Lowest Days Quotes

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was 'breaking the Lord's fourth commandment,' and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. The country is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a village, the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as these shall erelong cease to deform the landscape. There are few things more disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day.

There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.

Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.

What are these?" Maxon asked, brushing across the tips of my fingers as we walked. "Calluses. They're from pressing down on violin strings four hours a day." "I've never noticed them before." "Do they bother you?" I was the lowest caste of the six girls left, and I doubted any of them had hands like mine. Maxon stopped moving and lifted my fingers to his lips, kissing the tiny, worn tips. "On the contrary. I find them rather beautiful." I felt myself blush. "I've seen the world – admittedly mostly through bulletproof glass or from the tower of some ancient castle – but I've seen it. And I have access to the answers of a thousand questions at my disposal. But this small hand here?" He looked deeply into my eyes. "This hand makes sounds incomparable to anything I've ever heard. Sometimes I think I only dreamed that I heard you play the violin, it was so beautiful. These calluses are proof that it was real.

The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes. The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy–they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch _that_ time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes. The visitor from outer space made a gift to the Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections.

This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation.

Syn may be too much of a gentleman to hit you, but I’m not. I’m not only ashamed to call you human, I’m completely disgusted that we share the same gender. You want to know the truth? The only filth in this room is you, and you’re the one who doesn’t deserve to breathe our air. Decent’s got nothing to do with birthright. It’s all about actions, and trust me, you’re the lowest form I’ve ever met and I’ve taken in the worst scum imaginable. But I’d rather sit at the table with them than you any day. (Shahara to Mara)

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country who begs for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later. 'It is possible,' answers the doorkeeper, 'but not at this moment.' Since the door leading into the Law stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance. When the doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: 'If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect that even I cannot bear to look at.' These are difficulties which the man from the country has not expected to meet, the Law, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and long, thin, Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity. The doorkeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his home and about other matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes each gift: 'I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone.' During all these long years the man watches the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and the Law. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged watch he has learned to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper's fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the door of the Law. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to the man's disadvantage. 'What do you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper, 'you are insatiable.' 'Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it.

I don't know if everything will be okay . It may not be. You may think you are the lowest point now and then look up one day and see that its gotten so much worse.

You taught me what it means to fight for what you love. You showed me great endurance in a manner that was unusual to me. You fought for my heart until all the fight in you was gone without neglecting your brain. You displayed to me what unconditional love should look like, if I were to stare at it in a mirror. You loved me even on the days I found it difficult to even love myself. You scooped down to help me up at my lowest. You chained your heart to mine and stayed by my side even when all the signs gave you red lights about continuing our relationship. You remained loyal, even when I became disloyal, and fulfilled the belief that many men are dogs. You hung on longer than I expected, Loved me more than I could ever imagine. Some may have called you foolish for staying, but you showed me an aspect of love I’ve only read about in 1 Corinthians 13.

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.)

Bruno had a pain in his stomach and he could feel something growing inside him, something that when it worked its way up from the lowest depths inside him to the outside world would either make him shout and scream that the whole thing was wrong and unfair and a big mistake for which somebody would pay one of these days, or just make him burst into tears instead.

In the camp we saw our own people kill each other over a crust of bread. In the old days I used to think that religion did not matter much, that people could be good without it. That was not true in the camps. If you had no hope or faith to keep you human, you sank to the lowest depths. I'll practice my religion more faithfully now.

And until that day comes every true man's place/ is to reject all else and be with the lowest,/ the poorest - in the bottom of that deepest of wells/ in which alone is truth; in which is truth only - truth that should shine like the sun,/ with a monopoly of movement, and a sound like talking to God.

Moral of the story: Mortify yourself—when you are at your lowest, you feel ironically self-confident!

Seven is my favorite number," he said. "Why?" He nuzzled gently at her stomach. "There are seven colors in a rainbow, seven days of the week, and..." His voice lowered seductively, "...seven is the lowest natural number that can't be represented as the sum of the squares of three integers." "Mathematics," she exclaimed, laughing breathlessly. "How stirring.

From our first day alive on this planet, they began teaching society everything it knows and experiences. It was all brainwashing bullshit. Their trio of holy catechisms is: faith is more important than reason; inputs are more important than outcomes; hope is more important than reality. It was designed to choke your independent thinking and acting—to bring out the lowest common denominator in people—so that vast amounts of the general public would literally buy into sponsorship and preservation of their hegemonic nation. Their greatest achievement was the creation of the two-party political system; it gave only the illusion of choice, but never offered any change; it promised freedom, but only delivered more limits. In the end, you got stuck with two leading loser parties and not just one. It completed their trap of underhanded domination, and it worked masterfully. Look anywhere you go. America is a nation of submissive, dumbed-down, codependent, faith-minded zombies obsessed with celebrity gossip, buying unnecessary goods, and socializing without purpose on their electronic gadgets. The crazy thing is that people don't even know it; they still think they're free. Everywhere, people have been made into silent accomplices in the government's twisted control game. In the end, there is no way out for anyone.

What am I in the eyes of most people –a nonentity or an eccentric or an obnoxious person –someone who has no position in society and never will have, in short the lowest of the low. Well, then –even if that were all absolutely true, I should one day like to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.

I am adrift. At 21, penniless in a world of plausible excuses, I am alone with my goals. These are difficult years, and if anything loving lay ahead I was already paying a large enough price. At my lowest in these years of signing on, I do not fit in anywhere with the family philosophy, and these days set the tempo of the times- even for the days when the sun re-enters the room. Travestied or not, you must just get through it.

That's you, drops of water and you're on top of the mountain of success. But one day you start sliding down the mountain and you think wait a minute; I'm a mountain top water drop. I don't belong in this valley, this river, this low dark ocean with all these drops of water. Then one day it gets hot and you slowly evaporate into air, way up, higher than any mountain top, all the way to the heavens. Then you understand that it was at your lowest that you were closest to God. Life's a journey that goes round and round and the end is closest to the beginning. So if it's change you need, relish the journey.

Gentlemen, we are all cruel, we are all monsters, we all make people weep, mothers and nursing babies, but of all--let it be settled here and now--of all, I am the lowest vermin! So be it! Every day of my life I've been beating my breast and promising to reform, and every day I've done the same vile things. I understand now that for men such as I a blow is needed, a blow of fate, to catch them as with a noose and bind them by an external force. Never, never would I have risen by myself! But the thunder has struck. I accept the torment of accusation and of my disgrace before all, I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!

There’s one kind of writing that’s always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid this. In fact, I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time searching for the underrated value in ostensibly stupid things. I understand Turtle’s motivation and I would have watched Medelin in the theater. I read Mary Worth every day for a decade. I’ve seen Korn in concert three times and liked them once. I went to The Day After Tomorrow on opening night. I own a very expensive robot that doesn’t do anything. I am open to the possibility that everyting has metaphorical merit, and I see no point in sardonically attacking the most predictable failures within any culture.

It’s a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven’t fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.

The whispers you hear in your ear that you fear in the air everywhere, they are ghosts. The moans and the groans in the lowest of tones no one owns or condones, they are ghosts. You might deem them gremlins or water or wind, while others say shadows or rodents or sin. But oh! I say no! ‘Tis not so, child, for lo! The chills that you feel in a thrill that proves goose bumps are frightfully real, they are ghosts!

I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind. She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one. I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked at the lesser female officials, the humiliating pressure of male bodies on mine when I rode in the bus, and the long morning queue in front of a perpetually overflowing toilet.

The highest paid Americans read an average of two to three hours per day. The lowest paid Americans don't read at all... ...58% of adults never read another book after they leave high school—including 42% of university graduates... ...43.6% of American adults read below the 7th grade level... they are functionally illiterate... fully 50% of high school graduates cannot read their graduation diplomas, nor fill out an application form for a job at McDonald’s...

If I were to dedicate my life to science, whatever form that might take, it would be by the grace of the people I’d met during my lowest and most confusing days. More and more, I was feeling something I hadn’t in a long time: I was grateful.

Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; “the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people”;41 and “Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?

The three of us exchanged glances but said nothing. After all, what was there to say? The truth was that hookers did take credit cards—or at least ours did! In fact, hookers were so much a part of the Stratton subculture that we classified them like publicly traded stocks: Blue Chips were considered the top-of-the-line hooker, zee crème de la crème. They were usually struggling young models or exceptionally beautiful college girls in desperate need of tuition or designer clothing, and for a few thousand dollars they would do almost anything imaginable, either to you or to each other. Next came the NASDAQs, who were one step down from the Blue Chips. They were priced between three and five hundred dollars and made you wear a condom unless you gave them a hefty tip, which I always did. Then came the Pink Sheet hookers, who were the lowest form of all, usually a streetwalker or the sort of low-class hooker who showed up in response to a desperate late-night phone call to a number in Screw magazine or the yellow pages. They usually cost a hundred dollars or less, and if you didn’t wear a condom, you’d get a penicillin shot the next day and then pray that your dick didn’t fall off. Anyway, the Blue Chips took credit cards, so what was wrong with writing them off on your taxes? After all, the IRS knew about this sort of stuff, didn’t they? In fact, back in the good old days, when getting blasted over lunch was considered normal corporate behavior, the IRS referred to these types of expenses as three-martini lunches! They even had an accounting term for it: It was called T and E, which stood for Travel and Entertainment. All I’d done was taken the small liberty of moving things to their logical conclusion, changing T and E to T and A: Tits and Ass!

Normally, stress is lowest in the morning and rises steadily throughout the day. But the presence of dogs kept self-reported stress at their morning levels all day long. The researchers also found that the presence of dogs increased communication between workers.

Loss and Gain When I compare What I have lost with what I have gained, What I have missed with what attained, Little room do I find for pride. I am aware How many days have been idly spent; How like an arrow the good intent Has fallen short or been turned aside. But who shall dare To measure loss and gain in this wise? Defeat may be victory in disguise; The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Thanks to my librarians and booksellers who recommend my books - you are magic. Thanks to the bloggers and everyday readers who tell a friend, " You've gotta read this." Thanks to the readers who write me nice notes, which always tend to hit my inbox on my lowest days.

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in 'the house' who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility, that there was not. Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be 'farmed,' or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny's worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.

And perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, "We break the sword," and will smash its entire military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one's neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared—this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth, too.

People might feel sorry for a man who's fallen on hard times, but when an entire nation is poor, the rest of the world assumes that all its people must be brainless, lazy, dirty, clumsy fools. Instead of pity, the people provoke laughter. It's all a joke: their culture, their customs, their practices. In time the rest of the world may, some of them, begin to feel ashamed for having thought this way, and when they look around and see immigrants from that poor country mopping their floors and doing all the other lowest paying jobs, naturally they worry about what might happen if these workers one day rose up against them. So, to keep things sweet, they start taking an interest in the immigrants' culture and sometimes even pretend they think of them as equals.

It is better to be wise for one day than to be intelligent for a thousand. It is better to know yourself than to understand your enemies. It is better to find yourself than to find a thousand pots of gold. It is better to rule your mind than to rule the world. It is better to fight for justice than to give into tyranny. It is better to live in a pure mind than to reside in a darkened soul. It is better to be remembered as a coward than as a fool. It is better to study yourself than to examine your enemies. It is better to teach young children than to instruct old fools. It is better to strengthen your weaknesses than to celebrate your strengths. It is better to fight your fears than to harbour your anxieties. It is better to win hearts than to ruin souls. It is better to think your highest than to act your lowest. It is better to learn from fools than to ignore the wise. It is better to learn from your mistakes than to celebrate your success. It is better to think for yourself than to allow intellectuals to think for you. It is better to be wise and poor than to be rich and ignorant.  It is better to learn from children than to teach the wise. It is better to learn truth from your enemies than lies from your friends. It is better to be ostracized for who you are than to be embraced for who you are not. It is better to be hated for your virtues than to be loved for your vices. It is better to learn from the wise than to teach the foolish. It is better to discover your weaknesses than to glorify your strengths. It is better to heal yourself than to harm your enemies. It is better to love your enemies than to harm your friends. It is better to help the weak than to conquer the strong.

The proportion of Americans who read books for pleasure is now at its lowest level ever recorded. The American Time Use Survey--which studies a representative sample of 26,000 Americans--found that between 2004 and 2017, the proportion of men reading for pleasure had fallen by 40 percent, while for women, it was down by 29 percent. The opinion-poll company Gallup found that the proportion of Americans who never read a book in any given year tripled between 1978 and 2014. Some 57 percent of Americans now do not read a single book in a typical year. This has escalated to the point that by 2017, the average American spent seventeen minutes a day reading books and 5.4 hours on their phone.

Healing is always possible and that the lowest moments can lead to the greatest heights.

Amidst life's storms, a delicious brownie brings the sweet solace of happiness to even the lowest of days.

Gentleman, we're all cruel, we're all monsters, we all make men weep and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I've sworn to amend, and every day I've done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept torture of accusation, and my public shame; I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified.

1059The egg it is the source of it all. ‘Tis everyone’s ancestral hall. The bravest chief that ever fought, The lowest thief that e’er was caught, The harlot’s lip, the maiden’s leg, They each and all came from an egg.

The southern strategy marked the switch of the parties’ positions over the issue of race. Johnson knew what that meant: that the nation’s move toward equality would provide a weapon for a certain kind of politician to rise to power. In a hotel in Tennessee after a day spent seeing racial slurs scrawled on signs and an evening of bourbon, Johnson explained the signs to his young aide Bill Moyers: “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”[15]

Random chance—a freakishly close vote in the single decisive state—gave the Supreme Court the chance to resolve the 2000 presidential election. The character of the justices themselves turned that opportunity into one of the lowest moments in the Court's history. The struggle following the election of 2000 took thirty-six days, and the Court was directly involved for twenty-one of them. Yet over this brief period, the justices displayed all of their worst traits—among them vanity, overconfidence, impatience, arrogance, and simple political partisanship. These three weeks taint an otherwise largely admirable legacy. The justices did almost everything wrong. They embarrassed themselves and the Supreme Court.

Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he’s having right now. That’s how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction. We have to stand up to that, and say, at least to ourselves, that what he’s done before is still with us, still right here in this room until there’s true remorse. Nothing will be right until there’s that.” “He looks so, sort of, weakened.” “Weakened is not enough. Destroyed isn’t enough. He’s got to repent and feel humiliation and regret. I won’t be satisfied until he knows what he is.” "Do we know what we are?" "We know we aren’t him. We know that to that degree we don’t yet deserve the lowest circle of hell.

The word union itself seemed to be a dog whistle in the South, code for undeserving people of color who needed a union to compensate for some flaw in their character. As the workers spoke, I realized that it couldn’t be a coincidence that, to this day, the region that is the least unionized, with the lowest state minimum wages and the weakest labor protections overall, was the one that had been built on slave labor—on a system that compensated the labor of Black people at exactly zero.

All had suddenly lost their taste for vainglory and pride, they consigned these vices to the lowest circle of hell and would scarcely have believed even God had He assured them that just days before they themselves had ignominiously flaunted them; they were pious once more, wearing their meanest clothes and holding their old, despised rosaries in their hands, altogether convinced that they had always been like this, and if God Himself was not convinced, it was not for their want of trying.

The continent has embraced a spiritual death long before the demographic one. In those seventeen European countries that have fallen into the "lowest-low fertility," where are the children? In a way, you're looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe listening to his iPod, the eternal adolescent charges of the paternalistic state. The government makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection...the long-term cost of welfare is the infantilization of the population. The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latter-day Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in.

She was in a coma, and had been unresponsive for years. Every Tuesday I’d visit her and read to her, and as I’d leave I’d always say, “I love you,” as I’d kiss her on her forehead. One day as I was leaving, I said my normal I love you and kissed her, when her eyes popped open, she looked directly into my eyes, smiled, and then she said, “Spaghetti for brains albino idea weasel.” And that was when I stabbed her with a piece of garlic toast. It seemed like the most appropriate response. The police didn’t seem to agree, and I could tell by the way they bagged the evidence in a To Go box that they thought I was the lowest of the low, lower perhaps than even a politician. Well, not quite that low, but certainly with the cockroaches, vultures, and aids-infested vampires.

We exist within extraordinarily fine tolerances. Although our body temperature varies slightly through the day (it is lowest in the morning, highest in the late afternoon or evening), it normally doesn’t stray more than a degree or so from 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. (That’s in adults. Children tend to run about one degree higher.) To move more than a very few degrees in either direction is to invite a lot of trouble. A fall of just two degrees below normal, or a rise of four degrees above, can tip the brain into a crisis that can swiftly lead to irreversible damage or death. To avoid catastrophe, the brain has its trusty control center, the hypothalamus, which tells the body to cool itself by sweating or to warm itself by shivering and diverting blood flow away from the skin and into the more vulnerable organs.

Along with better training, pediatricians need better pay. Paradoxically, physicians involved in the primary care of our children—the doctors on the front lines who receive tens of thousands of visits every day from parents and their children—are among the lowest paid of all physicians in the United States. Something is wrong with our system when the doctor who performs a brief diagnostic procedure—some form of X-ray, for example, or a fifteen-minute operation—is paid many times more than the doctors making crucial decisions about our children’s health.

The great evangelist Dwight Moody once said, “When I was a young Christian, I thought that God kept His gifts on shelves and the best gifts were on the highest shelves and I would have to reach up. I learned later the best gifts are on the lowest shelf and I had to stoop down.” In

No more of this,” said our Host, “for the dignity Of God. Your storytelling is making me So terribly weary of your stupidity That, really, as I hope some day to be blessed, My ears are aching from your utterly senseless 5 Blather. Send such poetry to the devil! Whatever you call it, it’s stuff of the lowest level.

For the record…I didn't die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can't blame them. Maybe there'll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say, "Mark Witney is the only human being to have died on Mars." Let's see…where do I begin? The Ares Program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back heroes. They got parades and fame and love of the world. Ares 2 did the same thing , in a different location in Mars. They got a firm handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home. Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okey, not MINE per se. Commander Louis was in charge. I was just one of the crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be "in command" if I were the only remaining person. What do you know? I'm in command.

Apropos of Eskimo, I once heard a missionary describe the extraordinary difficulty he had found in translating the Bible into Eskimo. It was useless to talk of corn or wine to a people who did not know even what they meant, so he had to use equivalents within their powers of comprehension. Thus in the Eskimo version of the Scriptures the miracle of Cana of Galilee is described as turning the water into blubber; the 8th verse of the 5th chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter ran: ‘Your adversary the devil, as a roaring Polar bear walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ In the same way ‘A land flowing with milk and honey’ became ‘A land flowing with whale’s blubber,’ and throughout the New Testament the words ‘Lamb of God’ had to be translated ‘little Seal of God,’ as the nearest possible equivalent. The missionary added that his converts had the lowest opinion of Jonah for not having utilised his exceptional opportunities by killing and eating the whale.

It was The Gospel From Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space... [who] made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes. The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought...: Oh, boy — they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected. So it goes. The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that too, since the Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of the Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

I had better say something here about this question of age, since it is particularly important for mathematicians. No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. To take a simple illustration at a comparatively humble level, the average age of election to the Royal Society is lowest in mathematics. We can naturally find much more striking illustrations. We may consider, for example, the career of a man who was certainly one of the world's three greatest mathematicians. Newton gave up mathematics at fifty, and had lost his enthusiasm long before; he had recognized no doubt by the time he was forty that his greatest creative days were over. His greatest idea of all, fluxions and the law of gravitation, came to him about 1666 , when he was twentyfour—'in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since'. He made big discoveries until he was nearly forty (the 'elliptic orbit' at thirty-seven), but after that he did little but polish and perfect. Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work a good deal later; Gauss's great memoir on differential geometry was published when he was fifty (though he had had the fundamental ideas ten years before). I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. If a man of mature age loses interest in and abandons mathematics, the loss is not likely to be very serious either for mathematics or for himself.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.

The Bone Keeper presides over the festival. She rules the lowest level of the Lowerworld where she keeps watch over the bones. They say she has a skull for a face,wears a skirt made of serpents,and her mouth is extra wide in order to feed off the stars during the day.And yet,despite my numerous journeys to the Lowerworld,I have yet to run into her.But maybe you will, nieta,who knows?" "A skull faec,a snake skirt,and a steady diet of stars?" I shake my head and balk. "No thanks.I'd prefer to avoid her if it's okay with you." "You don't always get the journey you want, nieta. Though you always get the journey you need," she says-yet another sage statement in a collection of many. "You paraphrasing Mick Jagger now?

Don Enrique says a full moon pulls up the highest tides of the month, at midday and midnight. And it pulls them down to their lowest ebb when it is rising or setting. So says a man in a frock coat and breeches who, if he tried to row a boat, would fall out instantly and drown. But Leandro said the same thing about the moon and high tide, so it might be true. How can you know if the moon is going toward full, or disappearing? This evening the moon was half, and Leandro said it’s dying away. You can tell because it’s shaped like the letter C, not curved forward like D. He says when the moon is D like Dios, it is growing to fill God’s sky. When dying away it is C, like Cristo on the cross. So, no good tides again for many days.

The last year had been a series of wrong turns, bad choices, abandoned projects. There was the all-girl band in which she had played bass, variously called Throat, Slaughterhouse Six and Bad Biscuit, which had been unable to decide on a name, let alone a musical direction. There was the alternative club night that no-one had gone to, the abandoned first novel, the abandoned second novel, several miserable summer jobs selling cashmere and tartan to tourists. At her very, very lowest ebb she had taken a course in Circus Skills until it transpired that she had none. Trapeze was not the solution. The much-advertised Second Summer of Love had been one of melancholy and lost momentum. Even her beloved Edinburgh had started to bore and depress her. Living in a her University town felt like staying on at a party that everyone else had left, and so in October she had given up the flat in Rankellior Street and moved back to her parents for a long, fraught, wet winter of recriminations and slammed doors and afternoon TV in a house that now seemed impossibly small.

Those who, from the start, are the unfortunate, the downtrodden, the broken – these are the ones, the weakest, who most undermine life amongst men, who introduce the deadliest poison and scepticism into our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where can we escape the surreptitious glance imparting a deep sadness, the backward glance of the born misfit revealing how such a man communes with himself, – that glance which is a sigh. ‘If only I were some other person!’ is what this glance sighs: ‘but there’s no hope of that. I am who I am: how could I get away from myself ? And oh – I’m fed up with myself!’ . . . In such a soil of self-contempt, such a veritable swamp, every kind of weed and poisonous plant grows, all of them so small, hidden, dissembling and sugary. Here, the worms of revenge and rancour teem all round; here, the air stinks of things unrevealed and unconfessed; here, the web of the most wicked conspiracy is continually being spun, – the conspiracy of those who suffer against those who are successful and victorious, here, the sight of the victorious man is hated. And what mendacity to avoid admitting this hatred as hatred! What expenditure of big words and gestures, what an art of ‘righteous’ slander! These failures: what noble eloquence flows from their lips! How much sugared, slimy, humble humility swims in their eyes! What do they really want? At any rate, to represent justice, love, wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these who are ‘the lowest’, these sick people! And how skilful such an ambition makes them! In particular, we have to admire the counterfeiter’s skill with which the stamp of virtue, the ding-a-ling golden ring of virtue is now imitated. They have taken out a lease on virtue to keep it just for themselves, these weak and incurably sick people, there is no doubt about it: ‘Only we are good and just’ is what they say, ‘only we are the homines bonæ voluntatis’. They promenade in our midst like living reproaches, like warnings to us, – as though health, success, strength, pride and the feeling of power were in themselves depravities for which penance, bitter penance will one day be exacted: oh, how ready they themselves are, in the last resort, to make others penitent, how they thirst to be hangmen! Amongst them we find plenty of vengeance-seekers disguised as judges, with the word justice continually in their mouth like poisonous spittle, pursing their lips and always at the ready to spit at anybody who does not look discontented and who cheerfully goes his own way. Among their number there is no lack of that most disgusting type of dandy, the lying freaks who want to impersonate ‘beautiful souls’ and put their wrecked sensuality on the market, swaddled in verses and other nappies, as ‘purity of the heart’: the type of moral onanists and ‘self-gratifiers.’ The will of the sick to appear superior in any way, their instinct for secret paths, which lead to tyranny over the healthy, – where can it not be found, this will to power of precisely the weakest!

Yes, our social and economic circumstances shape decisions we make about all sorts of things in life, including sex. Sometimes they rob us of the power to make any decisions at all. But of all human activity, sex is among the least likely to fit neatly into the blueprint of rational decision making favoured by economists. To quote my friend Claire in Istanbul, sex is about 'conquest, fantasy, projection, infatuation, mood, anger, vanity, love, pissing off your parents, the risk of getting caught, the pleasure of cuddling afterwards, the thrill of having a secret, feeling desirable, feeling like a man, feeling like a woman, bragging to your mates the next day, getting to see what someone looks like naked and a million-and-one-other-things.' When sex isn't fun, it is often lucrative, or part of a bargain which gives you access to something you want or need. If HIV is spread by 'poverty and gender equality', how come countries that have plenty of both, such as Bangladesh, have virtually no HIV? How come South Africa and Botswana, which have the highest female literacy and per capita incomes in Africa, are awash with HIV, while countries that score low on both - such as Guinea, Somalia, Mali, and Sierra Leone - have epidemics that are negligible by comparison? How come in country after country across Africa itself, from Cameroon to Uganda to Zimbabwe and in a dozen other countries as well, HIV is lowest in the poorest households, and highest in the richest households? And how is it that in many countries, more educated women are more likely to be infested with HIV than women with no schooling? For all its cultural and political overtones, HIV is an infectious disease. Forgive me for thinking like an epidemiologist, but it seems to me that if we want to explain why there is more of it in one place than another, we should go back and take a look at the way it is spread.

Curiously enough, though, it was Jeanette who came home one day with a C on a test. Prior to that, B was the lowest grade any of us had gotten, and even a B caused Mommy to shake her head and ask, 'Did anyone in the class get an A? Then you can get an A, too. You just have to study harder.' But this time she looked at the C on Jeanette's paper and said nothing. Wasn't she going to lay into Jeanette? Was Doc so special that she could get away with anything? The rest of us were stunned. I, for one, resolved that if that's the way it was going to be, I was darned if I was going to work so hard at studying from then on. Then Saturday came. Mommy roused Jeanette at 6:00 A.M., told her to dress in old clothes, and ordered her to the kitchen, where she handed Jeanette a bucket and scrub clothes. 'You and I are going to clean the kitchen from top to bottom,' Mommy announced. 'I'm going to teach you how to do it and do every bit of it right because that's what you're going to be doing for a living when you grow up'. Jeanette was outraged. 'I'm going to be a doctor'! 'Anybody who gets a C on a test is either too dumb or too lazy to be a doctor. You're going to end up working in somebody's kitchen, so you'd better know how to do it. Now, start by scouring the oven. And I want it spotless'.

Marx believed that as wealth becomes more concentrated, poverty will become more widespread and the plight of working people evermore desperate. According to his critics, this prediction has proven wrong. They point out that he wrote during a time of raw industrialism, an era of robber barons and the fourteen-hour work day. Through persistent struggle, the working class improved its life conditions from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Today, mainstream spokespersons portray the United States as a prosperous middle-class society. Yet one might wonder. During the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, from 1981 to 1996, the share of the national income that went to those who work for a living shrank by over 12 percent. The share that went to those who live off investments increased almost 35 percent. Less than 1 percent of the population owns almost 50 percent of the nation’s wealth. The richest families are hundreds of times wealthier than the average household in the lower 90 percent of the population. The gap between America’s rich and poor is greater than it has been in more than half a century and is getting ever-greater. Thus, between 1977 and 1989, the top 1 percent saw their earnings grow by over 100 percent, while the three lowest quintiles averaged a 3 to 10 percent drop in real income.

Connor had become a doctor just two days ago—along with all of his friends. They were hand-selected at just three years old to undergo intensive medical training as part of a controversial experiment, called Kid Docs. In the past few years, the Kid Docs program had produced some of the best doctors in the entire country, if not the world. They had some of the lowest complication rates and the highest success rates, and they had developed innovative new procedures that saved lives that were previously unsalvageable. Connor hoped that he would be among the best doctors in the world someday. But right now, he was focused on only a single thing: saving this one man’s life.

I choose my outfit, my undergarments with care, because I know from experience that a drink, with him, will lead to much, much more. In the bar, I bask in his attention, happy in this moment, knowing full well it will be fleeting. I lie in bed, his sleeping body curled around mine, his arm around my waist, marvelling that someone can be so close, skin against mine, but simultaneously seem so remote, so inaccessible. When we part the next day and I hear the words I fully expect to hear - 'well, I guess I'll see you when I get back' - i feel a twinge of something I was determined not to feel. A brief pang of remorse that I may have been selling little pieces of myself to the lowest bidder.

The southern strategy marked the switch of the parties’ positions over the issue of race. Johnson knew what that meant: that the nation’s move toward equality would provide a weapon for a certain kind of politician to rise to power. In a hotel in Tennessee after a day spent seeing racial slurs scrawled on signs and an evening of bourbon, Johnson explained the signs to his young aide Bill Moyers: “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”[15] The stage was set, with rhetoric and policy, for the rise of authoritarianism.

but she would have traded them gladly for Mme Leroi’s permanent ability to be invited everywhere, just as, in a restaurant, a talented but unknown artist whose genius is written neither in the features of his diffident face nor in the outmoded cut of his threadbare jacket would readily change places with the young broker from the lowest ranks of society who is dining with two actresses at a neighboring table, and upon whom, in an obsequious and incessant bustle, owner, manager, waiters, pages dance attention; even the kitchen staff file out of the kitchen to salute him, as in fairy tales, while the sommelier comes forward, as dusty as his bottles, hobbling and dazed, as if, coming up from the cellar, he had twisted his foot before emerging into the light of day.

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.

The sky takes each flurry and sends it right back with just a hint of music lingering in the echo, a belt from some invisible trombone, the lowest note on an organ drawn out. Sound after sound flooding from my body like war-zone fire on a cold day, Mama rubbing the tightness out of my jaw, melting the tears back into my skin, until there is no more noise and my chest is heaving, out of breath and raw and Mama is holding me and the cars have not stopped, have not slowed, all of it, all the time racing past us while we are stuck between the sky and asphalt that does not know our names and Mama will walk me to the bus stop and leave me there and we will not speak of what the freeway does to us when it is nighttime and we are ghosts. But Mama taught me how to swim and I can see underwater. I can see.

The matter of sedition is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment....The causes and motives of sedition are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending people joineth them in a common cause.' The cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends. 'Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions...that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united.' A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth: 'Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread.' But this does not mean socialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; 'the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people;' and 'Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?' What Bacon wants is first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for administration; and above all a philosopher-king. 'It is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned governors.' He mentions Seneca, Antonius Pius and Aurelius; it was his hope that to their names posterity would add his own.

Europe in the days of Columbus, Copernicus and Newton had the highest concentration of religious fanatics in the world, and the lowest level of tolerance. The luminaries of the Scientific Revolution lived in a society that expelled Jews and Muslims, burned heretics wholesale, saw a witch in every cat-loving elderly lady and started a new religious war every full moon. If you travelled to Cairo or Istanbul around 1600, you would find there a multicultural and tolerant metropolis, where Sunnis, Shiites, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Armenians, Copts, Jews and even the occasional Hindu lived side by side in relative harmony. Though they had their share of disagreements and riots, and though the Ottoman Empire routinely discriminated against people on religious grounds, it was a liberal paradise compared with Europe.

In the roughly one-third of the day that is free of obligations, in their precious “leisure” time, most people in fact seem to use their minds as little as possible. The largest part of free time—almost half of it for American adults—is spent in front of the television set. The plots and characters of the popular shows are so repetitive that although watching TV requires the processing of visual images, very little else in the way of memory, thinking, or volition is required. Not surprisingly, people report some of the lowest levels of concentration, use of skills, clarity of thought, and feelings of potency when watching television. The other leisure activities people usually do at home are only a little more demanding. Reading most newspapers and magazines, talking to other people, and gazing out the window also involve processing very little new information, and thus require little concentration.

One day,our love will conquer this dark cycle.That's worth everything to me." Luce looked up and saw the love glowing in his eyes. He believed what he was saying. He didn't care if he suffered again and again; he'd forge on, losing her over and over,buoyed by the hope that one day this wouldn't be their end. He knew it was doomed,but he tried over and over again anyway,and he always would. His commitment to her,to them, touched a part of her that she'd thought she'd given up on. She still wanted to argue: This Daniel didn't know the challenges coming their way,the tears they would shed over the ages.He didn't know that she'd seen him in his moments of deepest desperation. What the pain of her deaths would do to him. But then- Luce knew.And that made all the difference in the world. Daniel's lowest moments had terrified her, but things had changed. All along, she'd felt bound to their love, but now she knew how to protect it.Now she had seen their love from so many different angles. She understood it in a way she'd never thought she would.If Daniel ever faltered,she could raise him up. She had learned how to do it from the best: from Daniel.Here she was,about to kill her soul, about to take away their love permanently, and five minutes alone with him brought her back to life. Some people spent their entire lives looking for love like this. Luce had had it all along. The future held no starshot for her. Only Daniel.Her Daniel, the one she'd left in her parent's backyard in Thunderbolt.She had to go. "Kiss me," she whispered. He was seated on the steps with his knees parted just enough to let her body slide between them. She sank to her knees and faced him. Their foreheads were touching.The tips of their noses. Daniel took her hands. He seemed to want to tell her something,but he could not find the words. "Please," she begged,her lips edging toward his. "Kiss me and set me free.

I was a bird. I lived a bird's life from birth to death. I was born the thirty-second chick in the Jipu family. I remember everything in detail. I remember breaking out of the shell at birth. But I learned later that my mother had gently cracked the shell first to ease my way. I dozed under my mother's chest for the first few days. Her feathers were so warm and soft! I was strong, so I kicked away my siblings to keep the cozy spot. Just 10 days after I was born, I was given flying lessons. We all had to learn quickly because there were snakes and owls and hawks. My little brothers and sisters, who didn't practice enough, all died. My little sister looked so unhappy when she got caught. I can still see her face. Before I could fly, I hadn't known that our nest was on the second-lowest branch of a big tree. My parents chose the location wisely. Snakes could reach the lowest branch and eagles and hawks could attack us if we lived at the top. We soared through the sky, above mountains and forests. But it wasn't just for fun! We always had to watch out for enemies, and to hunt for food. Death was always nearby. You could easily starve or freeze to death. Life wasn't easy. Once, I got caught in a monsoon. I smacked into a tree and lay bleeding for days. Many of my family and friends died, one after another. To help rebuild our clan, I found myself a female and married her. She was so sweet. She laid many eggs, but one day, a human cut down the tree we lived in, crushing all the eggs and my beloved. A bird's life is an endless battle against death. I survived for many years before I finally met my end. I found a worm at some harvest festival. I came fluttering down. It was a bad mistake. Some big guy was waiting to ambush hungry little birdies like me. I heard my own guts pop. It was clear to me that I was going to die at last. And I wanted to know where I'd go when I died.

IT is proverbially easier to destroy than to construct ; and as a corollary of this proverb, it is easier for readers to apprehend the destructive than the constructive side of an author's thought. More than this: when a writer is skilful at destructive criticism, the public is satisfied with that. If he has no constructive philosophy, it is not demanded; and if he has, it is overlooked. This is especially true when we are concerned with critics of society, from Arnold to the present day. All such critics are criticized from one common standard, and that the lowest: the standard of brilliant attack upon aspects of contemporary society which we know and dislike. It is the easiest standard to take. For the criticism deals with concrete things in our world which we know, and the writer may be merely echoing, in neater phrasing, our own thoughts; whereas the construction deals with things hard and unfamiliar. Hence the popularity of Mr. Mencken.

Yesterday while I was on the side of the mat next to some wrestlers who were warming up for their next match, I found myself standing side by side next to an extraordinary wrestler. He was warming up and he had that look of desperation on his face that wrestlers get when their match is about to start and their coach is across the gym coaching on another mat in a match that is already in progress. “Hey do you have a coach.” I asked him. “He's not here right now.” He quietly answered me ready to take on the task of wrestling his opponent alone. “Would you mind if I coached you?” His face tilted up at me with a slight smile and said. “That would be great.” Through the sounds of whistles and yelling fans I heard him ask me what my name was. “My name is John.” I replied. “Hi John, I am Nishan” he said while extending his hand for a handshake. He paused for a second and then he said to me: “John I am going to lose this match”. He said that as if he was preparing me so I wouldn’t get hurt when my coaching skills didn’t work magic with him today. I just said, “Nishan - No score of a match will ever make you a winner. You are already a winner by stepping onto that mat.” With that he just smiled and slowly ran on to the mat, ready for battle, but half knowing what the probable outcome would be. When you first see Nishan you will notice that his legs are frail - very frail. So frail that they have to be supported by custom made, form fitted braces to help support and straighten his limbs. Braces that I recognize all to well. Some would say Nishan has a handicap. I say that he has a gift. To me the word handicap is a word that describes what one “can’t do”. That doesn’t describe Nishan. Nishan is doing. The word “gift” is a word that describes something of value that you give to others. And without knowing it, Nishan is giving us all a gift. I believe Nishan’s gift is inspiration. The ability to look the odds in the eye and say “You don’t pertain to me.” The ability to keep moving forward. Perseverance. A “Whatever it takes” attitude. As he predicted, the outcome of his match wasn’t great. That is, if the only thing you judge a wrestling match by is the actual score. Nishan tried as hard as he could, but he couldn’t overcome the twenty-six pound weight difference that he was giving up to his opponent on this day in order to compete. You see, Nishan weighs only 80 pounds and the lowest weight class in this tournament was 106. Nishan knew he was spotting his opponent 26 pounds going into every match on this day. He wrestled anyway. I never did get the chance to ask him why he wrestles, but if I had to guess I would say, after watching him all day long, that Nishan wrestles for the same reasons that we all wrestle for. We wrestle to feel alive, to push ourselves to our mental, physical and emotional limits - levels we never knew we could reach. We wrestle to learn to use 100% of what we have today in hopes that our maximum today will be our minimum tomorrow. We wrestle to measure where we started from, to know where we are now, and to plan on getting where we want to be in the future. We wrestle to look the seemingly insurmountable opponent right in the eye and say, “Bring it on. - I can take whatever you can dish out.” Sometimes life is your opponent and just showing up is a victory. You don't need to score more points than your opponent in order to accomplish that. No Nishan didn’t score more points than any of his opponents on this day, that would have been nice, but I don’t believe that was the most important thing to Nishan. Without knowing for sure - the most important thing to him on this day was to walk with pride like a wrestler up to a thirty two foot circle, have all eyes from the crowd on him, to watch him compete one on one against his opponent - giving it all that he had. That is what competition is all about. Most of the times in wrestlin

I have again been asked to explain how one can "become a Daoists..." with all of the sad things happening in our world today, Laozi and Zhuangzi give words of advice, tho not necessarily to become a Daoist priest or priestess... " So many foreigners who want to become “Religious Daoists” 道教的道师 （道士） do not realize that they must not only receive a transmission of a Lu 籙 register which identifies their Daoist school, and learn as well how to sing the ritual melodies, play the flute, stringed instruments, drums, and sacred dance steps, required to be an ordained and functioning Daoist priest or priestess. This process usually takes 10 years or more of daily discipleship and practice, to accomplish. There are 86 schools and genre of Daoist rituals listed in the Baiyun Guan Gazeteer, 白雲觀志, which was edited by Oyanagi Sensei, in Tokyo, 1928, and again in 1934, and re-published by Baiyun Guan in Beijing, available in their book shop to purchase. Some of the schools, such as the Quanzhen Longmen 全真龙门orders, allow their rituals and Lu registers to be learned by a number of worthy disciples or monks; others, such as the Zhengyi, Qingwei, Pole Star, and Shangqing 正一，清微，北极，上请 registers may only be taught in their fullness to one son and/or one disciple, each generation. Each of the schools also have an identifying poem, from 20 or 40 character in length, or in the case of monastic orders (who pass on the registers to many disciples), longer poems up to 100 characters, which identify the generation of transmission from master to disciple. The Daoist who receives a Lu register (給籙元科, pronounced "Ji Lu Yuanke"), must use the character from the poem given to him by his or her master, when composing biao 表 memorials, shuwen 梳文 rescripts, and other documents, sent to the spirits of the 3 realms (heaven, earth, water /underworld). The rituals and documents are ineffective unless the correct characters and talismanic signature are used. The registers are not given to those who simply practice martial artists, Chinese medicine, and especially never shown to scholars. The punishment for revealing them to the unworthy is quite severe, for those who take payment for Lu transmission, or teaching how to perform the Jinlu Jiao and Huanglu Zhai 金籙醮，黃籙齋 科儀 keyi rituals, music, drum, sacred dance steps. Tang dynasty Tangwen 唐文 pronunciation must also be used when addressing the highest Daoist spirits, i.e., the 3 Pure Ones and 5 Emperors 三请五帝. In order to learn the rituals and receive a Lu transmission, it requires at least 10 years of daily practice with a master, by taking part in the Jiao and Zhai rituals, as an acolyte, cantor, or procession leader. Note that a proper use of Daoist ritual also includes learning Inner Alchemy, ie inner contemplative Daoist meditation, the visualization of spirits, where to implant them in the body, and how to summon them forth during ritual. The woman Daoist master Wei Huacun’s Huangting Neijing, 黃庭內經 to learn the esoteric names of the internalized Daoist spirits. Readers must be warned never to go to Longhu Shan, where a huge sum is charged to foreigners ($5000 to $9000) to receive a falsified document, called a "license" to be a Daoist! The first steps to true Daoist practice, Daoist Master Zhuang insisted to his disciples, is to read and follow the Laozi Daode Jing and the Zhuangzi Neipian, on a daily basis. Laozi Ch 66, "the ocean is the greatest of all creatures because it is the lowest", and Ch 67, "my 3 most precious things: compassion for all, frugal living for myself, respect all others and never put anyone down" are the basis for all Daoist practice. The words of Zhuangzi, Ch 7, are also deeply meaningful: "Yin and Yang were 2 little children who loved to play inside Hundun (ie Taiji, gestating Dao). They felt sorry because Hundun did not have eyes, or eats, or other senses. So everyday they drilled one hole, ie 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, one mouth; and on the 7th day, Hundun died.

I can notice a tiny weed forcing its way through a crack in the sidewalk, proving yet again that nature cannot be tamed by civilization, and employ the same concept to take comfort in my insignificance.43 You can experience similar awe when hearing ocean waves crash against rocks on a beach, gazing at the stars, walking under storm clouds in the middle of the day, hiking deep into uncharted territory, or taking part in spiritual ceremonies. People who report feeling awe more frequently also have the lowest levels of those nasty cytokines that cause inflammation (though nobody has proved cause and effect).44 Whether you cultivate awe, meditate, or find other ways to deconstruct your experience into physical sensations, recategorization is a critical tool for mastering your emotions in the moment. When you feel bad, treat yourself like you have a virus, rather than assuming that your unpleasant feelings mean something personal. Your feelings might just be noise. You might just need some sleep.

This is an important tool that is unique to networked products. Traditional products that lack networks often struggle with this, because they rely on spammy emails, discounts, and push notifications to entice users back. This usually doesn’t work, and company-sent communications rank among the lowest clickthrough rate messages. Networked products, on the other hand, have the unique capability to reactivate these users by enlisting active users to bring them back. Even if you don’t open the app on a given day, other users in the network may interact with you—commenting or liking your past content, or sending you a message. Getting an email notification that says your boss just shared a folder with you is a lot more compelling than a marketing message. A notification that a close friend just joined an app you tried a month ago is a lot more engaging than an announcement about new features. And the more dense the network is around a churned user, the more likely they are to receive this type of interaction.

I visited with American diplomats at the U.S. embassy just before they became entangled in the impeachment of President Donald Trump. On the day I visited, they were overwhelmed by Russia’s latest disinformation campaign: Russian trolls had been inundating Facebook pages frequented by young Ukrainian mothers with anti-vaccination propaganda. This, as the country reeled from the worst measles outbreak in modern history. Ukraine now had one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world and the Kremlin was capitalizing on the chaos. Ukraine’s outbreak was already spreading back to the States, where Russian trolls were now pushing anti-vaxxer memes on Americans. American officials seemed at a loss for how to contain it. (And they were no better prepared when, one year later, Russians seized on the pandemic to push conspiracy theories that Covid-19 was an American-made bioweapon, or a sinister plot by Bill Gates to profit off vaccines.) There seemed no bottom to the lengths Russia was willing to go to divide and conquer.

Rosewater was on the next bed, reading, and Billy drew him into the conversation, asked him what he was reading this time. So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian by the way. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes. The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: ''There are right people to lynch.'' Who? People not well connected. So it goes. The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

Then one day, as he was watching one of his workers sift a shovelful of earth, something among the rocks and sand caught his eye, “a flat fragment of some brick-red substance,” which appeared briefly and then disappeared. It looked, thought Suggs, exactly like a piece of pottery. But that couldn’t be—pottery was found throughout Island Southeast Asia and much of Melanesia, but it had never been seen east of Samoa. And yet, there it was: an unmistakable potsherd from the lowest level of the dark band of sand that indicated human habitation. Almost immediately, a second, larger fragment emerged, then a third: a piece of an ancient pot rim with a grooved and rounded lip and marks on the inner and outer surfaces, “from the hand of the potter who had smoothed this vessel in the dim past.” In all, five fragments of pottery were discovered, belonging to just three vessels: a poorly fired, crumbly brown pot with a coarse temper; a well-fired reddish-brown bowl with a flared rim; and a fine-tempered fragment, also reddish brown, with marks that showed it had been polished using some kind of tool. Modest though they were, these ceramic tidbits changed “the complexion of Polynesian prehistory”—though, as was so often the case, it was not immediately clear in precisely what way.

I lift my voice against these audacious practices and these infamous fashions, and I pray that you who have daughters in Zion will save them, if you can, from following these obscene fashions, that if followed, will destroy the last vestige of true womanly modesty, and reduce them to the level of the courtesans on the streets of Paris, from whence these debasing fashions come. They are the lowest and most degraded specimens of womankind, who have yielded their bodies to crime and their souls to death, if not to perdition, and are devoid of modesty and the sense of shame. We cannot afford to let our women follow such as these or to adopt the cursed fashions they set. . . . I suppose I shall incur the censure and displeasure of many in saying these things, but I do not care what the world has to say, what men say, nor what women say, in relation to these things. In my sight the present day fashions are abominable, suggestive of evil, calculated to arouse base passion and lust, and to engender lasciviousness, in the hearts of those who follow the fashions, and of those who tolerate them. Why? Because women are imitating the very customs of a class of women who have resorted to that means to aid them to sell their souls. It is infamous, and I hope the daughters of Zion will not descend to these pernicious ways, customs and fashions, for they are demoralizing and damnable in their effect.

Sacraments   I once met a man whom I’ll call Steve. He grew up in a nondenominational charismatic church. He was a highly motivated, highly talented individual. He was also a strong leader and an excellent communicator. Given his personality and gifting, it’s no surprise that he became the pastor of a successful independent church. His life seemed to be going great until the day he discovered that his wife was having an affair with one of his best friends. The situation got worse when his church fired him for not being able to control his family.   Unemployed, going through a divorce, and cut off from the community that had always surrounded him, a friend invited Steve to join him at an Anglican church. There he discovered the power of liturgy and the mystery of the communion table. Steve didn’t have the kind of spiritual life he had always relied on. Nothing about God made any sense to him. He couldn’t sing praise songs, he couldn’t read the Bible, he couldn’t even pray. But he could eat.   Steve’s mind needed answers. His heart needed to be comforted. His soul needed grace. Sermons weren’t giving him answers and praise music wasn’t comforting, but the body of Christ was feeding his inner self. Steve discovered that God was real to him when he ate and drank Holy Communion. Even though Steve was at the lowest point of his life, a time when he could do nothing to help himself, he was still able to receive the sacrament.

We often associate science with the values of secularism and tolerance. If so, early modern Europe is the last place you would have expected a scientific revolution. Europe in the days of Columbus, Copernicus and Newton had the highest concentration of religious fanatics in the world, and the lowest level of tolerance. The luminaries of the Scientific Revolution lived in a society that expelled Jews and Muslims, burned heretics wholesale, saw a witch in every cat-loving elderly lady and started a new religious war every full moon. If you had travelled to Cairo or Istanbul around 1600, you would find there a multicultural and tolerant metropolis, where Sunnis, Shiites, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Armenians, Copts, Jews and even the occasional Hindu lived side by side in relative harmony. Though they had their share of disagreements and riots, and though the Ottoman Empire routinely discriminated against people on religious grounds, it was a liberal paradise compared with Europe. If you had then sailed on to contemporary Paris or London, you would have found cities awash with religious extremism, in which only those belonging to the dominant sect could live. In London they killed Catholics, in Paris they killed Protestants, the Jews had long been driven out, and nobody in his right mind would dream of letting any Muslims in. And yet, the Scientific Revolution began in London and Paris rather than in Cairo and Istanbul.

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate–For one thing is one of the world's best talkers, and funny too–As I'll show–It was he and George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in all the modern antisepticism–Says Dave "People in America have all these racks of drycleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress, they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles–Isnt that amazing?give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state, the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades and perfumes are all walkin around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasn't occurred to anybody in America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles?"–The whole azzole shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good one–In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there on each trip–Monsanto hadnt heard about it yet, "Do you realize that until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that?"–"Let's go tell him right now!"–"Why of course if we wait another minute...and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's wrong they dont know just what!"–We rush to tell Monsanto at once in the book store around the corner. (Big Sur, Chap. 11)

Today I had a lively discussion with a merchant in Fez with a view to finding out what the Moors think of European civilization.... He was a fine man, about forty years old, with an honest and serious face, who had made business visits to the most important cities in Western Europe and had lived for a long time in Tangier, where he learnt Spanish.... I asked him therefore what kind of impression the large cities of Europe had made on him.... He looked hard at me and answered coldly: “Large streets, fine shops, beautiful palaces, good workshops, everything clean.” He gave the impression that with these words, he had mentioned everything in our countries that was worthy of praise. “Have you not found anything else in Europe that is beautiful and good?” I asked. He looked at me questioningly. “Is it possible,” I went on, “that an intelligent man like you, who has visited several countries so marvelously superior to your own can speak about them without astonishment, or at least without the emotion of a country boy who has seen the pasha’s palace? What can you possibly admire in the world? What sort of people are you? Who can possibly understand you?” “Perdone Usted”, he answered coldly, “it is for me to say that I cannot understand you. I have told you all the things which I consider to be better in Europe. What more can I say? Have I to say something that I do not believe to be true? I repeat that your streets are larger than ours, your shops finer, that you have workshops such as we do not have, and also rich palaces. That is all. I can only add one more thing: that you know more than we do, because you have many books, and read more.” I became impatient. “Do not lose patience, Caballero,” he said, “let us speak together calmly. Is not a man’s first duty honesty? Is it not honesty more than anything else that makes a man worthy of respect, and one country superior to another? Very well, then. As far as honesty is concerned, your countries are certainly not better than ours. That much I can say right away.” “Gently, gently!” I said, “Tell me first what you mean by honesty!” “Honesty in business, Caballero. The Moors, for example, sometimes cheat the Europeans in trade, but you Europeans cheat the Moors much more often.” “There must be a few cases,” I replied, in order to say something. “Casos raros?” he exclaimed angrily. “It happens every day! Proof: I go to Marseilles. I buy cotton. I choose a particular thread, give the exact reference number and brand-name, as well as the amount required. I ask for it to be sent, I pay, and I return home. Back in Morocco, I receive the cotton. I open the consignment, and take a look. I find the same number, the same brand-name, and a thread that is of one third the thickness! This is anything but good, and I lose thousands of francs! I rush to the consulate, but in vain. Another case: A merchant from Fez places an order in Europe for blue cloth, so many pieces, of such and such a length and breadth. He pays for it when the bargain is made. In due course he receives the cloth, opens the package, and checks the measurements. The first pieces are all right, those underneath are shorter, and those lowest down are half a meter too short! The cloth cannot be used for cloaks, and the merchant is ruined. . . . And so on and so on!

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

사이트문의~홈피:anaba.0pe.kr/ ??☎:텔레↔mak856 ??☎:카톡↔123w ☎라인【kom85】 사이트문의~홈피:anaba.0pe.kr/ ??☎:텔레↔mak856 ??☎:카톡↔123w ☎라인【kom85】 사이트문의~홈피:anaba.0pe.kr/ ??☎:텔레↔mak856 ??☎:카톡↔123w ☎라인【kom85】 #스테로이드판매, ,#디볼구입, #아나바구입방법,#옥산드롤론구입 #메디텍위니 ,#암브로콜구입 #스테로이드구입,#에페드린구입 #이퀴포이즈구입,#클렌부테롤 #아나볼릭스테로이드 #메디텍위니구입,#클렌부테롤구입, #스타노조롤구입, #아나볼릭스테로이드구입,#인슐린IGF #데카듀라볼린구입,#성장호르몬HGH구입 #프로바이론구입,#lg성선구입##성선 #성선구입,#에난,#에난구입, #이퀴구입,#윈스트롤구입 #케어트로핀,#케어트로핀구입 #유트로핀플러스구입 How are they taken? Steroids are taken in different ways, and the dosage may vary depending on the condition you have. The table below gives an idea of how often you might need to take steroids. You should always take medication as prescribed by the person treating you. Tablets, liquids and soluble tablets Usually once a day. Preferably in the morning. Either with or after food to prevent stomach problems. Creams and gels Usually once or twice a day for a few weeks. Your doctor might suggest taking them less often but for a longer period. Should only be used on affected areas of the skin. Eye drops and ointments May need to be taken regularly throughout the day. Usually one drop in each eye each time you take it. You will be given the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time, to reduce the risk of side effects. Your dose will probably be reduced gradually as your symptoms improve, or your doctor might suggest a weaker medication. It’s important that you don’t stop taking steroids without speaking to the person treating you first. If you’ve taken steroid tablets for more than a few days, they can cause side effects known as withdrawal symptoms if you stop suddenly. You might be given a small dose, known as a maintenance dose, for a long time to make sure your symptoms don’t return.

The dispersion of the daimonic by means of impersonality has serious and destructive effects. In New York City, it is not regarded as strange that the anonymous human beings secluded in single-room occupancies are so often connected with violent crime and drug addiction. Not that the anonymous individual in New York is alone: he sees thousands of other people every day, and he knows all the famous personalities as they come, via TV, into his single room. He knows their names, their smiles, their idiosyncrasies; they bandy about in a “we're-all-friends-together” mood on the screen which invites him to join them and subtly assumes that he does join them. He knows them all. But he himself is never known. His smile is unseen; his idiosyncrasies are important to no-body; his name is unknown. He remains a foreigner pushed on and off the subway by tens of thousands of other anonymous foreigners. There is a deeply depersonalizing tragedy involved in this. The most severe punishment Yahweh could inflict on his people was to blot out their name. “Their names,” Yahweh proclaims, “shall be wiped out of the book of the living.” This anonymous man's never being known, this aloneness, is transformed into loneliness, which may then become daimonic possession. For his self-doubts—“I don't really exist since I can't affect anyone” —eat away at his innards; he lives and breathes and walks in a loneliness which is subtle and insidious. It is not surprising that he gets a gun and trains it on some passer-by—also anonymous to him. And it is not surprising that the young men in the streets, who are only anonymous digits in their society, should gang together in violent attacks to make sure their assertion is felt. Loneliness and its stepchild, alienation, can become forms of demon possession. Surrendering ourselves to the impersonal daimonic pushes us into an anonymity which is also impersonal; we serve nature’s gross purposes on the lowest common denominator, which often means with violence.

Bharata, do not think that I have no sympathy for you in this your predicament. I understand it fully. But, then, my child, no man is allowed to do as he pleases. Man has no freedom. Fate tosses him about in all directions. The game which Fate plays is unpredictable. Nothing lasts in this world. What has been gathered is scattered about. What was once at the top soon reaches the lowest position. Meetings only end in separations and, as for life, it only ends in death. Ripe fruits have but one fear, that of falling down. And even so, man has no fear other than death. Think of a house built sturdily with strong pillars. Even that, in course of time, becomes weak and ancient. Men too become old, lose their power of thinking and death claims them. The night which passes will never come back and the waters of the Yamuna which flow fast, when in flood, towards the sea, will never return. In this world, Bharata, just as the waters on the surface of the earth get less and less, dried constantly by the rays of the sun, man’s life also gets lessened day by day. Your life and mine are fast ebbing away. Think on the Lord, my child. Do not spend your time in the contemplation of another’s life. Death walks with us: and he accompanies us on the longest journey we undertake. The skin gets wrinkled. Hair grows white. Old age makes man weak and helpless. Man delights at the sight of the sun rising and again, the setting sun is pleasing to the eye. But man forgets that every sunrise and every sunset has lessened one’s life on earth by another day. The seasons come and go and each season has a charm of its own. But they come and when they go, they take with them large slices of our lives every time. On the large expanse of the sea two pieces of wood come together. They float together for a while and then they are parted. Even so it is with man and his relationship with life, child, kinsmen, wealth and other possessions. Meetings end only in separation. It is the law of nature. No one is capable of altering the course of Fate. Weeping for one who is dead will not bring him back to life.

Computers speak machine language," Hiro says. "It's written in ones and zeroes -- binary code. At the lowest level, all computers are programmed with strings of ones and zeroes. When you program in machine language, you are controlling the computer at its brainstem, the root of its existence. It's the tongue of Eden. But it's very difficult to work in machine language because you go crazy after a while, working at such a minute level. So a whole Babel of computer languages has been created for programmers: FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, LISP, Pascal, C, PROLOG, FORTH. You talk to the computer in one of these languages, and a piece of software called a compiler converts it into machine language. But you never can tell exactly what the compiler is doing. It doesn't always come out the way you want. Like a dusty pane or warped mirror. A really advanced hacker comes to understand the true inner workings of the machine -- he sees through the language he's working in and glimpses the secret functioning of the binary code -- becomes a Ba'al Shem of sorts." "Lagos believed that the legends about the tongue of Eden were exaggerated versions of true events," the Librarian says. "These legends reflected nostalgia for a time when people spoke Sumerian, a tongue that was superior to anything that came afterward." "Is Sumerian really that good?" "Not as far as modern-day linguists can tell," the Librarian says. "As I mentioned, it is largely impossible for us to grasp. Lagos suspected that words worked differently in those days. If one's native tongue influences the physical structure of the developing brain, then it is fair to say that the Sumerians -- who spoke a language radically different from anything in existence today -- had fundamentally different brains from yours. Lagos believed that for this reason, Sumerian was a language ideally suited to the creation and propagation of viruses. That a virus, once released into Sumer, would spread rapidly and virulently, until it had infected everyone." "Maybe Enki knew that also," Hiro says. "Maybe the nam-shub of Enki wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe Babel was the best thing that ever happened to us.

With his Don Juan Mozart enters the little immortal circle of those whose names, whose works, time will not forget, because eternity remembers them. And though it is a matter of indifference, when one has found entrance there, whether one stands highest or lowest, because in a certain sense all stand equally high, since all stand infinitely high, and though it is childish to dispute over the first and the last place here, as it is when children quarrel about the order assigned to them in the church at confirmation, I am still too much of a child, or rather I am like a young girl in love with Mozart, and I must have him in first place, cost what it may. And I will appeal to the parish clerk and to the priest and to the dean and to the bishop and to the whole consistory, and I will implore and adjure them to hear my prayer, and I will invoke the whole congregation on this matter, and if they refuse to hear me, if they refuse to grant my childish wish, I excommunicate myself, and renounce all fellowship with their modes of thought; and I will form a sect which not only gives Mozart first place, but which absolutely refuses to recognize any artist other than Mozart; and I shall beg Mozart to forgive me, because his music did not inspire me to great deeds, but turned me into a fool, who lost through him the little reason I had, and spent most of my time in quiet sadness humming what I do not understand, haunting like a specter day and night what I am not permitted to enter. Immortal Mozart! Thou, to whom I owe everything; to whom I owe the loss of my reason, the wonder that caused my soul to tremble, the fear that gripped my inmost being; thou, to whom I owe it that I did not pass through life without having been stirred by something. Thou, to whom I offer thanks that I did not die without having loved, even though my love became unhappy. Is it strange then that I should be more concerned for Mozart's glorification than for the happiest moment of my life, more jealous for his immortality than for my own existence? Aye, if he were taken away, if his name were erased from the memory of men, then would the last pillar be overthrown, which for me has kept everything from being hurled together into boundless chaos, into fearful nothingness.

With his Don Juan Mozart enters the little immortal circle of those whose names, whose works, time will not forget, because eternity remembers them. And though it is a matter of indifference, when one has found entrance there, whether one stands highest or lowest, because in a certain sense all stand equally high, since all stand infinitely high, and though it is childish to dispute over the first and the last place here, as it is when children quarrel about the order assigned to them in the church at confirmation, I am still too much of a child, or rather I am like a young girl in love with Mozart, and I must have him in first place, cost what it may. And I will appeal to the parish clerk and to the priest and to the dean and to the bishop and to the whole consistory, and I will implore and adjure them to hear my prayer, and I will invoke the whole congregation on this matter, and if they refuse to hear me, if they refuse to grant my childish wish, I excommunicate myself, and renounce all fellowship with their modes of thought; and I will form a sect which not only gives Mozart first place, but which absolutely refuses to recognize any artist other than Mozart; and I shall beg Mozart to forgive me, because his music did not inspire me to great deeds, but turned me into a fool, who lost through him the little reason I had, and spent most of my time in quiet sadness humming what I do not understand, haunting like a specter day and night what I am not permitted to enter. Immortal Mozart! Thou, to whom I owe everything; to whom I owe the loss of my reason, the wonder that caused my soul to tremble, the fear that gripped my inmost being; thou, to whom I owe it that I did not pass through life without having been stirred by something. Thou, to whom I offer thanks that I did not die without having loved, even though my love became unhappy. Is it strange then that I should be more concerned for Mozart's glorification than for the happiest moment of my life, more jealous for his immortality than for my own existence? Aye, if he were taken away, if his name were erased from the memory of men, then would the last pillar be overthrown, which for me has kept everything from being hurled together into boundless chaos, into fearful nothningness.

Be thou joyous, Prince! Whose lot is set apart for heavenly Birth. Two stamps there are marked on all living men, Divine and Undivine; I spake to thee By what marks thou shouldst know the Heavenly Man, Hear from me now of the Unheavenly! They comprehend not, the Unheavenly, How Souls go forth from Me; nor how they come Back unto Me: nor is there Truth in these, Nor purity, nor rule of Life. "This world Hath not a Law, nor Order, nor a Lord," So say they: "nor hath risen up by Cause Following on Cause, in perfect purposing, But is none other than a House of Lust." And, this thing thinking, all those ruined ones—Of little wit, dark-minded—give themselves To evil deeds, the curses of their kind. Surrendered to desires insatiable, Full of deceitfulness, folly, and pride, In blindness cleaving to their errors, caught Into the sinful course, they trust this lie As it were true—this lie which leads to death—Finding in Pleasure all the good which is, And crying "Here it finisheth!" Ensnared In nooses of a hundred idle hopes, Slaves to their passion and their wrath, they buy Wealth with base deeds, to glut hot appetites; "Thus much, to-day," they say, "we gained! thereby Such and such wish of heart shall have its fill; And this is ours! and th' other shall be ours! To-day we slew a foe, and we will slay Our other enemy to-morrow! Look! Are we not lords? Make we not goodly cheer? Is not our fortune famous, brave, and great? Rich are we, proudly born! What other men Live like to us? Kill, then, for sacrifice! Cast largesse, and be merry!" So they speak Darkened by ignorance; and so they fall—Tossed to and fro with projects, tricked, and bound In net of black delusion, lost in lusts—Down to foul Naraka. Conceited, fond, Stubborn and proud, dead-drunken with the wine Of wealth, and reckless, all their offerings Have but a show of reverence, being not made In piety of ancient faith. Thus vowed To self-hood, force, insolence, feasting, wrath, These My blasphemers, in the forms they wear And in the forms they breed, my foemen are, Hateful and hating; cruel, evil, vile, Lowest and least of men, whom I cast down Again, and yet again, at end of lives, Into some devilish womb, whence—birth by birth—The devilish wombs re-spawn them, all beguiled; And, till they find and worship Me, sweet Prince! Tread they that Nether Road. The Doors of Hell Are threefold, whereby men to ruin pass,—The door of Lust, the door of Wrath, the door Of Avarice. Let a man shun those three! He who shall turn aside from entering All those three gates of Narak, wendeth straight To find his peace, and comes to Swarga's gate.

Sunday, May 7, 1944 I should be deeply ashamed of myself, and I am. What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again...I'm not all that ugly, or that stupid, I have a sunny disposition, and I want to develop a good character! Monday, May 22, 1944 ...Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it's practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? Thursday, May 25, 1944 The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor...Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next. ...We're going to be hungry, but nothing's worse than being caught. Friday, May 26, 1944 ...That gap, that enormous gap, is always there. One day we're laughing at the comical side of life in hiding, and the next day (there are many such days), we're frightened, and the fear, tension and despair can be read on our faces. ...But they also have their outings, their visits with friends, their everyday lives as ordinary people, so that the tension is sometimes relieved, if only for a short while, while ours never is, never has been, not once in the two years we've been here. How much longer will this increasingly oppressive, unbearable weight press down on us? ... ...What will we do if we're ever...no, I mustn't write that down. But the question won't let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I've ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. ... I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we'll know whether we are to be victors or the vanquished. Tuesday, June 13, 1944 Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become so smitten with nature? ... Many people think nature is beautiful, many people sleep from time to time under the starry sky, and many people in hospitals and prisons long for the day when they'll be free to enjoy what nature has to offer. But few are as isolated and cut off as we are from the joys of nature, which can be shared by rich and poor alike. It's not just my imagination - looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It's much better medicine than Valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage! ...Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute.

Enjoyment requires discernment. It can be a gift to wrap up in a blanket and lose myself in a TV show but we can also amuse ourselves to death. My pleasure in wine or tea or exercise is good in itself but it can become disordered. As we learn to practice enjoyment we need to learn the craft of discernment: How to enjoy rightly, to have, to read pleasure well. There is a symbiotic relationship, cross-training, if you will, between the pleasures we find in gathered worship and those in my tea cup, or in a warm blanket, or the smell of bread baking. Lewis reminds us that one must walk before one can run. We will not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable but we shall not have found Him so. These tiny moments of beauty in our day train us in the habits of adoration and discernment, and the pleasure and sensuousness of our gathered worship teach us to look for and receive these small moments in our days, together they train us in the art of noticing and reveling in our God’s goodness and artistry. A few weeks ago I was walking to work, standing on the corner of tire and auto parts store, waiting to cross the street when I suddenly heard church bells begin to ring, loud and long. I froze, riveted. They were beautiful. A moment of transcendence right in the middle of the grimy street, glory next to the discount tire and auto parts. Liturgical worship has been referred to sometimes derisively as smells and bells because of the sensuous ways Christians have historically worshipped: Smells, the sweet and pungent smell of incense, and bells, like the one I heard in neighborhood which rang out from a catholic church. At my church we ring bells during the practice of our eucharist. The acolyte, the person often a child, assisting the priest, rings chimes when our pastor prepares the communion meal. There is nothing magic about these chimes, nothing superstitious, they’re just bells. We ring them in the eucharist liturgy as a way of saying, “pay attention.” They’re an alarm to rouse the congregation to jostle us to attention, telling us to take note, sit up, and lean forward, and notice Christ in our midst. We need this kind of embodied beauty, smells and bells, in our gathered worship, and we need it in our ordinary day to remind us to take notice of Christ right where we are. Dostoevsky wrote that “beauty will save the world.” This might strike us as mere hyperbole but as our culture increasingly rejects the idea and language of truth, the churches role as the harbinger of beauty is a powerful witness to the God of all beauty. Czeslaw Milosz wrote in his poem, “One more day,” “Though the good is weak, beauty is very strong.” And when people cease to believe there is good and evil, only beauty will call to them and save them so that they still know how to say, “this is true and that is false.” Being curators of beauty, pleasure, and delight is therefore and intrinsic part of our mission, a mission that recognizes the reality that truth is beautiful. These moments of loveliness, good tea, bare trees, and soft shadows, or church bells, in my dimness, they jolt me to attention and remind me that Christ is in our midst. His song of truth, sung by His people all over the world, echos down my ordinary street, spilling even into my living room.