“
I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.'
Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.
'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?'
Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)
“
Does it give you deja voodoo how alike the houses are?"
"That's deja vu, and I hate you right now."
"For narcing on you to your mom? Wait until you hear what I tell your dad."
From the sly grin on his face, she knew what he was thinking.
"Don't you even think about it."
"I could tell him about the time we-"
"Hell, no.
”
”
Rachel Caine (Ghost Town (The Morganville Vampires, #9))
“
I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a
bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely
than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south
wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new
house.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau
“
I enjoy the presence of a woman in the house for brief periods of time. They fall into two categories: the organizers and the slobs. There’s probably a third category—the naggers, who try to get you to do things, but I’ve never run into one of those. Oddly, I have no preference regarding oganizers or slobs, as long as they don’t try to pick my clothes for me. Basically, all women are nurturers and healers, and all men are mental patients to varying degrees. It works fine if people stick to their fated roles. But nobody does.
”
”
Nelson DeMille (The General's Daughter)
“
Even when your dream is taken from you, you can have a great new life.
”
”
Lev A.C. Rosen (Lavender House (Evander Mills, #1))
“
People are always trying to claim you, without ever listening to who you are. They want you to be something else, to be the role they have for you in the family.
But really, we're all better off just making our own.
”
”
Lev A.C. Rosen (Lavender House (Evander Mills, #1))
“
When my own mother died, there seemed to me to be no answer to anything. For a time the only universality was death. And then I remember walking in the dusk along the quiet little street toward the house now so empty and meaningless. There was light enough from the sky to cast the lattice shadow of leaves on the walk. The sound of the river was steady and swift, and the air smelled of sulphur from the mills beyond it. As I looked up, a delicate petal of moon drifted into the tender blue, and all at once I thought, How beautiful God made the world! How wonderful that the stars still shine! And I was comforted.
”
”
Gladys Taber (Stillmeadow Seasons (Stillmeadow Series, #3))
“
The park is high. And as out of a house
I step out of its glimmering half-light
into openness and evening. Into the wind,
the same wind that the clouds feel,
the bright rivers and the turning mills
that stand slowly grinding at the sky's edge.
Now I too am a thing held in its hand,
the smallest thing under the sky. --Look:
Is that one sky?:
Blissfully lucid blue,
into which ever purer clouds throng,
and under it all white in endless changes,
and over it that huge, thin-spun gray,
pulsing warmly as on red underpaint,
and over everything this silent radiance
of a setting sun.
Miraculous structure,
moved within itself and upheld by itself,
shaping figures, giant wings, faults
and high mountain ridges before the first star
and suddenly, there: a gate into such
distances as perhaps only birds know...
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (The Book of Images)
“
Still, we made it back to the corn mill, and even though it felt like a dwarf with a chisel had taken up permanent residence in my frontal lobe, I managed to stagger all the way back to the house.
”
”
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
“
I mean, technically, he wasn’t fired,” Emilia clarified. “He was reassigned. But precision of language has never been the gossip mill’s forte, and I guess anything’s a pretty big step down after the White House.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Fixer (The Fixer, #1))
“
Then he crossed his arms over his chest and began to listen to the radiant voices of the slaves singing the six o'clock Salve in the mills, and through the window he saw the diamond of Venus in the sky that was dying forever, the eternal snows, the new vine whose yellow bellflowers he would not see bloom on the following Saturday in the house closed in mourning, the final brilliance of life that would never, through all eternity, be repeated again.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (The General in His Labyrinth)
“
Cleopatra moreover came of age in a country that entertained a singular definition of women’s roles. Well before her and centuries before the arrival of the Ptolemies, Egyptian women enjoyed the right to make their own marriages. Over time their liberties had increased, to levels unprecedented in the ancient world. They inherited equally and held property independently. Married women did not submit to their husbands’ control. They enjoyed the right to divorce and to be supported after a divorce. Until the time an ex-wife’s dowry was returned, she was entitled to be lodged in the house of her choice. Her property remained hers; it was not to be squandered by a wastrel husband. The law sided with the wife and children if a husband acted against their interests. Romans marveled that in Egypt female children were not left to die; a Roman was obligated to raise only his first-born daughter. Egyptian women married later than did their neighbors as well, only about half of them by Cleopatra’s age. They loaned money and operated barges. They served as priests in the native temples. They initiated lawsuits and hired flute players. As wives, widows, or divorcées, they owned vineyards, wineries, papyrus marshes, ships, perfume businesses, milling equipment, slaves, homes, camels. As much as one third of Ptolemaic Egypt may have been in female hands.
”
”
Stacy Schiff (Cleopatra)
“
Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorland, of course, vast tracts of brooding landscape under lowering skies, and across this heath strode brooding, lowering men intent on reaching their ancestral houses, where they were going to fling open doors and castigate orphaned yet resolute governesses. Or — preferably — the brooding, lowering men were on horseback, black horses with huge muscled haunches, glistening with sweat —
”
”
Kate Atkinson (Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1))
“
I go back to the union man and say, “Sir, this is a house of God, not a proper place for a union meeting. I have some things to say today that God would not want to hear in His own house. Boys, I want you to get up, every one of you, and go across the road. I want you to sit down on the hillside over there and wait for me to speak to you.
”
”
Jerry Ash (Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel)
“
The car ran almost noiselessly. It ran as if gravity had no power over it. Houses glided past, churches, villages, the golden spots of the estaminets and bistros, a gleaming river, a mill, and then again the even contour of the plain, the sky arching above it like the inside of a huge shell in whose milky nacre shimmered the pearl of the moon.
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country)
Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories: House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, and A Christmas Memory)
“
There is no homosexual problem aside from that created by a heterosexual society.
”
”
Lev A.C. Rosen (Lavender House (Evander Mills, #1))
“
The 5/6 ratio was devised to count the lunar phases and the rest sixth portion was dedicated to the House of the Sun (i.e. the Eastern Portal) whence the Royal Cubit were derived!
”
”
Ibrahim Ibrahim (The Mill of Egypt: The Complete Series Fused)
“
What was true was true, and what wasn't, wasn't.
”
”
Melissa Wiley (On Tide Mill Lane (Little House: The Charlotte Years, #2))
“
What happened between us has impacted a lot of people around us whom we care for and who care for us, so I think we should try to be civil to each other and make life easier and less awkward for everyone.
”
”
Nelson DeMille (The Gate House (John Sutter, #2))
“
I want to fuck you,” he rasps. “I want this whole house to hear how good I fuck you.” He strokes harder, making me groan. “Because no matter what happens between you and anyone else in this house? You. Are. Mine.
”
”
Ames Mills (Riches to Riches: Part Two)
“
We are all, of course, wayfaring strangers on this earth. But coming out of the rainbow tunnel, the liminal portal between Marin and San Francisco, myth and reality, I catch sight of a beautiful, sparkling city that might as well be on the moon. I can name the sights, the streets, the eateries, but in my heart it feels as unfamiliar as Cape Town or Cuzco. I've lived here for fourteen years. This is the arena of my adult life, with its large defeats and small victories. Maybe, like all transplants (converts?), I've asked too much of the city. I would never have moved to Pittsburh or Houston or L.A. expecting it to save my soul. Only here in the great temple by the bay. It's a mistake we've been making for decades, and probably a necessary one. The city's flaws, of course, are numerous. Our politics can suffer from humourless stridency, and life here is menacingly expensive. But if you're insulated from these concerns, sufficiently employed and housed, if you are -in other words- like most people, you are in view of the unbridgeable ideal. Here, with our plentiful harvest, our natural beauty, our bars, our bookstores, our cliffs and ocean, out free to be you and me; here, where pure mountain water flows right out of the tap. It's here that the real questions become inescapable. In fact the proximity of the ideal makes us more acutely aware of the real questions. Not the run-of-the-mill insolubles-Why am I here? Who am I?- but the pressing questions of adult life: Really? and Are you sure? And Now what?
”
”
Scott Hutchins (A Working Theory of Love)
“
Did I write to you about the storm I watched not long ago? The sea was yellowish, especially close to the shore. On the horizon a streak of light and above it immensely large dark grey clouds, from which one could see the rain coming down in slanting streaks. The wind blew the dust from the little white path among the rocks into the sea and shook the hawthorn bushes in bloom and the wallflowers that grow on the rocks. To the right, fields of young green corn and in the distance the town, which, with it’s towers, mills, slate roofs, Gothic-style houses and the harbour below, between two jetties sticking out into the sea, looked like the towns Albert Durer used to etch.
”
”
Vincent van Gogh
“
New Rule: Now that liberals have taken back the word "liberal," they also have to take back the word "elite." By now you've heard the constant right-wing attacks on the "elite media," and the "liberal elite." Who may or may not be part of the "Washington elite." A subset of the "East Coast elite." Which is overly influenced by the "Hollywood elite." So basically, unless you're a shit-kicker from Kansas, you're with the terrorists. If you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being "elite," you'd be almost as wasted as Rush Limbaugh.
I don't get it: In other fields--outside of government--elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I'd like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad--the elite aren't down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-Brains.
Which is fine, except that whenever there's a Bush administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, "Where are they getting these screwups from?" Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I'm not kidding. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because she's smack in the middle of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She's thirty-three, and though she never even worked as a prosecutor, was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all ninety-three U.S. attorneys. How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College--you know, home of the "Fighting Christies"--and then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school.
Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause "earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor," has a law school. And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years, and you have to read only one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix.
Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist diploma mill work in the Bush administration? On hundred fifty. And you wonder why things are so messed up? We're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college founded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House? In two hundred years, we've gone from "we the people" to "up with people." From the best and brightest to dumb and dumber. And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school? The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by elites. It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling hired to keep her ass out of jail went to a real law school.
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
When I started in real estate, I considered renovating old houses instead of tearing them down, but it didn’t make sense. Nigerians don’t buy houses because they’re old. A renovated two-hundred-year-old mill granary, you know, the kind of thing Europeans like. It doesn’t work here at all. But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
“
Pulling to a stop in front of Aly’s house, I take a deep breath. With a flick of my wrist, I cut the engine and listen to the silence. I’ve sat in this exact spot more times than I can count. In many ways, Aly’s house is like my sanctuary. A place I go when my own home feels like a graveyard. I glance up at the bedroom window of the girl who knows me better than anyone, the only person I let see me cry after Dad died. I won’t let this experiment take that or her away from me.
Tonight, I’m going to prove that Aly and I can go back to our normal, easy friendship.
Throwing open my door, I trudge up her sidewalk, plant my feet outside her front door, and ring the bell.
“Coming!”
I step back and see Aly stick her head out of her second-story window.
“No problem,” I call back up. “Take your time.”
More time to get my head on straight.
Aly disappears behind a film of yellow curtain, and I turn to look out at the quiet neighborhood. Up and down the street, the lights blink on, filling the air with a low hum that matches the thrumming of my nerves. Across the street, old Mr. Lawson sits at his usual perch under a gigantic American flag, drinking beer and mumbling to himself. Two little girls ride their bikes around the cul-de-sac, smiling and waving. Just a normal, run-of-the-mill Friday night. Except not.
I thrust my hands into my pockets, jiggling the loose change from my Taco Bell run earlier tonight, and grab my pack of Trident. I toss a stick into my mouth and chew furiously. Supposedly, the smell of peppermint can calm your nerves.
I grab a second stick and shove it in, too.
With the clacking sound of Aly’s shoes approaching the door behind me, I remind myself again about tonight’s mission. All I need is focus. I take another deep breath for good measure and rock back on my heels, ready to greet my best friend. She opens the door, wearing a black dress molded to her skin, and I let the air out in one big huff.
”
”
Rachel Harris (The Fine Art of Pretending (The Fine Art of Pretending, #1))
“
; so too, her glazed ceramics and her macramé are interchangeable with those executed by her women friends in the area, who take courses at the Mill Brook Valley Arts Co-op and whose houses are gradually filling with their creations, like ships gradually sinking beneath the weight of ever-more cargo.
”
”
Joyce Carol Oates (Jack of Spades)
“
The Mad Gardener's Song
He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
'At length I realise,' he said,
'The bitterness of Life!'
He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister's Husband's Niece.
'Unless you leave this house,' he said,
'I'll send for the Police!'
He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
'The one thing I regret,' he said,
'Is that it cannot speak!'
He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
'If this should stay to dine,' he said,
'There won't be much for us!'
He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-Pill.
'Were I to swallow this,' he said,
'I should be very ill!'
He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head.
'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing!
It's waiting to be fed!'
He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp.
'You'd best be getting home,' he said:
'The nights are very damp!'
He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
'And all its mystery,' he said,
'Is clear as day to me!'
He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!
”
”
Lewis Carroll (Sylvie and Bruno)
“
Closing the door behind him, Macdonald stood still in the darkness, as he had stood so often in other buildings. Houses, barns, shops, flats, warehouses, all dark, as this passage was dark, but having in the darkness their own character because each had its own peculiar smell. Gramarye smelt of floor polish and carbolic and soap: something of the unwelcoming smell of an institution, but behind the overlay of modern cleanliness, the smell of the ancient house declared itself, of old mortar, of stone walls built without damp courses, of woodwork decaying under coats of paint, of panelling and floor boards which gave out their ancient breath as the coldness of the stone house triumphed over the warmth of the midsummer evening.
”
”
E.C.R. Lorac (Murder in the Mill Race)
“
Maslick’s 220-pound frame was wedged behind the wheel. Raindrops were collecting on the windshield, blurring ancient row houses and a street narrow enough that passing required having two wheels on the sidewalk. After days on the move in a city where good driving etiquette meant clipping fewer than three people a week, they’d resigned themselves to the impossibility of staying
”
”
Kyle Mills (The Survivor (Mitch Rapp, #14))
“
During Tucker's Little Rock stint, former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was in the White House, and it's not hard to argue that to a remarkable degree he imposed his hometown's flexible, free-and-easy moral standards on the entire country.
Indeed, the Clintons noxious influence on the nation and its values would go far beyond the legitimization of Dogpatch shenanigans and run-of-mill grift.
”
”
Chadwick Moore (Tucker)
“
Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges
“
I can’t stop yet. If the world was entirely made up of [magicians], I’ll tell you what I should do. I should have a paper-mill established at one end of the house, and so have an endless riband of foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I should write a thousand — a million — billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you. The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question — they are One.
”
”
Herman Melville
“
Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of human torture—traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at the great door of the Dedlock mansion.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Bleak House)
“
I came to recognize the landscape of my life in the lives of many women. Their stories and the places they spoke of spanned a world beyond my experience, from mill towns to suburbs, from logging camps to ethnic neighborhoods, from inner cities to Indian reservations. Few shared my place of origin or the events of my life, but many, it seems, shared my experience. Listening to their stories, I came to understand how women can be isolated by circumstances as well as by distance, and how our experiences, though geographically distinct, often translated into the same feelings. Away from the physical presence of my past, I found it easy to argue that what mattered most was the story, the truth of what we tell ourselves, the versions we pass along to our daughters. But as I stood in the living room of my rock house that afternoon, I was again reminded of the enormous power of this prairie, its silence and the whisper I made inside it. I had forgotten how easily one person can be lost here.
”
”
Judy Blunt (Breaking Clean)
“
Our case was straightforward: The deal prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The Iranians had to remove two-thirds of their centrifuges, couldn’t use their more advanced centrifuges, and had to get rid of 98 percent of their stockpile. They had to convert a heavy water reactor so it couldn’t produce plutonium.
Inspectors would have 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the ability to access Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain—from uranium mines and mills to centrifuge manufacturing and storage facilities. To cheat, Iran wouldn’t just need a nuclear facility like Natanz or Fordow—they’d have to run an entirely secret supply chain. If they cheated, sanctions would snap back into place.
Then there were the consequences of not having the deal. Without it, Iran could quickly advance its nuclear program to the point of having enough material for a bomb. That would leave us with a choice between bombing their facilities and acquiescing to a nuclear-armed Iran. Holding out for a better deal was not going to work. It was diplomacy or war.
”
”
Ben Rhodes (The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House)
“
Grandma was always warm, even on the coldest nights, and I loved to sleep with her because she let me put my cold feet on her warm legs. Whenever I had to cry over something, it almost always happened at that time of the night. Being close to Grandma in bed gave me some sense of freedom and relief, and whatever had hurt me during the day usually came out then. Sometimes she could help me with my problems and sometimes not, but she always held on to me, and that made me feel I could get through it. That night I cried and cried.
”
”
Gail Rock (The House without a Christmas Tree (Addie Mills #1))
“
All the profits that Papa made by the sweat of his brow from his mill she extorted from him and spent the lot on expensive dressmakers who made her luxurious dresses. But she was too mean to wear them: she saved them up at the back of her wardrobe, and most of the time she wore an old mouse-coloured housecoat round the house. Only a couple of times a year she got herself up like the Tsar’s carriage to go to synagogue or to some charity ball, so the whole town could see her and burst with envy. Yet she shouted at us that we were ruining Papa. Fania,
”
”
Amos Oz (A Tale of Love and Darkness)
“
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!
From A Railway Carriage
”
”
Rbert Louis Stevenson
“
The agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon whom the town depended for its existence was shown by the class of objects displayed in the shop windows. Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears, bill-hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the iron-monger’s; bee-hives, butter-firkins, churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes, field-flagons, and seed-lips at the cooper’s; cart-ropes and plough-harness at the saddler’s; carts, wheel-barrows, and mill-gear at the wheelwright’s and machinist’s, horse-embrocations at the chemist’s; at the glover’s and leather-cutter’s, hedging-gloves, thatchers’ knee-caps, ploughmen’s leggings, villagers’ pattens and clogs.
”
”
Thomas Hardy (Thomas Hardy: The Complete Novels [Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Two on a Tower, etc] (Book House))
“
and some other shit, and the wife—can’t remember her name—would cry a lot. The kids were young. Three of them. They were okay, but they always talked about the big house they had in Cuba. And servants. So I guess they all felt like they got fucked.” He smiled. “Hey, I was born fucked in New Jersey.” There were two kinds of history: the kind you read about, and the kind you lived through—or were actually part of. For Jack, the Cuban Revolution was a childhood memory. For Sara, it was family history, and part of who she was. For Eduardo, it was a boyhood trauma and an obsession. And for me, it was irrelevant. Until today. Jack asked me, “You trust these people?” “My instincts say they’re honorable
”
”
Nelson DeMille (The Cuban Affair)
“
Now general benevolence was one of the leading features of the Pickwickian theory, and no one was more remarkable for the zealous manner in which he observed so noble a principle than Mr. Tracy Tupman. The number of instances recorded on the Transactions of the Society, in which that excellent man referred objects of charity to the houses of other members for left-off garments or pecuniary relief is almost incredible. ‘I should be very happy to lend you a change of apparel for the purpose,’ said Mr. Tracy Tupman, ‘but you are rather slim, and I am—’ ‘Rather fat — grown-up Bacchus — cut the leaves — dismounted from the tub, and adopted kersey, eh? — not double distilled, but double milled — ha! ha! pass the wine.
”
”
Charles Dickens (The Complete Works of Charles Dickens)
“
At last, we arrived home. Indian Vale. The house my father had built that had become mine and that one day would be my daughter’s, if she chose to stay in the area. She wouldn’t, though. Why should she? The young people here moved somewhere else as fast as they could, and the old folks withered away and died. The factories vanished and the mines and mills sank into the ground, and in their places were erected fast food joints and furniture rental places and pawnshops. Sometimes I hear places like where I live called “Real America,” and I know it rankles some folks—city folks, mostly—something awful, and I wish I could tell them it’s only done out of politeness. That it’s only people saying nice things about the dying.
”
”
Jason Miller (Red Dog (Slim in Little Egypt #2))
“
At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times?
”
”
Elizabeth Gaskell (Mary Barton)
“
I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much. Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering, ‘A repository of original articles, written exclusively by females actively employed in the mills,’—which is duly printed, published, and sold; and whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end. The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim, with one voice, ‘How very preposterous!’ On my deferentially inquiring why, they will answer, ‘These things are above their station.’ In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask what their station is.
”
”
Charles Dickens (American Notes and Pictures from Italy)
“
I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone—but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
“
Some employees were offered jobs in Georgia, but few took up the offer to relocate. They had houses and mortgages, and the real estate market was already grim, thanks to the closing of two smaller mills the year before. True, people weren’t sure how they’d pay those mortgages now, but they had kids in school and family nearby that might be able to help a little, and many irrationally clung to the possibility that the mill might reopen under new ownership. They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving, and because for a while at least they’d be able to draw unemployment benefits. Others remained out of pride. When the realization dawned that they were the victims of corporate greed and global economic forces, they said, okay, sure, fine, they’d been fools but they would not, by God, be run out of the town their grandparents and parents had grown up in and called home.
”
”
Richard Russo (Empire Falls: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
“
In the Mountains, they cooked, too.
Joe Godwin made liquor in Muscadine. Moe Shealey made it in Mineral Springs. Junior McMahan had a still in ragland. Fred and Alton Dryden made liquor in Tallapoosa, and Eulis Parker made it on Terrapin Creek. Wayne Glass knew their faces because he drove it, and made more money hauling liquor than he ever made at the cotton mill. He loaded the gallon cans into his car in the deep woods and dodged sheriffs and federal men to get it to men like Robert Kilgore, the bootlegger who sold whiskey from a house in Weaver, about ten minutes south of Jacksonville. "I could haul a hundred and fifty gallons in a Flathead Ford, at thirty-five dollars a load," he said. Wayne lost the end of one finger in the mill, but he was bulletproof when he was running liquor, and only did time once, for conspiracy. "They couldn't catch me haulin' liquor," he said, "so they got me for thinkin' about it.
”
”
Rick Bragg (The Prince of Frogtown)
“
Half the world is made of tiny communities that have grown up around nothing more than a crossroads market, or a good clay pit, or a bend of river strong enough to turn a mill wheel.
Sometimes these towns are prosperous. Some have rich soil and generous weather. Some thrive on the trade moving through them. The wealth of these places is obvious. The houses are large and well-mended. People are friendly and generous. The children are fat and happy. There are luxuries for sale: pepper and cinnamon and chocolate. There is coffee and good wine and music at the local inn.
Then there are the other sort of towns. Towns where the soil is thin and tired. Towns where the mill burned down, or the clay was mined out years ago. In these places the houses are small and badly patched. The people are lean and suspicious, and wealth is measured in small, practical ways. Cords of firewood. A second pig. Five jars of blackberry preserve.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
chewing gum, particularly peppermint chewing gum, which they were allergic to, but they ran to the pots. Violet picked one up and Sunny picked up the other, while Klaus hurriedly made the beds. “Give them to me,” Foreman Flacutono snapped, and grabbed the pots out of the girls’ hands. “Now, workers, we’ve wasted enough time already. To the mills! Logs are waiting for us!” “I hate log days,” one of the employees grumbled, but everyone followed Foreman Flacutono out of the dormitory and across the dirt-floored courtyard to the lumbermill, which was a dull gray building with many smokestacks sticking out of the top like a porcupine’s quills. The three children looked at one another worriedly. Except for one summer day, back when their parents were still alive, when the Baudelaires had opened a lemonade stand in front of their house, the orphans had never had jobs, and they were nervous. The Baudelaires followed Foreman Flacutono into the
”
”
Lemony Snicket (The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #4))
“
I’m in mid-passage, darling,” he said, beginning to talk like a queen so as to demystify himself, so as to destroy the very qualities John Schaeffer had fallen in love with, “I’m menopausal, change of life, hot flashes, you know. Wondering how much longer I can go without hair transplants and whether Germaine Monteil really works on the crow’s feet. I’ve had it, I’ve been through the mill, I’m a jaded queen. But you, dear, you have that gift whose loss the rest of life is just a funeral for—why else do you suppose those gray-haired gentlemen,” he said, nodding at his friends on the floor, “make money, buy houses, take trips around the world? Why else do they dwindle into a little circle of close friends, a farm upstate, and become in the end mere businessmen, shop-owners, decorators who like their homes filled with flowers and their friends flying in on Air France and someone pretty like you at the dinner table? It is all, my dear, because they are no longer young. Because they no longer live in that magic world that is yours for ten more years. Adolescence in America ends at thirty.
”
”
Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance)
“
Barrels of oysters wrapped in seaweed came by boat from Stollport. Fat beam and trout were carried in dripping wooden boxes lined with wet straw. A great conger eel arrived in a crate large enough to hold a cannon and appeared so fearsome Mister Bunce quelled the kitchen boys' mock-screams only by bringing out Mister Stone to take his pick among the screechers. Sacks of raisins, currants, dried prunes and figs piled up in the dry larder. In the wet room, soused brawn, salted ling and gallipots of anchovies crowded the shelves and floor. In the butchery, Colin and Luke marshalled four undercooks, six men from the Estate armed with saws, a grumbling Barney Curle and his barrow to skin, draw and joint the hogs. Simeon, Tam Yallop and the other bakers lugged in sacks of meal from the Callock Marwood mill while a dray from the ale-house made journeys over the hill, past the gatehouse and into the yard until the buttery and cellar were filled with kegs and barrels. Rhenish wine arrived in a covered wagon, the dark oak tuns resting on a thick bed of bracken. Scents of cinnamon and saffron drifted out of the spice room.
”
”
Lawrence Norfolk (John Saturnall's Feast)
“
How is my English?” Tatiana asked Alexander in English. “It’s good,” Alexander replied in English. It was late morning. They were walking through the dense deciduous riverbank woods a few kilometers from home, with two buckets for blueberries, and they were supposed to be talking only in English, but Tatiana backtracked and said in Russian, “I’m reading much better than I’m talking, I think. John Stuart Mill is simply unreadable now instead of unintelligible.” Alexander smiled. “That’s a fine distinction.” He yanked up a couple of mushrooms. “Tania, can we eat these?” Taking them out of his hands and throwing them back on the ground, Tatiana said, “Yes. But we will only be able to eat them once.” Alexander laughed. She said, “I have to teach you how to pick mushrooms, Shura. You can’t just rip them out of the ground like that.” “I have to teach you how to speak English, Tania,” said Alexander. In English, Tatiana continued, “This is my new husband, Alexander Barrington.” And in English, Alexander replied with a smile of pleasure on his face, “And this is my young wife, Tatiana Metanova.” He kissed the top of her braided head and in Russian said, “Tatiana, now say the other words I taught you.” She turned the color of a tomato. “No,” she stated firmly, in English. “I am not saying them.” “Please.” “No. Look for blueberries.” Still in English. She saw that Alexander couldn’t have been less interested in blueberries. “What about later? Will you say them later?” he asked. “Not now, not later,” Tatiana replied bravely. But she was not looking at him. Alexander drew her to him. “Later,” he continued in English, “I will insist that you please me by using your English-speaking tongue in bed with me.” Struggling slightly against him, Tatiana said in English, “It is good I am not understand what you say to me.” “I will show you what I mean,” said Alexander, putting down his bucket. “Later, later,” she acquiesced. “Now, pick up your backet. Collect blueberries.” “All right,” he said in English, not letting go of her. “And it’s bucket. Come on, Tania. Say the other words.” He held her. “Your shyness is an aphrodisiac to me. Say them.” Tatiana, breathless inside and out, said, “All right,” in English. “Pick up your bucket. Let us go house. I will practice love with you.” Alexander laughed. “Make love to you, Tania. Make love to you.
”
”
Paullina Simons (The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman, #1))
“
At this crisis certain inventions in machinery were introduced into the staple manufactures of the north, which, greatly reducing the number of hands necessary to be employed, threw thousands out of work, and left them without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest supervened. Distress reached its climax. Endurance, overgoaded, stretched the hand of fraternity to sedition. The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot broke out in a manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a manufacturer’s house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy. A ringleader was detected, or more frequently suffered to elude detection; newspaper paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance — who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread — they were left to suffer on, perhaps inevitably left. It
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (The Brontës Complete Works)
“
The lights from the stream below touched the ceiling and the polished tables and glanced along the little girl's curls, and the little girl's mother said, "She wants her cup of stars."
Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, "She wants her cup of stars."
Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.
"Her little cup," the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. "It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk." The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, "You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?"
Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass.
Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)
“
And don’t get me started on Canadians. It’s a whole thing. Remember when the feds busted in on that Mormon polygamist cult in Texas a few years back? And the dozens of wives were paraded in front of the camera? And they all had this long mouse-colored hair with strands of gray, no hairstyle to speak of, no makeup, ashy skin, Frida Kahlo facial hair, and unflattering clothes? And on cue, the Oprah audience was shocked and horrified? Well, they’ve never been to Seattle. There are two hairstyles here: short gray hair and long gray hair. You go into a salon asking for hair color, and they flap their elbows and cluck, “Oh, goody, we never get to do color!” But what really happened was I came up here and had four miscarriages. Try as I might, it’s hard to blame that one on Nigel Mills-Murray. Oh, Paul. That last year in L.A. was just so horrible. I am so ashamed of my behavior. I’ve carried it with me to this day, the revulsion at how vile I became, all for a stupid house. I’ve never stopped obsessing about it. But just before I completely self-immolate, I think about Nigel Mills-Murray. Was I really so bad that I deserved to have three years of my life destroyed for some rich prick’s practical joke? So I had some cars towed, yes. I made a gate out of trash doorknobs. I’m an artist. I won a MacArthur grant, for fuck’s sake. Don’t I get a break? I’ll be watching TV and see Nigel Mills-Murray’s name at the end. I’ll go nuts inside. He gets to keep creating, and I’m the one who’s still in pieces?
”
”
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
“
There is an excellent short book (126 pages) by Faustino Ballvè, Essentials of Economics (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education), which briefly summarizes principles and policies. A book that does that at somewhat greater length (327 pages) is Understanding the Dollar Crisis by Percy L. Greaves (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1973). Bettina Bien Greaves has assembled two volumes of readings on Free Market Economics (Foundation for Economic Education). The reader who aims at a thorough understanding, and feels prepared for it, should next read Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1949, 1966, 907 pages). This book extended the logical unity and precision of economics beyond that of any previous work. A two-volume work written thirteen years after Human Action by a student of Mises is Murray N. Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State (Mission, Kan.: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1962, 987 pages). This contains much original and penetrating material; its exposition is admirably lucid; and its arrangement makes it in some respects more suitable for textbook use than Mises’ great work. Short books that discuss special economic subjects in a simple way are Planning for Freedom by Ludwig von Mises (South Holland, 111.: Libertarian Press, 1952), and Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). There is an excellent pamphlet by Murray N. Rothbard, What Has Government Done to Our Money? (Santa Ana, Calif.: Rampart College, 1964, 1974, 62 pages). On the urgent subject of inflation, a book by the present author has recently been published, The Inflation Crisis, and How to Resolve It (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978). Among recent works which discuss current ideologies and developments from a point of view similar to that of this volume are the present author’s The Failure of the “New Economics”: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies (Arlington House, 1959); F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1945) and the same author’s monumental Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Ludwig von Mises’ Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, 1969) is the most thorough and devastating critique of collectivistic doctrines ever written. The reader should not overlook, of course, Frederic Bastiat’s Economic Sophisms (ca. 1844), and particularly his essay on “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.” Those who are interested in working through the economic classics might find it most profitable to do this in the reverse of their historical order. Presented in this order, the chief works to be consulted, with the dates of their first editions, are: Philip Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911; John Bates Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 1899; Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888; Karl Menger, Principles of Economics, 1871; W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817; and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
”
”
Henry Hazlitt (Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics)
“
In all matters of consequence, General P.P. Peckem was, as he always remarked when he was about to criticize the work of some close associate publicly, a realist. He was a handsome, pink-skinned man of fifty-three. His manner was always casual and relaxed, and his uniforms were custom-made. He had silver-gray hair, slightly myopic eyes and thin, overhanging, sensual lips. He was a perceptive, graceful, sophisticated man who was sensitive to everyone's weaknesses but his own and found everyone absurd but himself. General Peckem laid great fastidious stress on small matters of taste and style. He was always augmenting things. Approaching events were never coming, but always upcoming. It was not true that he wrote memorandums praising himself and recommending that his authority be enhanced to include all combat operations; he wrote memoranda. And the prose in the memoranda of other officers was always turgid, stilted, or ambiguous. The errors of others were inevitable deplorable. Regulations were stringent, and his data never was obtained from a reliable source, but always were obtained. General Peckem was frequently constrained. Things were often incumbent upon him, and he frequently acted with the greatest reluctance. It never escaped his memory that neither black nor white was a color, and he never used verbal when he meant oral. He could quote glibly from Plato, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Theodore Roosevelt, the Marquis de Sade and Warren G. Harding. A virgin audience like Colonel Scheisskopf [his new underling] was grist for General Peckem's mill, a stimulating opportunity to throw open his whole dazzling erudite treasure house of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies, anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apothegms, bon mots and other pungent sayings. He beamed urbanely as he began orienting Colonel Scheisskopf to his new surroundings.
”
”
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
“
Something must be wrong then in art, or the happiness of life is sickening in the house of civilization. What has caused the sickness? Machine-labour will you say? Well, I have seen quoted a passage from one of the ancient Sicilian poets rejoicing in the fashioning of a water-mill, and exulting in labour being set free from the toil of the hand-quern in consequence; and that surely would be a type of man's natural hope when foreseeing the invention of labour-saving machinery as 'tis called; natural surely, since though I have said that the labour of which art can form a part should be accompanied by pleasure, so one could deny that there is some necessary labour even which is not pleasant in itself, and plenty of unnecessary labour which is merely painful. If machinery had been used for minimizing such labour, the utmost ingenuity would scarcely have been wasted on it; but is that the case in any way? Look round the world, and you must agree with John Stuart Mill in his doubt whether all the machinery of modern times has lightened the daily work of one labourer. And why have our natural hopes been so disappointed? Surely because in these latter days, in which as a matter of fact machinery has been invented, it was by no means invented with the aim of saving the pain of labour. The phrase labour-saving machinery is elliptical, and means machinery which saves the cost of labour, not the labour itself, which will be expended when saved on tending other machines. For a doctrine which, as I have said, began to be accepted under the workshop-system, is now universally received, even though we are yet short of the complete development of the system of the Factory. Briefly, the doctrine is this, that the essential aim of manufacture is making a profit; that it is frivolous to consider whether the wares when made will be of more or less use to the world so long as any one can be found to buy them at a price which, when the workman engaged in making them has received of necessaries and comforts as little as he can be got to take, will leave something over as a reward to the capitalist who has employed him. This doctrine of the sole aim of manufacture (or indeed of life) being the profit of the capitalist and the occupation of the workman, is held, I say, by almost every one; its corollary is, that labour is necessarily unlimited, and that to attempt to limit it is not so much foolish as wicked, whatever misery may be caused to the community by the manufacture and sale of the wares made.
”
”
William Morris (Art Under Plutocracy: Exploring the Corrosive Influence of Wealth on Art in the 19th Century)
“
If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not. It allows us to connect aspects of woman-identification as diverse as the impudent, intimate girl-friendships of eight- or nine-year-olds and the banding together of those women of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries known as Beguines who “shared houses, rented to one another, bequeathed houses to their room-mates … in cheap subdivided houses in the artisans’ area of town,” who “practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressing and living simply and not associating with men,” who earned their livings as spinners, bakers, nurses, or ran schools for young girls, and who managed–until the Church forced them to disperse–to live independent both of marriage and of conventual restrictions. It allows us to connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the women’s school around Sappho of the seventh century B.C.; with the secret sororities and economic networks reported among African women; and with the Chinese marriage resistance sisterhoods–communities of women who refused marriage, or who if married often refused to consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands–the only women in China who were not footbound and who, Agnes Smedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized successful women’s strikes in the silk mills. It allows us to connect and compare disparate individual instances of marriage resistance: for example, the type of autonomy claimed by Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century white woman genius, with the strategies available to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dickinson never married, had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and a smaller group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her way from Florida to Harlem to Columbia University to Haiti and finally back to Florida, moved in and out of white patronage and poverty, professional success and failure; her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical ”. Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.
”
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Adrienne Rich (Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence)
“
HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES: Part I
THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom's place,
There was old Tom, boiled to the eyes, blind,
(Don't you remember that time after a dance,
Top hats and all, we and Silk Hat Harry,
And old Tom took us behind, brought out a bottle of fizz,
With old Jane, Tom's wife; and we got Joe to sing
'I'm proud of all the Irish blood that's in me,
'There's not a man can say a word agin me').
Then we had dinner in good form, and a couple of Bengal lights.
When we got into the show, up in Row A,
I tried to put my foot in the drum, and didn't the girl squeal,
She never did take to me, a nice guy - but rough;
The next thing we were out in the street, Oh it was cold!
When will you be good? Blew in to the Opera Exchange,
Sopped up some gin, sat in to the cork game,
Mr. Fay was there, singing 'The Maid of the Mill';
Then we thought we'd breeze along and take a walk.
Then we lost Steve.
('I turned up an hour later down at Myrtle's place.
What d'y' mean, she says, at two o'clock in the morning,
I'm not in business here for guys like you;
We've only had a raid last week, I've been warned twice.
Sergeant, I said, I've kept a decent house for twenty years, she says,
There's three gents from the Buckingham Club upstairs now,
I'm going to retire and live on a farm, she says,
There's no money in it now, what with the damage don,
And the reputation the place gets, on account off of a few bar-flies,
I've kept a clean house for twenty years, she says,
And the gents from the Buckingham Club know they're safe here;
You was well introduced, but this is the last of you.
Get me a woman, I said; you're too drunk, she said,
But she gave me a bed, and a bath, and ham and eggs,
And now you go get a shave, she said; I had a good laugh, couple of laughs (?)
Myrtle was always a good sport'). treated me white.
We'd just gone up the alley, a fly cop came along,
Looking for trouble; committing a nuisance, he said,
You come on to the station. I'm sorry, I said,
It's no use being sorry, he said; let me get my hat, I said.
Well by a stroke of luck who came by but Mr. Donovan.
What's this, officer. You're new on this beat, aint you?
I thought so. You know who I am? Yes, I do,
Said the fresh cop, very peevish. Then let it alone,
These gents are particular friends of mine.
- Wasn't it luck? Then we went to the German Club,
Us We and Mr. Donovan and his friend Joe Leahy, Heinie Gus Krutzsch
Found it shut. I want to get home, said the cabman,
We all go the same way home, said Mr. Donovan,
Cheer up, Trixie and Stella; and put his foot through the window.
The next I know the old cab was hauled up on the avenue,
And the cabman and little Ben Levin the tailor,
The one who read George Meredith,
Were running a hundred yards on a bet,
And Mr. Donovan holding the watch.
So I got out to see the sunrise, and walked home.
* * * *
April is the cruellest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land....
”
”
T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land Facsimile)
“
They’ve had several conversations since that day in Owings Mills when Bisciotti fired him. “He said at some point we will sit down and have a glass of wine in that new house of yours,” Billick said. Billick had the perfect response. “It’s the least I can do, because you’re paying for it.
”
”
Gary Myers (Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches)
“
In the battle to turn the tide against Barack Obama’s primary victories, Mills was candidate Clinton’s de facto campaign manager. At Foggy Bottom, she was Secretary Clinton’s chief counsel and chief of staff. And if the Clintons make it back to the White House, Cheryl Mills will be the second most powerful woman in the world. She will be Hillary’s Hagen.
”
”
Daniel Halper (Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine)
“
The union team of New Zealand's national sport of Rugby has incorporated the static posture of the Haka war dance into its symbols. That symbol of the sprawling arms and legs is similar to that of the Dogon's Kanaga mask which I trace back to Egypt; it resembles the Ka signaling the beginning of the solar and/or lunar cycle based on the Egyptian theology when Osiris proceeds from the Great Pyramid (which is the House of Ka) into the Duat.
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Ibrahim Ibrahim (The Mill of Egypt: The Complete Series Fused)
“
Though Bentham's Panopticon was never constructed, the Westminster Review institutionalized the same democratic and scientific principle of public exposure:
'It were to be wished that no such thing as secrecy existed - that every man's house were made of glass. There would be the less reason to desire windows to his breast ... The more men live in public, the more amenable they are to the moral sanction. The greater dependence men are in to the public, ... the clearer the evidence comes out, the more it has of certainty in its results. The liberty of the press throws all men into the public presence ... Under such influence, it were strange if men grew not every day more virtuous ... A whole kingdom, the great globe itself, will become a gymnasium, in which every man exercises himself before the eyes of every other man. Every gesture, every turn of limb or feature, in those whose motions have a visible influence on the general happiness, will be noticed and marked down. The constitution of the human mind being opened by degrees, the labyrinth is explored, a clue is found out for it. That clue is the influence of interest ... It is put into the hands of every man. The design by which short-sighted iniquity would mask its projects are every day laid open. There will be no moral enigmas by and by.'
This vision of journalistic exposure provided the youthful propagandist with the prospect of becoming 'a reformer of the world.'
However, the moment arrived when the propagandist could no longer look forward to this prospect. He found he was a moral enigma to himself. In the course of struggling with this moral enigma, he became a liberal.
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”
Robert Denoon Cumming (Human Nature and History: A Study of the Development of Liberal Political Thought)
“
Part One
1. Mr. B.G.
(My Testimony)
Mr. B.G. Lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, One of my memories is attending the Mill Creek Baptist Church between the age of 8-10. What I remember most about this church is the way they emphasized working with youth. Occasionally heard preaching before Sunday school. Followed by going downstairs to learn an hour-long Bible Lesson. They invested time with us outside regular church hours; Mr. B.G. And his brother would eat pizza at Sunday school teacher's house. Church even planned an all-night sleepover in the basement one time. Never can forget drinking coffee all night, which caused me to have an energy boost. Followed by overwhelming tiredness the whole evening. Played on tennis tables, among many other events. Thinking back, I did enjoy a church that cared about me at such a young age. Only participated a couple of years then stopped going. Thankful for their kindness to teach me from God's Holy word a way to Jesus for the years attended. John Paul Guras and Mr. B.G. both were blessed to have an excellent Sunday school teacher, Mr. Walt Silman.
After making this choice, I could have traveled the remainder of my eternally bound life not seeking a real, living God. Many times, Holy Spirit was trying to speak to me, Ignorantly avoided influences like church, praying, reading the Holy Bible. Lost in the jailhouse of sinful darkness, with no care in the world to allow Jesus to direct my decisions.
I wanted to lead the helm of my life the way I thought was best. Choosing our selfish way is like shooting an arrow at a target wholly missing the center of the bulls-eye. Doing what pleases me, me, me, leads us astray. Sin leads us to destruction. Jesus alone can change our inward nature to fulfill the center of the Father's will.
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”
Bryan Guras
“
We entered the house, and there was that pregnant silence in the air, the silence between a husband and wife who have just had words, and it is unlike any other silence except perhaps the awful stillness you hear between the flash of an atomic bomb and the blast.
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Nelson DeMille (The Gold Coast)
“
The Jew presence on Elephantine coincided with Khnum's cult, for that the Jew maintained his own temple there (i.e. the House of YHWH) which functioned alongside that of Khnum's. Khnum was the creator of children, which he made on a potter's wheel from clay. Therefore, we expect to find some evidence of Ihy's creation story in Egypt - taking into consideration his important role as a rejuvenated god in the New Kingdom and that is exactly what we see in Dendera's Temple complex where Khnum moulds Ihy.
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Ibrahim Ibrahim (The Mill of Egypt: The Complete Series Fused)
“
5 over 6 is the temporal ratio that refers to the phases of the Moon which was embedded in the Aryan ancient calendar to complement the one sixth of the House of the Sun/Son.
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Ibrahim Ibrahim (The Mill of Egypt: The Complete Series Fused)
“
Turning to the northwest I see the much nearer fires on the hill, like a dwarfish volcano. Vigorous figures mill about the blazes, their shadows hopping and hobnobbing, like island natives beside a night-painted ocean. I might’ve been able to catch the sounds of their carnivalesque revelling if there weren’t so much music and mad gaiety behind me.
Far beyond the hill, the forest ends at the grey northern stretch of moorland with its dead whip of gritty roadway, down which I had seen the Night Hounds. Now, hooded figures trundle the same gloomy way. I wonder, are those druidic forms en route to the fire-capped hilltop? It seems a long way to go. Further north, past that winding road, the watching mountains tower, nigh-entirely disguised against the sky, one ebon peak protruding sharply, resembling an unapproachable pyramid or similar conical fortress. It must be some falsifying angle of light and shadow from the sky which has accentuated that dome in such a way - I well knew that those mountains should seem far smoother, more gentle, not nearly so sharp and craggy as that peak now appeared.
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Avalon Brantley (The House of Silence)
Roger P. Mills (True Hauntings And Paranormal: 10 of The Most Chilling Neighborhoods On Earth (Scary Stories Book 2))
“
Sara looked at the well-kept houses along the road. “These Communist pigs have beach clubs, good food, and access to foreign goods that the Cuban people can only dream about.
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Nelson DeMille (The Cuban Affair)
“
MY DEAREST SARAH, "I would give anything for a good hour's talk with you. You have not told me half enough about Mr. Wentworth, and that walk to the Mill, and your fit of dignity about the music book. It is so interesting, and quite as amusing as one of Miss Austen's novels; and this is all true, and your happiness is concerned in it; so you may guess how I pore over your letters. If he does not propose soon, I shall think he is behaving very ill, and shall hate him; but I know he will. We go on very happily here; at least, I hope dear Helen is happy; but I do not feel quite sure.
”
”
Emily Eden (The Semi-Detached House)
“
Juniper lifts her chin, looks down her crooked nose at Agnes.
“I’m not working on some factory. I already told you: I’m signing up with the suffrage ladies. I’m going to find that tower. Fight for something.”
It’s such a youngest-sister thing to say that Agnes wants to slap her. In the witch-tales it’s always the youngest who is the best-beloved, the most-worthy, the one bound for some grander destiny than her sisters. The other two are too ugly or too selfish or boring to get fairy godmothers or even beastly husbands. The stories never mentioned boarding house rent or laundry or aching knuckles from a double-shift at the mill. They never mentioned babies that needed feeding or choices that needed making.
Agnes swallows all those horseshit stories. “That’s all well and good but causes don’t pay much, I heard. They don’t feed you or give you a place to sleep.
”
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Alix E. Harrow (The Once and Future Witches)
“
The one-story wooden houses looked a set of dentures that hadn't seen Polident in years." FBI Agent Marc Wilkins
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DiAnn Mills (Concrete Evidence)
“
Today, Africatown is on the brink of disappearing. All the businesses and most of the people are gone. Fewer than two thousand people live in the old neighborhoods. The Meahers, the same family that removed the Clotilda’s passengers from Africa, have in effect continued to oppress their descendents into the twentieth century. Deciding to get out of the house rental business after nearly a century as one of Africatown’s most prominent landlords, the Meaher family suddenly bulldozed hundreds of rental properties they had built, destroying much of Africatown’s housing stock, rendering entire city blocks into vacant lots. They leased or sold their old plantation land surrounding the community for paper mills and other heavy industry, leaving residents saddled with high rates of cancers associated with environmental pollution. Even today, the Meaher Family Land Trust Group seeks to rezone property it owns in Africatown to bring more industry into the community.
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Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
“
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different potions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen,- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance-and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortieses exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few-not omitting even scaffolding-or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in-in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.
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Abraham Lincoln ("A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand,")
“
through stinging eyes at the computer monitor. He was exhausted but the man on-screen didn’t seem to be. He continued to dig through the rubble of the house above and had now been joined by his
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Kyle Mills (Total Power (Mitch Rapp, #19))
“
D’murr no longer needed to concern himself with the mundane affairs of humans, so trivial were they, so limited and short-sighted: political machinations, populations milling about like ants in a disturbed hill, lives flickering bright and dull like sparks from a campfire. His former life was only a vague and fading memory, without specific names or faces. He saw images, but ignored them. He could never go back to what he had been.
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”
Brian Herbert (House Atreides (Prelude to Dune, #1))
“
One of the Africans’ first communal decisions was to ask Timothy Meaher to give them a piece of his land around Magazine Point so they could build houses. He had plenty of land, they reasoned, some of it purchased with the money they had made for him through five years of free labor. They appointed Cudjo to talk with Meaher. His chance to approach Timothy came when the old captain came strolling through a section of forest where Cudjo was chopping trees for the mill. Meaher sat down on a felled log and started whittling on a stick. The conversation occurred where the elementary school in Africatown stands today.
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Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
“
After 1965, people in Africatown could shop anywhere they wanted. Cars had become common in the community, and the larger markets and department stores of Mobile’s downtown shopping district were just a three-minute ride away. Likewise, desegregation meant African-Americans were no longer confined to living near the few schools available to the Black population. People started moving out, to other parts of Mobile, or to several small African-American towns that surround Africatown, places where you couldn’t smell the overpowering stench from the paper mills. Contributing to the problem was a sudden dearth of housing when the Meaher clan decided to get out of the house rental business in 1967, after building more than five hundred rental houses in Africatown since the 1880s. Residents say the family simply moved people out and bulldozed the houses, destroying much of the area’s longtime housing stock.
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”
Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
“
In the years since, rule number one in crisis management, whether in the White House or during run-of-the-mill Washington scandals, has been “Tell the truth and tell it early.
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”
Michael K. Bohn (Presidents in Crisis: Tough Decisions inside the White House from Truman to Obama)
“
How had I never noticed before how dear she was? How dear, in fact, was everyone in my village, and every house and tree and garden. How comforting the whisper of the wheel of the mill, the clanging of the smith’s hammer, the lowing of the cattle, the laughter of the women.
”
”
Martine Leavitt (Keturah and Lord Death)
“
Shid, better you than me. They saw me spank Karlie the other day, and I woke up to a remote at my temple. Man, I’m sending them niggas somewhere and stat. If the other two act like that, they can have the house, Karlie, and their damn mama.” He folded his arms and really appeared to be mad. “I can’t keep living my life in fear.
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”
Nek Mills (Loved by a Certified Maniac (Certified Maniac's))
“
The cacophony of county jail is deafening: That's what hap- pens when you jam thousands of women into concrete rooms that were intended to house a population half our size. We sleep in bunk beds in the common areas, feet away from the tables where we play cards and read all day. We urinate in overwhelmed toilets that clog and overflow. We stand in lines for showers, meals, hair- cuts, telephones, meds. At all hours of the day and night, the con- crete echoes with screams and prayers and tears and laughter and curses.
There is nothing to do here but wait.
I mill around the common room in my canary-yellow prison suit, watching the hands of the clock in the cage on the wall slowly ticking away the minutes of the days. I wait for mealtime, though I have no interest in eating the gray slurry that slides around tray. I wait for the library cart to come around, so I can pick out the least offensive romance novel on offer. I wait for lights-out, so that I can lie in my upper bunk in the semi-dark, listening to the snores and whispers of my fellow inmates while I wait for sleep to come. my
It hardly ever does.
But mostly, I wait for someone to come help me.
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”
Janelle Brown (Pretty Things)
“
By now, the three assholes were probably running out the back door and heading around both sides of the house to outflank
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Nelson DeMille (The Maze (John Corey, #8))
“
I always thought that voluntary arms compliance inspections were sort of like a suspected murderer leading me on a guided tour of his house. No, Detective, there’s nothing in that closet of any interest. Now, let me show you my patio.
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Nelson DeMille (Plum Island (John Corey, #1))
“
the old house,
in the lee of the hills,
surrounded by relics
of the old powder mill.
the ancient stones silent,
the water wheels still,
but yet there is life
in the ruins of the mill.
the birds and the sheep
find shelter to sleep
the fisherman fish
in the river so deep.
the flowers of the forest
carpet the glades.
and the frogs they are leaping
down in the lades.
laughter bygone
forever is still
yet the echoes still linger
here in the mill.
voices come whispering
from the century that was
and dash is just resting
under the moss.
on nights of bright moon
flooding over the hill
I sense the life breathing
here, in the mill.
and here in the house
time beats gently past
as it has done before
and will to the last.
”
”
Christine Marion Fraser (Green Are My Mountains (An Autobiography Book 2))
“
We turned onto the thoroughfare and walked north toward the palace, and my spirits lifted. Despite the destruction and death, this was a glorious day for Hytanica. I started to say something to this effect to Galen, but he halted, his face ashen, and the words died on my lips. His hand fell on my shoulder, and I looked at him in confusion, then followed his gaze farther up the road. My eyes fell on Steldor, who was kneeling on the unforgiving stone of the street, a few other men milling around him, and my confusion grew. Shouldn’t Galen be pleased to find his best friend?
I couldn’t see what Steldor was doing, but after a moment he stood, and the men who were with him lifted a flat litter bearing a body. My eyes took in the height and build of the man lying unnaturally still, the nearly black hair, the officer’s insignia on the black leather jerkin, the blood--and my breath caught in my throat.
I tried to run to Steldor, denials raging in my head, but Galen pulled me against his chest. I stared uncomprehendingly at the litter, the image burning itself into my brain, while tears stung my eyes. Cannan’s arms were folded over his chest, his sword tucked beneath his hands. It was really the only evidence any of us needed. As sobs shook me, Galen passed me into the arms of my suitor and advanced upon his best friend, his motion unnaturally stiff. Steldor turned his head at the sound of the approaching footsteps, his dark eyes dry but looking helpless, hopeless and alone.
Cannan had been Galen’s father the same way he had been Steldor’s, and the young men stood side by side, watching the Hytanican soldiers carry the litter toward the palace, not moving until it was out of sight. Both of them seemed lost, not knowing what to do or say, then they wrapped their arms around one another in a fierce embrace, befitting the brothers that they were. They held each other for a long time, almost as unmoving as their deceased father.
I fell back against Grayden, losing what little strength remained to me, and he hugged me, eventually leading me back to my house. Though I was only eighteen, I felt I had stumbled upon one of life’s few truisms: with every step forward came a step backward, with every gain came a loss and with every joy came tears. In the end, the best for which one could hope was to leave the world in better straits than existed on the day of your birth; to have truly lived. And oh, how Cannan, the Captain of the Guard, had lived.
”
”
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
“
if she can’t achieve that, something truly brilliant, then what’s the point in living at all? Because in her family, being mediocre, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, simply isn’t allowed.
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Menna Van Praag (The House at the End of Hope Street)
“
Nigerians don’t buy houses because they’re old. A renovated two-hundred-year-old mill granary, you know, the kind of thing Europeans like. It doesn’t work here at all. But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
“
Is there a doctor in the house?" Bobby's voice floated into the room. My heart fluttered, just as it had the first time I'd met him, just as it did every time. The low timbre of his voice, combined with his rolling southern accent, made my pulse race and my palms sweat....
"She is. Is there someone in need of medical attention?" I answered, trying not to sound breathless but failing, as I always did....
Not answering but stopping right in front of me, placing his hands on my shoulders and leaning forward, the sexiest man in Georgia kissed me just a teeny bit senseless amid the dead bodies, antiseptic smells, and right in front of Reggie.
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Julia Mills (Vidalia ('Not Quite', #1))
“
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16)
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Bill Mills (Changed: Experiencing God's Transforming Power (Connecting with God Series))
“
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. Matthew 24:37-44
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Mark Goodwin (Perdition (The Days of Noah, #3))
“
Population control was a long-standing public-policy concern. “We need to make population and family planning household words,” Bush said. “The sensationalism needs to be taken out of the subject.” He urged the creation of a joint House-Senate panel on family planning and related issues. “Population control and family planning is too important to whisper and giggle about now,” Bush said. He credited his interest in the issue to his involvement with Planned Parenthood in Houston. Bush raised the stakes in the fall of 1969, proposing that the Department of the Interior become a new federal Department of Resources, Environment, and Population. His interest in legislation about “family-planning services” led Wilbur Mills to refer to Bush as
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Jon Meacham (Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush)
“
Chapter 15 Grace One morning, after an uneventful sojourn at the bath house. The ward received a rare visit from the Physician Superintendent. He walked into the day room accompanied by the charge nurse just as me and Art were preparing the patients for lunch. “Do you say Grace before meals?” inquired the Superintendent of the charge. “Yes Sir.” The charge was well aware of the hospital rules and snapped almost to attention in reply. His response was true. Our charge, being a stickler for the rule book of the institution, always insisted on saying grace. The order was; “Stand behind your chairs.” Usually bellowed by the deputy although Art and I occasionally got the chance. The seventy odd patients milling round in the dining gallery would stand behind their chairs in absolute silence. Years of institutional living had taught them that meals would only be served after a period of absolute silence, followed by grace. The charge, not leaving his chair, would open his office door and poking his head out would call. “For whayouare aboutorecieve maythelor mayoutruly thankful.” To which the patients would dutifully chorus “Amen” and sit down to eat. On this day the “Big Chief” was present and Art and I could tell things were going to be different. “Stand behind your chairs.” Was said. Nothing happened.—Louder, “Stand behind your chairs.” Nothing.—Art bellowed “Stand behind your chairs.” The effect was electric and the mass moved into its lunchtime position of silence standing behind their chairs in the dining room. The charge had slipped into his long white nursing coat. He was going to assist with lunch. He moved away from the side of the Physician Superintendent and stood in the centre of the dining room. There he adopted a posture which he adjudged spiritually appropriate. Hands clasped in front of him, eyes lowered, he bowed his head. Not wishing to get on the wrong side of our boss. Art and I stood one either side of him and followed suit. Absolute silence reigned. Before the charge could proceed any further with this charade the ward kitchen door opened to reveal Benny and Jimmy. They were two long standing ward worker patients who’s job it was to prepare the plates on the servery ready for the meal. Patients assisting with serving meals was against the “rules” and Benny realising that the Superintendent was present blurted out. “For Christ’s sake shut that bloody door.” Seventy nine patients solemnly responded with “Amen.” and promptly sat down in eager anticipation of their dinner. “I see.” said the Physician Superintendent and walked poker faced from the dining room with the red faced charge trailing in his wake. We never said Grace again after that.
”
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Gordon M. Kerkham (Random Reflections of a Looney Bin)
“
32Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 33So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. 34Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. 35Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. 36But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 37But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 39And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 40Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 41Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 42Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 43But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. 44Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
”
”
Cliff Ball (Times of Trouble: Christian End Times Novel (The End Times Saga Book 2))
“
..the guests milled back and forth: men stood with their heads together, discussing politics and crops, their stiff white shirts puffed and ruffled, their voices rising and falling in steadfast opinions as women of fair whispered to one another and laughed behind silk fans, occasionally calling out gaily to pull another into their ring of white shoulder flounced with satin as house niggers dipped and weaved all around them bearing trays of syllabub and sack, almost invisible as the shadows they cast
”
”
Pamela Jekel
“
the lawn from a grassy field to a twilit garden. As if on cue, Sebastian arrived leading a parade into the clearing, and called everyone to order. “Honored guests,” he shouted, holding his hands out in greeting. “I’m pleased to announce we have record attendance this year. This is in no small part due to the efforts of our friends-of-the-farm coordinator, Benjamin Thorndike, and his new assistant, Jason Adams.” Polite applause accompanied an occasional cheer. One woman at the back called out, “Which ones are they, Sebastian?” The managing director scanned the crowd and pointed. “Over there. Benjamin’s the one on the porch steps with the camera, taking your pictures. And you can’t miss Jason. He’s the tallest here, but just in case, raise your hand, Jason.” Helena watched, bemused, as Jason raised his hand. He seemed embarrassed, but she thought he was enjoying the celebrity. Once Sebastian completed his welcome, the crowd headed for the food and drink, then milled around sipping apple wine and taking in the scene. Two farm members mounted the steps of the great house and began to play music on a penny whistle and violin, a lilting tune from a time when farmers would gather to celebrate the harvest. A few people came over to meet
”
”
David Litwack (The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky)