Neat And Tidy Quotes

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley...He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!

What a mess. Truths are messy and lies are messy, and I don’t care what Da said, it’s impossible to cut a person into pielike pieces, neat and tidy.

I had money...But for some reason, I couldn't go anywhere. Apparently, finding a warm place to belong...Takes something other than money. Several years later, I realized that this "something" other than money...Was also required to enjoy food, to keep yourself neat and tidy, and to mutually respect people. But at the time, I dind't know that.

Womens, they ain't like men. A woman ain't gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn't pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn't come burn my house down. No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set of tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.

We got to his place and it looked a lot like his personality. Just a bunch of space filler, nothing to really wow you. It looked like he had bought a lot of stuff from IKEA and then decided to refinish it at home. Everything was neat and tidy, but you wouldn't want any of it for yourself.

That's the trouble with gathering truth. It's never neat and tidy...

No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined.

It was so silly to try to define things by words. What did one person mean by infatuation or obsession and another mean by love. The whole thing couldn't be tidied away with neat little labels." - Lena Gray

...that's the way to tell a true story from a made-up one. A made-up story always has a neat and tidy end. But true stories don't end, at least until their heroes and heroines die, and not then really because the things they did and didn't do, sometimes live on.

They looked like the people you see on the six o’clock news—refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them. It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them. They couldn’t have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph

Life didn’t have to fit into a four-sided box that was neat and tidy. It was okay if the box had three sides or the fourth one was hanging on with duct tape. It was okay if the corners were dented and if there was a big red FRAGILE sticker on top. It was all okay.

It's all very nice for Christians, yes? 'Angels' in Rome, 'demons' here. How neat, how tidy for the Western world view, and how wrong.

If ever there were a true “just as I am” church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended — we could not make enough room inside the building.

Unlearning is challenging. Do not expect neat, tidy resolutions, or assume that we will instantly fix the world’s ills in a single dialogue. We can, however, get closer to those goals if we are willing to be uncomfortable.

..chaos is the neighbour of God: but everything's usually neat and tidy in hell...

No, white women like to keep their hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gonna take they time with em.

Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.

Sugar leans her chin against the knuckles of the hand that holds the pen. Glistening on the page between her silk-shrouded elbows lies an unfinished sentence. The heroine of her novel has just slashed the throat of a man. The problem is how, precisely, the blood will flow. Flow is too gentle a word; spill implies carelessness; spurt is out of the question because she has used the word already, in another context, a few lines earlier. Pour out implies that the man has some control over the matter, which he most emphatically doesn’t; leak is too feeble for the savagery of the injury she has inflicted upon him. Sugar closes her eyes and watches, in the lurid theatre of her mind, the blood issue from the slit neck. When Mrs Castaway’s warning bell sounds, she jerks in surprise. Hastily, she scrutinises her bedroom. Everything is neat and tidy. All her papers are hidden away, except for this single sheet on her writing-desk. Spew, she writes, having finally been given, by tardy Providence, the needful word.

I collect my frustration like Gabe’s wayward assignments and stack it into something neat and tidy in my chest.

The future was on the way, and it was as critical as a mother-in-law, expecting everything to be neat and tidy when it arrived.

We had to keep explaining things, backtracking and filling gaps. We realised our own conversations had evolved into a kind of shorthand, a tidy, neat little minimalism. Covering the whole canvas in broad obvious brushstrokes for outsiders felt like a waste of sounds, time and effort. Speaking with footnotes.

Even though you were running around and shooting guns, your hair absolutely could not be in disarray. One had to look all neat and tidy while involved in the aerobic activity of saving the galaxy.

Well,' said Can o' Beans, a bit hesitantly,' imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.' Huh?' Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.' The manner in which the other were regarding him/her made Can O' Beans feel compelled to continue. 'The word neat, for example, has precise connotations. Neat means tidy, orderly, well-groomed. It's a valuable tool for describing the appearance of a room, a hairdo, or a manuscript. When it's generically and inappropriately applied, though, as it is in the slang aspect, it only obscures the true nature of the thing or feeling that it's supposed to be representing. It's turned into a sponge word. You can wring meanings out of it by the bucketful--and never know which one is right. When a person says a movie is 'neat,' does he mean that it's funny or tragic or thrilling or romantic, does he mean that the cinematography is beautiful, the acting heartfelt, the script intelligent, the direction deft, or the leading lady has cleavage to die for? Slang possesses an economy, an immediacy that's attractive, all right, but it devalues experience by standardizing and fuzzing it. It hangs between humanity and the real world like a . . . a veil. Slang just makes people more stupid, that's all, and stupidity eventually makes them crazy. I'd hate to ever see that kind of craziness rub off onto objects.

That's real life. Things don't always work out the way you think they will. They're not so neat and tidy. But people come into your life with a purpose--I see that now. Claire likes to say that people cross your paths for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Astor was a reason. Hayley, though? Hayley is a lifetime.

Man’s world is manifold, and his attitudes are manifold. What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple. Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them. They like to be told that there are two worlds and two ways. This is comforting because it is so tidy. Almost always one way turns out to be common and the other is celebrated as superior. Those who tell of two ways and praise one are recognised as prophets or great teachers. They save men from confusion and hard choices. They offer a single choice that is easy to make because those who do not take the path that is commended to them live a wretched life. To walk on this path may be difficult, but the choice is easy, and to hear the celebration of the path is pleasant. Wisdom offers simple schemes, but truth is not so simple.

Marriages don't stay in neat, tidy shapes you know; they sprawl about, very messily sometimes. The important thing is not to let them get out of control.

I guess they needed a maze in Japan, where everything's neat and tidy. In America everybody's already wandering around lost.

Allowing yourself to follow the crevices of your heart lines is a messy process and not easy to characterize or rationalize into neat and tidy lists and boxes.

Cats like milk. Have you ever seen how cats lap it up? In real tiny sips, very neat and tidy, never spilling a drop. Cats will do just about anything to irritate.

So does that mean you're neat and tidy, since you're a woman ?" I scrunched up my face. "Are you kidding ? I used to buy paper plates just so I wouldn't have to do the dishes. My idea of vacuuming is borrowing someone's dog for the day and having them eat all the crap off the floor.

Bright color operates like a stimulant, a shot of caffeine for the eyes. It stirs us out of complacency. The artist Fernand Léger related the story of a newly renovated factory in Rotterdam. “The old factory was dark and sad,” he noted. “The new one was bright and colored: transparent. Then something happened. Without any remark to the personnel, the clothes of the workers became neat and tidy.… They felt that an important event had just happened around them, within them.

People aren't tidy creations to be stacked neatly in the Tupperware or poured in premeasured quantities from a box into the Cuisinart with no spills; everybody alive is a lost and disastrous mess.

RBG’s longtime friend Cynthia Fuchs Epstein says, “I think had she not had this persona as this very soft-spoken, neat, and tidy person, with a conventional life, she would have been considered a flaming radical.

The Lake Isle O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, With the little bright boxes piled up neatly upon the shelves And the loose fragrant cavendish and the shag, And the bright Virginia loose under the bright glass cases, And a pair of scales not too greasy, And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing, For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, Lend me a little tobacco-shop, or install me in any profession Save this damn’d profession of writing, where one needs one’s brains all the time.

Conservatism -- hard work -- saving one's money -- looking neat and gentlemanly. It was such an Eveless paradise, that.

The room was so neat and tidy it made me feel quite depressed...I do not allow myself to repine about what cannot be helped; but I remembered earlier Decembers, under the cloudless blue skies and brilliant sun of Egypt. As I stood morosely contemplating the destruction of our cheerful domestic clutter, and recalling better days, I heard the sound of wheels on the gravel of the drive. The first guest had arrived. Gathering the robes of my martyrdom about me, I made ready to receive her.

Mastema prefers absolutes. He wants fences on the world and everything in its place, neat and tidy as a churchyard garden. God is not like that. God is boundless. For all his wisdom, Mastema cannot comprehend Yahweh’s need for surprises. An omniscient Being would naturally yearn for things beyond His control, futures He could not see, wills He could influence but not command. Strange, yes. It is odd when the puppeteer desires his wooden slaves to cut their strings, yet that is exactly what He did when he granted humans free will.

I'd like to be tidy, said Hen, I try, but I guess you can't be what you aren't.

A sane man who is untidy seems crazier than a tidy man who is insane.

Autumn is grey rainy afternoons, and fond memories of raking up leaves into tidy neat piles, just to jump in a spread them around again.

I think homes that are too tidy, neat and sparse look like nothing interesting is going on.

In spite of all my efforts to create a neat, tidy, obedient, moderate, unexceptional persona, I was simply too weird for them; until that is, my first female tutor was hired.

Put simply, you can’t ask your unconscious a question, and expect a direct answer—a neat, tidy little verbal message.

like this – I’d thought it would be neat and tidy, one reporter at a time. I didn’t know then how Charlie Einfeld

My mind is not like a neat and tidy garden; it is a vast and untidy wilderness, full of irrelevancies, but with lots of places to wander and get lost.

where the desks looked as they normally did – Reggie’s neat and tidy, Ox’s like a vacuum cleaner and a recycling bin had fought to the death over a takeaway order.

Neat and tidy is my absolute favourite kind of girl.

One had to look all neat and tidy while involved in the aerobic activity of saving the galaxy.

I saw her eyes and then it no longer mattered how neat and tidy she looked. What I saw was lethal. Her eyes were jet black.

I am not depressed; my life is just shit. As a consequence of my not being depressed, I am not like them. You need to know this from the very off. You need to know I, Arch Fry, will not allow myself to be neatly pigeonholed, erroneously labelled or closed off in some tidy little box - one to be shelved away and conveniently forgotten about. No, I am not depressed: NOT. DEPRESSED. You see, I’m just not stuck in some deep unassailable chasm like all the rest, like all these other poor fuckers who’ve so readily accepted that noose of a word.

Warning bells rang in Evie’s head. She knew where the story was going, knew it had a tragic end. Because unlike the beauty of fairy tales, real life didn’t end in a neat and tidy bow.

I had a neat and tidy life in a messy world, and if sometimes I suspected I was trying to fulfill the stereotype of a small-town librarian, well, I had yearnings to play other roles, too.

The women had been vindicated. The dial-painters had won. And it was Catherine Wolfe Donohue, in the end, who had led them to victory. “If there are saints on earth,” one commentator said, “and you believe in that, I think Catherine Wolfe Donohue was one of them. I really do.”38 She was buried in St. Columba Cemetery. She has a simple, flat gravestone, as unobtrusive, and as neat and tidy, as she herself had been in life.

Life didn’t have to fit into a four-sided box that was neat and tidy. It was okay if the box had three sides or the fourth one was hanging on with duct tape. It was okay if the corners were dented and if there was a big red FRAGILE sticker on top.

Real shadow work does not leave us intact; it is not some neat and tidy process, but rather an inherently messy one, as vital and unpredictably alive as birth. The ass it kicks is the one upon which we are sitting; the pain it brings up is the pain we’ve been fleeing most of our life; the psychoemotional breakdowns it catalyzes are the precursors to hugely relevant breakthroughs; the doors it opens are doors that have shown up year after year in our dreams, awaiting our entry. Real shadow work not only breaks us down, but breaks us open.

In my room, I looked around at all the pieces of my life, neat and tidy on their little shelves, my clothes and books and telephones, my shoes and hair barrettes, and tried to care about them. Mine, mine, mine. But they were only things, things that could have belonged to anyone.

Muslim Girlhood I never found myself in a pink aisle. There was no box for me with glossy cellophane like heat and a neat packet of instructions in six languages. Evenings, I watched TV like a religion I moderately believed. I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the other - no laugh track in my living room, no tidy and punctual resolution waiting. I took tests in which Jane & William had so many apples. I fasted through birthday parties and Christmas parties and ate leftover tajine at plastic lunch tables, picked at pepperoni from slices like blemishes and tried not to complain. I prayed at the wrong times in the wrong tongue. I hungered for Jell-O & Starburts & margarine; could read mono- and diglycerides by five, knew what gelatin meant, and where it came from.

A deserted library in the morning – there’s something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully. I want to do what I can to preserve this place, keep it neat and tidy. Sometimes I come to a halt and gaze at all the books on the stacks, reach out and touch the spines of a few.

So we go around pigeonholing everything. We put cows in cowsheds, horses in stables, pigs in pigsties, and chickens in chicken coops. The same happens when Sophie Amundsen tidies up her room. She puts her books on the bookshelf, her schoolbooks in her schoolbag, and her magazines in the drawer. She folds her clothes neatly and puts them in the closet - underwear on one shelf, sweaters on another, and socks in a drawer on their own. Notice that we do the same thing in our minds. we distinguish between things made of stone, things made of wool, and things made of rubber. We distinguish between things that are alive or dead, and we distinguish between vegetables, animal, and human

Hold him,” he told Jesper and the Fjerdan. Kaz flicked his coat sleeve, and an oyster shucking knife appeared in his hand. At any given time he had at least two knives stashed somewhere in his clothes. He didn’t even count this one, really—a tidy, wicked little blade. He made a neat slash across Oomen’s eye—from brow to cheekbone—and before Oomen could draw breath to cry out, he made a second cut in the opposite direction, a nearly perfect X. Now Oomen was screaming. Kaz wiped the knife clean, returned it to his sleeve, and drove his gloved fingers into Oomen’s eye socket. He shrieked and twitched as Kaz yanked out his eyeball, its base trailing a bloody root. Blood gushed over his face. Kaz

By neatly folding your clothes, you can solve almost every problem related to storage.

Unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes.

the unrequited lover is the one who waits. He waits and waits, and then waits some more. He is the one who drops vital moments of his life, lets them scatter away, lets himself scatter away piece by piece for those three words. I love you. He is desperate and lonely, both by choice and circumstance. It’s the story of my life packed into a neat, tidy script. Thomas

How much easier the task will be to review your past life, if you live each day as if that was the sole recording of your entire lifetime. Keep that page so neat and tidy, so filled with loving care, that if your life ended at midnight the page would be spotless and blameless, for surely even the worst of us can live one day in nearly blameless harmony with all about us.

white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.

Johnstone railway station was small, neat and tidy, quite attractive. On the platforms, I noticed that the signs also had the name in Gaelic – ‘Baile Iain’, literally ‘John’s town’. It is a recent wheeze by the triumphant, all-conquering Scottish National Party to add the Gaelic name to every station in the whole of Scotland, despite the fact that most of these places never had a Gaelic name or people who ever spoke Gaelic.

We take off for New Jersey. Gigantic landscape of factories, bridges, and railroads. And then, suddenly, East Orange and a countryside as postcard as can be, with thousands of neat and tidy cottages like toys in the midst of tall poplars and magnolias. I'm shown in the little public library, bright and gay, which the neighborhood uses a lot - with a huge room for children. (Finally a country where the children are really taken care of.)

But if I were to become unlikeable, if I were no longer viable as a brand, I might finally allow myself to be a person. This book is my final act of defiance, my last hope, and I’ve done the one thing that nobody, not my mother and not even me, expected: I’ve written the truth. Not anything so neat and tidy as what you read in the news, or see on TV. But it is the truth, as I experienced it that summer. I’ve no illusions about being liked after this. But at least I’ll be understood.

We say we want revival . . . but on our terms. We don’t pray this way, but this is what our hearts are saying to God: “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you promise in advance to do things the way we have always done them in our church.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if I have some sort of prior guarantee that when you show up you won’t embarrass me.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is one that I can still control, one that preserves intact the traditions with which I am comfortable.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is neat and tidy and dignified and understandable and above all else socially acceptable.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you plan to change others; only if you make them to be like me; only if you convict their hearts so they will live and dress and talk like I do.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you let us preserve our distinctives and retain our differences from others whom we find offensive.

I always felt that someone, a long time ago, organized the affairs of the world into areas that made sense-catagories of stuff that is perfectible, things that fit neatly in perfect bundles. The world of business, for example, is this way-line items, spreadsheets, things that add up, that can be perfected. The legal system-not always perfect, but nonetheless a mind-numbing effort to actually write down all kinds of laws and instructions that cover all aspects of being human, a kind of umbrella code of conduct we should all follow. Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect. But after this someone got through organizing everything just perfectly, he (or probably a she) was left with a bunch of stuff that didn't fit anywhere-things in a shoe box that had to go somewhere. So in desperation this person threw up her arms and said, 'OK! Fine. All the rest of this stuff that isn't perfectible, that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else, will just have to be piled into this last, rather large, tattered box that we can sort of push behind the couch. Maybe later we can come back and figure where it all is supposed to fit in. Let's label the box ART.' The problem was thankfully never fixed, and in time the box overflowed as more and more art piled up. I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. The have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don't sometimes necessarily make sense. Art is all just perfectly imperfect. Once the word ART enters the description of what you're up to , it is almost getting a hall pass from perfection. It thankfully releases us from any expectation of perfection. In relation to my own work not being perfect, I just always point to the tattered box behind the couch and mention the word ART, and people seem to understand and let you off the hook about being perfect a go back to their business.

Wouldn’t that be a tidy ending to the story? Nice and neat, all smoothed over. The abuser gets pushed out the window, saved by female friendship and camaraderie and the indelible bonds that men like to think bind women together. They never see the places where those bonds fray; they don’t care enough to look.

One other thing this skinny Arab knew: the power of hating the Jew. He could quote from the Holy Book chapter and verse the perfidy of Jews. He could show the dagger of Israel stuck in the soul of Jerusalem where Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. And this son of Islam’s most holy places could wrap it all up in a tidy little conspiracy, the Jews in New York controlling America, the Great Satan, launching their crusades against Muslims everywhere. See, we Muslims are nursed on the mother’s milk of conspiracies. And unless you have a conspiracy to explain everything in one neat package, we simply won’t believe you.

They told you to be quiet and constrained and obedient, didn’t they? That’s virtually the same thing. The doors want wild things. They want feral beasts in the skin of dutiful daughters—and you can’t sit here, with your neatly brushed hair and your tidy uniform and tell me you don’t know what it is to be feral. I know you too well for that.

The classical tradition in philosophy is the last surviving child of two very diverse parents: the Greek belief in reason, and the mediæval belief in the tidiness of the universe. To the schoolmen, who lived amid wars, massacres, and pestilences, nothing appeared so delightful as safety and order. In their idealising dreams, it was safety and order that they sought: the universe of Thomas Aquinas or Dante is as small and neat as a Dutch interior. To us, to whom safety has become monotony, to whom the primeval savageries of nature are so remote as to become a mere pleasing condiment to our ordered routine, the world of dreams is very different from what it was amid the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline. Hence William James's protest against what he calls the “block universe” of the classical tradition; hence Nietzsche's worship of force; hence the verbal bloodthirstiness of many quiet literary men. The barbaric substratum of human nature, unsatisfied in action, finds an outlet in imagination. In philosophy, as elsewhere, this tendency is visible; and it is this, rather than formal argument, that has thrust aside the classical tradition for a philosophy which fancies itself more virile and more vital. B.

The guy with the revolver stayed at the door. He went into a crouch and pointed the weapon two- handed. At my head. The guy with the shotgun approached close. These were fit lean boys. Neat and tidy. Textbook moves. The revolver at the door could cover the room with a degree of accuracy. The shotgun up close could splatter me all over the window. The other way around would be a mistake. The revolver could miss in a close- quarters struggle and a long- range shotgun blast from the door would kill the arresting officer and the old guy in the rear booth as well as me. So far, they were doing it right. No doubt about that. They had the advantage. No doubt about that, either. The tight booth trapped me. I was too hemmed in to do much. I spread my hands on the table. The officer with the shotgun came near.

I know all their favorites. It's a knack, a professional secret, like a fortune teller reading palms. My mother would have laughed at this waste of my skills, but I have no desire to probe farther into their lives than this. I do not want their secrets or their innermost thoughts. Nor do I want their fears or gratitude. A tame alchemist, she would have called me with kindly contempt, working domestic magic when I could have wielded marvels. But I like these people. I like their small and introverted concerns. I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily- this one with its hint of bitterness will relish my zesty orange twists; this sweet-smiling one the soft-centered apricot hearts; this girl with the windblown hair will love the mendiants; this brisk, cheery woman the chocolate brazils. For Guillaume, the florentines, eaten neatly over a saucer in his tidy bachelor's house. Narcisse's appetite for double-chocolate truffles reveals the gentle heart beneath the gruff exterior. Caroline Clairmont will dream of cinder toffee tonight and wake hungry and irritable. And the children... Chocolate curls, white buttons with colored vermicelli, pain d'épices with gilded edging, marzipan fruits in their nests of ruffled paper, peanut brittle, clusters, cracknells, assorted misshapes in half-kilo boxes... I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crash-crash-crashing among the hazels and nougatines....

To Pandora's surprise, the duchess was waiting for them in the hall. She glowed like a flame in the cool white surroundings, with her gold-freckled complexion and a wealth of rose-copper hair that had been pinned up in a braided mass. Her voluptuous but tidy form was covered in a blue muslin dress, with a ribbon belt tied neatly at her trim waist. Everything about her was warm and approachable and soft. The duke went to his wife, his hand coming to rest at the small of her back. He seemed to luxuriate in her presence like a great cat.

Ultimately, there are not fifty-six cards in the Minor Arcana of the tarot. There are only four—the four aces. The other fifty-two cards (the sixteen court cards and the thirty-six small cards), live inside the four aces. As we learned in chapter 8, if we look at the ace of any suit under a magic microscope, we first see the four court cards of that suit living comfortably inside. Let's not stop there. If we increase the magnification level of our microscope, we see that the nine small cards of the suit are nestled neatly inside in three rows of three cards. Isn't that tidy?

When we take our clothes in our hands and fold them neatly, we are, I believe, transmitting energy, which has a positive effect on our clothes. Folding properly pulls the cloth taut and erases wrinkles, and makes the material stronger and more vibrant. Clothes that have been neatly folded have a resilience and sheen that can be discerned immediately, clearly distinguishing them from those that have been haphazardly stuffed in a drawer. The act of folding is far more than making clothes compact for storage. It is an act of caring, an expression of love and appreciation for the way these clothes support your lifestyle. Therefore, when we fold, we should put our heart into it, thanking our clothes for protecting our bodies.

The fact is, nobody would have known from looking. An outsider walking past my cubicle that morning would have seen a petite woman of thirty-four with long, light brown hair pulled back in a barrette, neat and orderly-looking. Closer inspection would have suggested a perfectionistic, polished exterior, a careful attention to detail: a young woman with well-manicured nails and black leggings and Italian shoes; a daily list of things to do sitting on the desk, written in perfect print, several items already neatly ticked off; a workspace so compulsively tidy that one of my staff writers used to say you could fly a plane over my desk and it would look like a map of the Midwest, everything at perfect right angles. Colleagues saw me as smart and introspective, a little reserved maybe, and a paragon of efficiency at work: organized, professional, productive.

Look here, it's all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white,' said the Major, trying to soften his tone slightly. 'It's a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders.' He stopped to organize his thoughts into some statement short enough for a youthful attention span. 'However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing. Not in your case, of course—you are very neat.' Abdul Wahid looked confused, which was an improvement over the frown. 'You are very strange,' he said. 'Are you saying it is wrong, stupid, to try to live a life of faith?' 'No, I think it is admirable,' said the Major. 'But I think a life of faith must start with remembering that humility is the first virtue before God.

Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night. “I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall,” said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor McGonagall blew her nose in reply. Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner he stopped and took out the silver Put-Outer. He clicked it once, and twelve balls of light sped back to their street lamps so that Privet Drive glowed suddenly orange and he could make out a tabby cat slinking around the corner at the other end of the street. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step of number four. “Good luck, Harry,” he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone. A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky,

he herself will serve them coffee in tiny, cracked cups of precious porcelain and little sugar cakes. The hobbledehoys sit with a spilling cup in one hand and a biscuit in the other, gaping at the beautiful Countess in her satin finery as she pours from a silver pot and chatters distractedly to put them at their fatal ease. A certain desolate stillness of her eyes indicates she is inconsolable. She would like to caress their lean, brown cheeks and stroke their ragged hair. When she takes them by the hand and leads them to her bedroom, they can scarcely believe their luck. Afterwards, her governess will tidy the remains into a neat pile and wrap it in its own discarded clothes. This mortal parcel she then discreetly buries in the garden. The blood on the Countess' cheeks will be mixed with tears; her keeper probes her fingernails for her with a little silver toothpick, to get rid of the fragments of skin and bone that have lodged there.

Finally, the ambassadors concluded their task of keeping Europe not only out of American affairs but, indeed, out of the entire Western Hemisphere. In 1846 President Polk observed: “We must have California.” Since that Pacific littoral was part of Mexico, Polk provoked Mexico into a war with the United States. California, Arizona, and Utah were ceded two years later. More peacefully, the tidy-minded Polk acquired the Pacific Northwest by treaties with England. With the acquisition of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, the Union now filled the continent from sea to shining sea. In 1867 the Russians sold us their icebox, Alaska, while Hawaii was annexed in 1898, along with Puerto Rico and the reluctant Philippines. While this filling in of vast spaces with neatly ruled new states, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams produced for President James Monroe a doctrine declaring that the two American continents were off limits to Europe, as Europe would be to us. In 1917, by entering World War I, we in effect voided the Monroe Doctrine. But that was to gain yet another world, one that is currently—optimistically—called “global.” Benjamin

more than anything.” He turned to Jean Louise. “Seven-thirty tonight and no Landing. We’ll go to the show.” “Okay. Where’re you all going?” “Courthouse. Meeting.” “On Sunday?” “Yep.” “That’s right, I keep forgetting all the politicking’s done on Sunday in these parts.” Atticus called for Henry to come on. “Bye, baby,” he said. Jean Louise followed him into the livingroom. When the front door slammed behind her father and Henry, she went to her father’s chair to tidy up the papers he had left on the floor beside it. She picked them up, arranged them in sectional order, and put them on the sofa in a neat pile. She crossed the room again to straighten the stack of books on his lamp table, and was doing so when a pamphlet the size of a business envelope caught her eye. On its cover was a drawing of an anthropophagous Negro; above the drawing was printed The Black Plague. Its author was somebody with several academic degrees after his name. She opened the pamphlet, sat down in her father’s chair, and began reading. When she had finished, she took the pamphlet by one of its corners, held it like she would hold a dead rat by the tail, and walked into the kitchen. She held the pamphlet in front of her aunt. “What is this thing?” she said. Alexandra looked over her glasses at it. “Something of your father’s.” Jean Louise stepped on the garbage can trigger and threw the pamphlet in. “Don’t do that,” said Alexandra. “They’re hard to come by these days.” Jean Louise opened her mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “Aunty, have you read that thing? Do you know what’s in it?” “Certainly.” If Alexandra had uttered an obscenity in her face, Jean Louise would have been less surprised. “You—Aunty, do you know the stuff in that thing makes Dr. Goebbels look like a naive little country boy?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jean Louise. There are a lot of truths in that book.” “Yes indeedy,” said Jean Louise wryly. “I especially liked the part where the Negroes, bless their hearts, couldn’t help being inferior to the white race because their skulls are thicker and their brain-pans shallower—whatever that means—so we must all be very kind to them and not let them do anything to hurt themselves and keep them in their places. Good God, Aunty—” Alexandra was ramrod straight. “Well?” she said. Jean Louise said, “It’s just that I never knew you went in for salacious reading material, Aunty.” Her aunt was silent, and Jean Louise continued: “I was real impressed with the parable where since the dawn of history the rulers of the world have always been white, except Genghis Khan or somebody—the author was real fair about that—and he made a killin’ point about even the Pharaohs were white and their subjects were either black or Jews—” “That’s true, isn’t it?” “Sure, but what’s that got to do with the case?” When Jean Louise felt apprehensive, expectant, or on edge, especially when confronting her aunt, her brain clicked to the meter of Gilbertian tomfoolery. Three sprightly figures

Designori's face had clouded over once more. "Some times," he said resignedly, "it seems to me that we have not only two different languages and ways of expressing ourselves, each of which can only vaguely be translated into the other, but that we are altogether and fundamentally different creatures who can never understand each other. Which of us is really the authentic and integral human being, you or me? Every so often I doubt that either of us is. There were times when I looked up to you members of the Order and Glass Bead Game players with such reverence, such a sense of inferiority, and such envy that you might have been gods or supermen, forever serene, forever playing, forever enjoying your own existences, forever immune to suffering. At other times you seemed to me either pitiable or contemptible, eunuchs, artificially confined to an eternal childhood, child-like and childish in your cool, tightly fenced, neatly tidied playground and kindergarten, where every nose is carefully wiped and every troublesome emotion is soothed, every dangerous thought repressed, where everyone plays nice, safe, bloodless games for a lifetime and every jagged stirring of life, every strong feeling, every genuine passion, every rapture is promptly checked, deflected, and neutralized by meditation therapy. Isn't it artificial, sterilized, didactically pruned world, a mere sham world in which you cravenly vegetate, a world without vices, without passions, without hunger, without sap and salt, a world without family, without mothers, without children, almost without women? The instinctual life is tamed by meditation. For generations you have left to others dangerous, daring, and responsible things like economics, law, and politics. Cowardly and well-protected, fed by others, and having few burdensome duties, you lead your drones' lives, and so that they won't be too boring you busy yourselves with all these erudite specialties, count syllables and letters, make music, and play the Glass Bead Game, while outside in the filth of the world poor harried people live real lives and do real work.

My mom always said to wear clean underwear in case of an accident. What she didn’t say was make sure your underwear drawer is neat and tidy and only filled with clean, sexy underwear in case of panty raids by cute boys.

I’ve perpetually found myself convinced that I can’t live a life that makes sense without understanding my imminent death and making a real effort to incorporate the idea of mortality into my worldview. I feel like if I don’t connect with that, my life gets lost in a series of fast food moments – my actions and relationships and thoughts veer toward easy answers, perpetual consumption, comfort and convenience valued above all else with no sense of meaning underneath. I forget to hold onto the passion of being alive, falling into taking it for granted, into that grind of production and consumption that becomes daily life. Everything becomes easy, neat, packaged, tidy, thoughtless. Every day becomes the same thing, the same color and shape and taste, like life itself should come with fries if you want them. And

No matter how self-aware you are, memoir wrenches at your insides precisely because it makes you battle with your very self – your neat analyses and tidy excuses… Your small pieties and impenetrable, mostly unconscious poses invariably trip you up. " p. xxi

Everybody talks about foul dens and filthy slums in which crime can run riot; but it's just the other way. They are called foul, not because crimes are committed, but because crimes are discovered. It's in the neat, spotless, clean and tidy places that crime can run riot; no mud to make footprints; no dregs to contain poison; kind servants washing out all traces of the murder; and the murderer killing and cremating six wives and all for want of a little Christian dirt.

As you run your hands over the cloth, you pour your energy into it. The Japanese word for healing is te-ate, which literally means “to apply hands.” The term originated prior to the development of modern medicine when people believed that placing one’s hand on an injury promoted healing. We know that gentle physical contact from a parent, such as holding hands, patting a child on the head, and hugging, has a calming effect on children. Likewise, a firm but gentle massage by human hands does much more to loosen knotted muscles than being pummeled by a massage machine. The energy that flows from the person’s hands into our skin seems to heal both body and soul. The same is true for clothing. When we take our clothes in our hands and fold them neatly, we are, I believe, transmitting energy, which has a positive effect on our clothes. Folding properly pulls the cloth taut and erases wrinkles, and makes the material stronger and more vibrant.

so I focused on getting my life in order. While my peers stayed up late and played video games, I built good sleep habits and went to bed early each night. In the messy world of a college dorm, I made a point to keep my room neat and tidy.

Of course, neat and tidy Mindy can’t stand the lawn ornaments. Neither can Mom. Every time Dad brings a new one home, Mom threatens to toss it into the garbage.

I made a point to keep my room neat and tidy.

This group split up the seven-acre parcel, which was about a half mile away from the property purchased from Meaher. It has come to be known as “Lewis Quarters,” and the eight neat and tidy homes in the neighborhood are still inhabited today by descendants of the Africans.

There are all kinds of forces of attraction in the universe, gravity, magnetism, electricity and so on. We haven’t discovered them all. When we calculated why the universe is structured the way it is, we found there simply isn’t enough of it to keep it all neat and tidy. There must be something that keeps the stars clustered. Keeps it all working. Something that breathes life into the Nine Worlds. A Cosmological Constant, my friend Einnsteinen called it. Perhaps the Norns are that constant.

Recent research has challenged the widely held assumption that you define your gender identity and then figure out how to express it in a neat and tidy way.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t find my home in the depths. That I didn’t crave connection below the pretty surface of things. I've wished to be like all of “them”—the ones who live neat and tidy lives, not always asking questions or seeking more. Able to ignore the dull ache that speaks to places inside me that long to be seen. Performing a predecided role for external approval. Practiced at tucking away parts that don’t fit the prescribed notions for how one should be or act or feel or want or love or fuck or live. But that will never be me.

I have no answer to that question. I’m sure psychologists would give it some kind of label. A syndrome of some sort. I hate labels like that—putting me into neat and tidy boxes. Life, emotions, humanity—none of that is remotely neat and tidy. We are, all of us, just trying to do the best we can, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

The importance of fertility and abundance springs from two other themes formerly associated with the Wild Hunt:41 that of the night feast, about which we have already talked a great deal, and that of the resuscitated bull. During the cultic meals of these spirits, a bull was killed and eaten, then his hide was placed back over its correctly arranged bones, and the troop leader struck it with her wand, restoring the animal to life. Shamanic in origin, this rite is greatly attested in alpine legends outside those concerning the Wild Hunt. Another recurring motif reflects a third function context: that concerning the neat and tidy house and prohibitions on working. Here, the dead appear in the guise of the guarantors of a certain kind of order over which they keep watch. They never hesitate to reward or punish.