Nerve War Quotes

I've always had a theory that some of us are born with nerve endings longer than our bodies

This was what people fought wars over, she thought, and killed each other over, and destroyed their lives for: this nerve-shredding mixture of longing and pleasure.

Our leaders strain every nerve and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates...And perhaps...it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing...eternity...it isn't fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn't fame. It is what I call eternity...The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity...It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for...And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.

We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.

You too know that all my eyes see, all I touch with myself, from any distance, is Diego. The caress of fabrics, the color of colors, the wires, the nerves, the pencils, the leaves, the dust, the cells, the war and the sun, everything experienced in the minutes of the non-clocks and the non-calendars and the empty non-glances, is him.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever: The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain. The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh. You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down. You don’t even have lungs anymore. Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever. Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?

I have not forgotten you — the nights are long and difficult. You too know that all my eyes see, all touch with myself, from any distance, is you. The caress of fabrics, the color of colors, the wires, the nerves, the pencils, the leaves, the dust, the cells, the war and the sun, everything experienced in the minutes of the non-clocks and the non-calendars and the empty non-glances, is you. You felt it, that’s why you let that ship take me away from Le Havre where you never said good-bye to me. I will write to you with my eyes, always. For you is all.

He looked at her, amazed with her sudden nerves. “Sweetheart… marrying was never on any list of mine.” He reached for her hand and held it tightly in his. “But marrying you… now that’s something different.

War is an unpredictable beast. Once unleashed, it runs like a rabid dog, ravening friend or foe alike. It can drag on for years, a slow attrition of nerve and fortitude, or be over in one brilliant flash, an extravagant conflagration of flame and blood and waste.

He was convinced that men lost their nerve in combat when they allowed themselves to think too much. The part movies never got right about war was all the waiting, and all the effort it took not to think.

Why are you here?” she asked weakly. “You know why.” “No, I don’t,” she replied. “I think you do,” he murmured. “I don’t.” “Melissa, we’re not going to pretend it didn’t happen.” Crow nuzzled her neck. “What didn’t happen?” Melissa moaned. “Need a reminder?” he whispered into her ear. Melissa’s knees buckled as her mind waged war with her senses. Every nerve ending in her body craved his touch, while her instincts screamed at her to run for her life. And there she stood wedged between the wall and Crow—between logic and lust. Caught in a spider’s web of need and confusion and heat. “I think we better stop,” she breathed out. “Baby, I’m not stopping. But I promise to go real slow.

All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves. Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks. Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create. So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry? -- The Desolation of Tolkien

For it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomizes our daughters and our earth. It is not the anger of Black women which corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless we meet it with what we have, our power to examine and to redefine the terms upon which we will live and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating difference and the earth to support our choices.

The fever of war that would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve, and destroy brain, had yet to develop.

Since the dawn of time, warring combatants have regularly reached for what support they could find to nerve their own side for battle.

These moments of nocturnal prowling leave an indelible impression. Eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum, the rustling approach of strange feet in the tall grass in an unutterably menacing thing. Your breath comes in shallow bursts; you have to force yourself to stifle any panting or wheezing. There is a little mechanical click as the safety-catch of your pistol is taken off; the sound cuts straight through your nerves. Your teeth are grinding on the fuse-pin of the hand-grenade. The encounter will be short and murderous. You tremble with two contradictory impulses: the heightened awareness of the huntsmen, and the terror of the quarry. You are a world to yourself, saturated with the appalling aura of the savage landscape.

And some go the other way, the most lethal way of all: when the pressure gets to be too much, it's not their nerve that breaks, it's their fear. They lose the capacity to be afraid, even when they should be. These can't ever go home again. They're like those First World War airmen, the finest ones, shining in their recklessness and invincible, who got home and found that home had no place for what they were. Some people are undercovers all the way to the bone; the job has taken them whole.

They were not medical problems to rehabilitate. We were not medical problems. I was never going to undo the damage polio had done to my nerve cells and walk again, nor was this my goal. The disabled veterans coming home from the Vietnam War were never going to grow their limbs back or heal their spinal cords and walk again. My friends with muscular dystrophy were never going to not have been born with muscular dystrophy. Accidents, illnesses, genetic conditions, neurological disorders, and aging are facts of the human condition, just as much as race or sex.

I want to lose all harshness of jagged nerves, to be above all gentle. I feel we have achieved victory for that almost more than anything-to be able to cultivate gentleness. George Malory to his wife Ruth at the end of the Great War

often think about borders. It’s hard not to. There were the Guatemalans and Mexicans I read about in the paper who died of dehydration while trying to cross into America. Or later, the Syrians fleeing war and flooding into Turkey. Arizona had the nerve to ban books by Latino writers when only a few hundred years ago Arizona was actually Mexico. Or the sheer existence of passports, twentieth-century creations that decide who gets to stay and leave.

Start on clavicle. Remove middle third. Control and divide subsc art and vein. Divide large nerve trunks around these as prox as poses. Then come onto chest wall immed anterior and divide Pec maj origin from remaining clav. Divide pec minor insertion and (very imp) divide origin and get deep to serrates anterior. Your hand sweeps behind scapula. Divide all muscles attached to scapula. Stop muscle bleeding with count suture. Easy! Good luck. Meirion

Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease that Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine - not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs.

Even the poorest and most squalid life is an Aeschylean drama, if you think about the tragedy of the bodily functions, the whispering of the secretions, the silence of the organs, the exertions of memory, the groping of the voice, the blood that courses, the mortal miasmas, the riots among microorganisms, the spermatic wars, the cellular eruptions, the pestilences of the nerves, the biochemical predestinations, and the fate that slowly but surely introduces you to the final infection, to the sores, the exploded boils, the snakes of madness, the furious bitches of Hunger.

For it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over the globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomises our daughters and our earth.

Hell, any game that gives its players guns is probably not the kind that'll ever really let you go free.

for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.

On the cusp of a smashing victory, a commander must keep his nerve or fail altogether.

How dare he tell me about his awful past at a particularly relevant moment? The nerve of the man!

Boyd, borrowing from Sun Tzu, said the best commander is the one who wins while avoiding battle. The intent is to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos. Boyd said war is organic and compared his technique to clipping the nerves, muscles, and tendons of an enemy, thus reducing him to jelly. As Boyd

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don’t bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don’t rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can?

I divide officers into four classes—the clever, the lazy, the stupid, and the industrious. The man who is clever and lazy is fit for the very highest commands. He has the temperament and the requisite nerves to deal with all situations. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the high staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be removed immediately. —General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, German Chief of Army Command (1930–33)

I'm not the first one to point out that George Lucas used plastic helmets to cover the faces of the storm troopers in Star Wars, in order to make them more inhuman, as their eyes and faces were not visible. In our times, we are getting a more modern version of Lucas's Stormtroopers, thanks to the popular nerve toxin Botox. This is something more and more people who are past their middle age are happily injecting into themselves - more specifically, into their faces. Botox causes local paralysis (it is a nerve toxin, after all), which smoothes out wrinkles. Unfortunately, it also means you can no longer use some of your facial muscles, as you are paralyzed. This means you're not only getting the skin of a Barbie doll, you're getting its range of facial expressions too.

There’s a saying: ‘War is a long cliff.’ You can avoid the cliff completely, you can walk along the top for as long as you have the nerve, you can even choose to leap off, and if you only fall a short way before you hit a ledge you can always scramble back up again. Unless you’re just plain invaded, there are always choices, and even then, there’s usually something you’ve missed — a choice you didn’t make — that could have avoided invasion in the first place. You people still have your choices. There’s nothing inevitable about it.

The way that led from the acute mental tension of the last days in camp (from the war of nerves to mental peace) was certainly not free from obstacles. It would be an error to think that a liberated prisoner was not in need of spiritual care any more. We have to consider that a man who has been under such enormous mental pressure for such a long time is naturally in some danger after his liberation, especially since the pressure was released quite suddenly. This danger (in the sense of psychological hygiene) is the psychological counterpart of the bends. Just as the physical health of the caisson worker would be endangered if he left his diver's chamber suddenly (where he is under enormous atmospheric pressure), so the man who has suddenly been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health. During this psychological phase one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences.

Violet,' Xaden groans against my mouth. The plea in his tone floods my veins with a whole different form of power. Knowing he's just as affected by our attraction as I am is a rush. 'This isn't what you want.' 'It's exactly what I want,' I counter. I want to replace the anger with lust, the death of the day with the pulse-pounding assurance of my own life, and I know he's capable of delivering all that and more. 'You said to do whatever I need.' I arch my back, pressing the tips of my breasts against his chest. His breathing changes, and there's a war in his eyes that I'm determined to win. It's time to stop dancing around this unbearable tension and break it. He leans down, his mouth only inches from mine. 'And I'm telling you that I'm the last thing you need.' The barely leashed growl of his voice rumbles up through his chest, and every nerve ending in my body flares to life. 'Are you suggesting someone else?' My heart races as I chance calling his bluff. 'Fuck no.' The unmistakable flare of jealousy narrows his eyes for a heartbeat before his hips pin mine to the door, and my instant relief at his answer is replaced by a jolt of pure lust. I can see that infamous control of his hovering on the edge, balancing precariously on the point of a knife. All he needs is one. Little. Push. And I'm about to shamelessly shove. 'Good.' I tilt my head up to his and draw his bottom lip between mine, sucking before gently nipping him with my teeth. 'Because I only want you, Xaden.' The words breach something within him, and he gives. Finally. One mouths collide, and the kiss is hot and hard and completely out of our control.

The thing that drew me to Lafayette as a subject - that he was that rare object of agreement in the ironically named United States - kept me coming back to why that made him unique. Namely, that we the people never agreed on much of anything. Other than a bipartisan consensus on barbecue and Meryl Streep, plus that time in 1942 when everyone from Bing Crosby to Oregonian school children heeded FDR's call to scrounge up rubber for the war effort, disunity is the through line in the national plot - not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privilege. And thanks to Lafayette and his cohorts in Washington's army, plus the king of France and his navy, not to mention the founding dreamers who clearly did not think through what happens every time one citizen's pursuit of happiness infuriates his neighbor, getting on each other's nerves is our right.

She managed a bored sigh. “I suppose we could do one picture, but a group shot won’t work. Nyx, how about one of you with your favorite child? Which one is that?” The brood rustled. Dozens of horrible glowing eyes turned toward Nyx. The goddess shifted uncomfortably, as if her chariot were heating up under her feet. Her shadow horses huffed and pawed at the void. “My favorite child?” she asked. “All my children are terrifying!” Percy snorted. “Seriously? I’ve met the Fates. I’ve met Thanatos. They weren’t so scary. You’ve got to have somebody in this crowd who’s worse than that.” “The darkest,” Annabeth said. “The most like you.” “I am the darkest,” hissed Eris. “Wars and strife! I have caused all manner of death!” “I am darker still!” snarled Geras. “I dim the eyes and addle the brain. Every mortal fears old age!” “Yeah, yeah,” Annabeth said, trying to ignore her chattering teeth. “I’m not seeing enough dark. I mean, you’re the children of Night! Show me dark!” The horde of arai wailed, flapping their leathery wings and stirring up clouds of blackness. Geras spread his withered hands and dimmed the entire abyss. Eris breathed a shadowy spray of buckshot across the void. “I am the darkest!” hissed one of the demons. “No, I!” “No! Behold my darkness!” If a thousand giant octopuses had squirted ink at the same time, at the bottom of the deepest, most sunless ocean trench, it could not have been blacker. Annabeth might as well have been blind. She gripped Percy’s hand and steeled her nerves. “Wait!” Nyx called, suddenly panicked. “I can’t see anything.” “Yes!” shouted one of her children proudly. “I did that!” “No, I did!” “Fool, it was me!” Dozens of voices argued in the darkness. The horses whinnied in alarm. “Stop it!” Nyx yelled. “Whose foot is that?” “Eris is hitting me!” cried someone. “Mother, tell her to stop hitting me!” “I did not!” yelled Eris. “Ouch!” The sounds of scuffling got louder. If possible, the darkness became even deeper. Annabeth’s eyes dilated so much, they felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets. She squeezed Percy’s hand. “Ready?” “For what?” After a pause, he grunted unhappily. “Poseidon’s underpants, you can’t be serious.” “Somebody give me light!” Nyx screamed. “Gah! I can’t believe I just said that!” “It’s a trick!” Eris yelled. “The demigods are escaping!” “I’ve got them,” screamed an arai. “No, that’s my neck!” Geras gagged. “Jump!” Annabeth told Percy. They leaped into the darkness, aiming for the doorway far, far below.

In the event, what actually happened was that citizens, without paying much attention to government at all, went about creating a national culture for themselves. Long before political parties became effective as national, democratic institutions, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians were building the nerve system of a national culture.

Every year in this war and that, even in our own cities, countless children are killed, while those who spray the bullets—or plant the roadside bomb, authorize the use of nerve gas, send the drone with the Hellfire missile that strikes the wrong target—shed not a tear, referring to those tender deceased as mere “collateral damage,” if they acknowledge

Nerves of steel were wired to a soft heart.

Females were now vassals who could not vote, were legally bound to obey their husbands, and, declared Vichy, “had their nerves upset by strident noises.

I returned from the West, and brought home in my nostrils and nerves that benumbing lethargy, imprudent hostility, and arrogant superiority with which the West viewed the fate of Eastern Europe.

The academic reflection of the massive social and economic changes that took place between 1970 and 1981 could be seen in the gradual marginalization of serious social theory and political philosophy, and particularly of “leftist” thought. The usual story that is told about the history of “political philosophy” since World War II holds that political philosophy was “dead” until it was revived by Rawls, whose Theory of Justice appeared in 1971. This seems to me seriously misleading. Rather than the publication of Theory of Justice being a renewal of political philosophy, it seems to me more fruitful to see it as part of a failure of nerve, and a turning away from the real world of institutions, politics and history toward the never-never land of purely normative theory.

It remains a sad truth of the Imperium that virtually no veteran ever comes back from fighting its wars intact. Combat alone shreds nerves and shatters bodies. But the horrors of the warp, and of foul xenos forms like the tyranid, steal sanity forever, and leave veterans fearing the shadows, and the night and, sometimes, the nature of their friends and neighbours, for the rest of their lives.

Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?' Worries Forget your worries All the stations full of cracks tilted along the way The telegraph wires they hang from The grimacing poles that gesticulate and strangle them The world stretches lengthens and folds in like an accordion tormented by a sadistic hand In the cracks of the sky the locomotives in anger Flee And in the holes, The whirling wheels the mouths the voices And the dogs of misfortune that bark at our heels The demons are unleashed Iron rails Everything is off-key The broun-roun-roun of the wheels Shocks Bounces We are a storm under a deaf man's skull... 'Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?' Hell yes, you're getting on my nerves you know very well we're far away Overheated madness bellows in the locomotive Plague, cholera rise up like burning embers on our way We disappear in the war sucked into a tunnel Hunger, the whore, clings to the stampeding clouds And drops battle dung in piles of stinking corpses Do like her, do your job 'Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?

Is he dead? Blue asked, staring down at the prostrate body. kitterick shook his head.'No,but he will remain in a coma for several hours.And there will be a substantial headache when he wakes up. And tremors.Something of a limp.Blurred vision.Impaired hearing.A few facialtics.Some nausea,loss of appetite, occasional hallucinations,flatulence,a weakness in the back. The nerve damage will repair itself in a few years.Providing he rests of course.

Exoneration of Jesus Christ If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before Him like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and women would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain. He knew that his church would invent and use instruments of torture; that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and rack. He saw the horizon of the future lurid with the flames of the auto da fe. He knew what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans—saw the faces white with agony. He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the teachings attributed to him. He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and-he knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross. He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned—that cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his church would extinguish reason’s holy light and leave the world without a star. He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves of pain. He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women’s breasts unbabed for gold. And yet he died with voiceless lips. Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world: “You shall not burn, imprison and torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellow-men.” Why did he not plainly say: “I am the Son of God,” or, “I am God”? Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not tell the mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not say that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God? Why did he not write the New Testament himself? Why did he leave his words to ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the rights of man, of the liberty of hand and brain? Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt? I will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know.

The principles of war are the same as those of a siege. Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing.' Subsequent military theory has put the accent on the first clause instead of on the last: in particular, on the words 'one point' instead of on the word 'equilibrium'. The former is but a physical metaphor, whereas the latter expresses the actual psychological result which ensures 'that the rest is nothing'. His own emphasis can be traced in the strategic course of his campaigns. The word 'point' even, has been the source of much confusion, and more controversy. One school has argued that Napoleon meant that the concentrated blow must be aimed at the enemy's strongest point, on the ground that this, and this only, ensures decisive results. For if the enemy's main resistance be broken, its rupture will involve that of any lesser opposition. This argument ignores the factor of cost, and the fact that the victor may be too exhausted to exploit his success-so that even a weaker opponent may acquire a relatively higher resisting power than the original. The other school-better imbued with the idea of economy of force, but only in the limited sense of first costs-has contended that the offensive should be aimed at the enemy's weakest point. But where a point is obviously weak this is usually because it is remote from any vital artery or nerve centre, or because it is deliberately weak to draw the assailant into a trap. Here, again illumination comes from the actual campaign in which Bonaparte put this maxim into execution. It clearly suggests that what he really meant was not 'point', but 'joint'-and that at this stage of his career he was too firmly imbued with the idea of economy of force to waste his limited strength in battering at the enemy's strong point. A joint, however, is both vital and vulnerable. It was at this time too, that Bonaparte used another phrase that has subsequently been quoted to justify the most foolhardy concentrations of effort against the main armed forces of the enemy. 'Austria is our most determined enemy....Austria overthrown, Spain and Italy fall of themselves. We must not disperse our attacks but concentrate them.' But the full text of the memorandum containing this phrase shows that he was arguing, not in support of the direct attack upon Austria, but for using the army on the frontier of Piedmont for an indirect approach to Austria.

Louie killed time by sleeping on Mitchell’s navigator table and taking flying lessons from Phil. On some flights, he sprawled behind the cockpit, reading Ellery Queen novels and taxing the nerves of Douglas, who eventually got so annoyed at having to step over Louie’s long legs that he attacked him with a fire extinguisher.

He who has known the other days, the angry ones of gout attacks, or those with that wicked headache rooted behind the eyeballs that casts a spell on every nerve of eye and ear with a fiendish delight in torture, or soul-destroying, evil days of inward vacancy and despair, when, onthis distracted earth, sucked dry by the vampires of finance, the world of men and of so-called culture grins back at us with the lying, vulgar, brazen glamor of a Fair and dogs us with the persistence of an emetic, and when all is concentrated and focused to the last pitch of the intolerable upon your own sick self—he who has known these days of hell may be contente indeed with normal half-and-half days like today. Thankfully you sit by the warm stove, thankfully you assure yourself as you read your morning paper that another day has come and no war broken out, no new dictatorship has been set up, no particularly disgusting scandal been unveiled in the worlds of politics or finance. Thankfully you tune the strings of your moldering lyre to a moderated, to a passably joyful, nay, to an even delighted psalm of thanksgiving and with it bore your quiet, flabby and slightly stupefied half-and-half god of contentment; and in the thick warm air of a contented boredom and very welcome painlessness the nodding mandarin of a half-and-half god and the nodding middle-aged gentleman who sings his muffled psalm look as like each other as two peas.

The busy 20th and 21st centuries have made Garfield's era seem remote and irrelevant, its leaders ridiculed for their very obscurity... to the generation of Americans then alive, though, their dramas, humanities, and dignity were a compelling part of daily life. For twenty years after the Civil War, America was led by a group of larger-than-life figures with clay feet who fought and raged and plied their craft with nerve and ambition while following a code of honor riddled with blind spots and inconsistencies; during that time, public involvement in politics reached levels far higher than today. Garfield held a special place: one of the most promising of his generation, shot down in his prime, martyred for taking a principled stand.

no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine—not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs.

I reached across her folded legs, tugged at the magazine in her tense clutch, like a tug-of-war. I didn't want her to leave. The white glare of the overhead light gleamed across her collarbones. She was beautiful, with all her nerves and all her complicated, circuitous feelings and contradictions and fears. This would be the last time I'd see her in person. "I love you," I said. "I love you, too.

Tradition now dictated that anyone could try and pull the couple apart. Whoever succeeded in separating them at their ribbons would be able to sit beside the couple as they feasted in celebration. The field became a tumble of laughing mates and contestants as males tried to remove males and females tried to remove females. Jacob grabbed his newly healed bride and floated out of the reach of the would-be renders, a cry of protest rising from below them. Gideon and Legna were left unmolested, Gideon’s imposing reputation having a quelling effect on the nerves of any who might have approached. He was kissing his bride when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw Damien arching a challenging brow at him. Legna laughed, delighted as Gideon gave the Prince a dirty look. Her humor lasted about two seconds. That was when Damien’s partner in crime tapped Legna’s shoulder. Siena gave the bride a feline grin. “Oh, you bitch,” Legna choked out, laughing in her shock at the excellent maneuver on the Queen’s part. “Uh-uh,” the Queen scolded, her collar winking in the firelight. “That’s not very diplomatic of you, Ambassador.” “You realize this means war,” Legna said archly. “As if I would settle for anything less,” Siena returned. Legna and Gideon sighed, looking at each other and rolling their eyes. Husband grabbed hold of wife by their joined arms and then they braced their feet. Legna felt slim, strong arms around her waist and shoulders, and Gideon was seized in a similar hold by the determined Damien. “Darling?” Legna said. “Yes, love.” “Yes?” “Definitely yes.” The Vampire and Lycanthrope pulled, and immediately found themselves holding nothing but air. They both fell over hard into the dirt, dazedly watching a pair of ribbons floating down to the ground. “Oh look, they won,” Legna remarked from her and Gideon’s new position a few feet away. “How about that,” Gideon mused. “See you both at dinner. Congratulations on your victory.” The couple popped off to who knows where, leaving indignant but dubiously victorious royalty behind.

There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly unpremeditated, completely unexpected. In that sort of half-reverie which permits one to participate in an event and yet remain quite aloof, the little detail which was lacking began obscurely but insistently to coagulate, to assume a freakish, crystalline form, like the frost which gathers on the windowpane. And like those frost patterns which seem so bizarre, so utterly free and fantastic in design, but which are nevertheless determined by the most rigid laws, so this sensation which commenced to take form inside me seemed also to be giving obedience to ineluctable laws. My whole being was responding to the dictates of an ambience which it had never before experienced; that which I could call myself seemed to be contracting, condensing, shrinking from the stale, customary boundaries of the flesh whose perimeter knew only the modulations of the nerve ends. And the more substantial, the more solid the core of me became, the more delicate and extravagant appeared the close, palpable reality out of which I was being squeezed. In the measure that I became more and more metallic, in the same measure the scene before my eyes became inflated. The state of tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered everything. For the fraction of a second perhaps I experienced that utter clarity which the epileptic, it is said, is given to know. In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.

Robert rode beneath the banner of Carrick, the dragon shield on his left arm. He wore it proudly now in common cause; this symbol of Arthur, the warrior king. As he caught sight of Humphrey, the knight raised his fist in a defiant gesture that Robert returned. Today, God willing, they would finish this campaign. He wanted to return home blooded, to be able to tell his grandfather that he too had won his spurs in the king’s war. Nerves and anticipation battled within him, his breaths coming hard and fast in the tight encasement of his helm.

The man who makes a success of an important venture never wails for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticized. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done.

For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joynts, but so many Wheeles, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature, Man. For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH, or STATE, (in latine CIVITAS) which is but an Artificiall Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other Officers of Judicature and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and Punishment (by which fastned to the seat of the Soveraignty, every joynt and member is moved to performe his duty) are the Nerves, that do the same in the Body Naturall; The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members, are the Strength; Salus Populi (the Peoples Safety) its Businesse; Counsellors, by whom all things needfull for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the Memory; Equity and Lawes, an artificiall Reason and Will; Concord, Health; Sedition, Sicknesse; and Civill War, Death.

It will be long before everyone is wiped out. People live in war time, they always have. There was terror down through history - and the men who saw the Spanish Armada sail over the rim of the world, who saw the Black death wipe out half of Europe, those men were frightened, terrified. But though they lived and died in fear, I am here; we have built again. And so I will belong to a dark age, and historians will say "We have few documents to show how the common people lived at this time. Records lead us to believe that a majority were killed. But there were glorious men." And school children will sigh and learn the names of Truman and Senator McCarthy. Oh, it is hard for me to reconcile myself to this. But maybe this is why I am a girl - - - so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill, because there isn't time, because there isn't time at all, but instead the quick desperate fear, the ticking clock, and the snow which comes too suddenly upon the summer. Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, into my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Perhaps that would help, to synthesize my ideas into a philosophy for me, now, at the age of eighteen, but the clock ticks, ah yes, "At my back I hear, time's winged chariot hovering near." And I have too much conscience, too much habit to sit and stare at snow, thick now, and evenly white and muffling on the ground. God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

Now in his early thirties, Hitler was an undisciplined but mesmerizing orator. The Iron Cross he had earned while in the military steeled his nerve, and his time on the streets gave him an intuitive sense of what delighted audiences—and it wasn’t abstract theories or objective arguments. He used simple words and did not hesitate to tell what he later described as “colossal untruths.” He sought to incite hatred toward those he considered traitors—the “November criminals” whose treachery had cost Germany the war—and he returned each day to what Nietzsche had called the ideology “of those who feel cheated”: anti-Semitism.

You want coffee?” she asked Carla. The phouka turned to Eddi. “You make coffee?” His voice was full of longing. “Oh, I love coffee.” “Oh God, just what we need.” Carla sighed. “A mad dog with coffee nerves.” Eddi ignored that. “Why didn’t you say something this morning? We could have had it at breakfast.” He looked embarrassed. “Yes, well, that was my treat, you see. And I don’t know how to make coffee.” “You can make pancakes, and not coffee?” “Pancakes, my inquisitive flower, are a profoundly primitive and practically universal item, in one form or another.” “So’s coffee,” said Carla. “Not,” the phouka said disdainfully, “where I come from.

Our leaders strain every nerve and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates...And perhaps...it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing...eternity...it isn't fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn't fame. It is what I call eternity...The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity...It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for...And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.

In general there was also a "cultural hibernation" in the camp. There were two exceptions to this: politics and religion. Politics were talked about everywhere in camp, almost continuously; the discussions were based chiefly on rumors, which were snapped up and passed around avidly. The rumors about the military situation were usually contradictory. They followed one another rapidly and succeeded only in making a contribution to the war of nerves that was waged in the minds of all the prisoners. Many times, hopes for a speedy end to the war, which had been fanned by optimistic rumors, were disappointed. Some men lost all hope, but it was the incorrigible optimists who were the most irritating companions.

The Brits call this sort of thing Functional Neurological Symptoms, or FNS, the psychiatrists call it conversion disorder, and almost everyone else just calls it hysteria. There are three generally acknowledged, albeit uncodified, strategies for dealing with it. The Irish strategy is the most emphatic, and is epitomized by Matt O’Keefe, with whom I rounded a few years back on a stint in Ireland. “What are you going to do?” I asked him about a young woman with pseudoseizures. “What am I going to do?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do. I’m going to get her, and her family, and her husband, and the children, and even the feckin’ dog in a room, and tell ’em that they’re wasting my feckin’ time. I want ’em all to hear it so that there is enough feckin’ shame and guilt there that it’ll keep her the feck away from me. It might not cure her, but so what? As long as I get rid of them.” This approach has its adherents even on these shores. It is an approach that Elliott aspires to, as he often tells me, but can never quite marshal the umbrage, the nerve, or a sufficiently convincing accent, to pull off. The English strategy is less caustic, and can best be summarized by a popular slogan of World War II vintage currently enjoying a revival: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” It is dry, not overly explanatory, not psychological, and does not blame the patient: “Yes, you have something,” it says. “This is what it is [insert technical term here], but we will not be expending our time or a psychiatrist’s time on it. You will have to deal with it.” Predictably, the American strategy holds no one accountable, involves a brain-centered euphemistic explanation coupled with some touchy-feely stuff, and ends with a recommendation for a therapeutic program that, very often, the patient will ignore. In its abdication of responsibility, motivated by the fear of a lawsuit, it closely mirrors the beginning of the end of a doomed relationship: “It’s not you, it’s … no wait, it’s not me, either. It just is what it is.” Not surprisingly, estimates of recurrence of symptoms range from a half to two-thirds of all cases, making this one of the most common conditions that a neurologist will face, again and again.

Patriotism has then, many faces. Those who would reject it entirely do not seem to have considered what will certainly step—has already begun to step—into its place. For a long time yet, or perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for ‘their country’ they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. Patriotic sentiment did not of course need to disregard ethics. Good men needed to be convinced that their country’s cause was just; but it was still their country’s cause, not the cause of justice as such. The difference seems to me important. I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds—wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine—I become insufferable. The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side—as some neutral Don Quixote might be—for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.

Arabel wants me to go to England, but as I did not last year my heart and nerves revolt from it now. Besides, we belong to the nonno and you this summer. Arabel can and, I dare say, will join us. And Milsand? You say ‘once in three years.’ Not quite so, I think. In any case, it has been far worse with some of mine. All the days of the three times of meeting in fourteen years, can only be multiplied together into three weeks; and this after a life of close union! Also, it was not her fault — she had not pecuniary means. I am bitter against myself for not having gone to England for a week or two in the Havre year. I could have done it, Robert would have let me. But now, no more. It was the war the year before last, and my unsteadiness of health last year, which kept us from our usual visit to you. This time we shall come.

Natürlich ist ein Selbst viel umfassender als der innere Erzähler. Die Insel des selbst-bewussten Geschichtenerzählers liegt mitten in einem Meer von Unbewusstem, über das wir nichts wissen, nie etwas wissen werden oder das wir vergessen haben. Es gibt vieles in uns, das wir nicht beherrschen oder wollen, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es unwichtig wäre, eine Erzählung für uns selbst zu finden. In der Sprache bilden wir den Lauf der Zeit so ab, wie wir ihn empfinden – das Es war, es ist, es wird sein. Wir abstrahieren, denken und erzählen. Wir ordnen unsere Erinnerungen und verknüpfen sie miteinander und diese Bruchstücke bekommen einen Besitzer: das autobiographische Ich, das nicht ohne ein Du ist. Für wen erzählen wir denn schließlich? Auch allein in unseren Köpfen ist ein vorausgesetzter anderer dabei, die zweite Person unserer Rede.

The youngsters today—Oh, the aviators have plenty of nerve. The physicists, these twenty-five-year-old Ph. D.'s that violate the inviolable atom, they're pioneers. But most of the wishy-washy young people today—Going seventy miles an hour but not going anywhere—not enough imagination to want to go anywhere! Getting their music by turning a dial. Getting their phrases from the comic strips instead of from Shakespeare and the Bible and Veblen and Old Bill Sumner. Pap-fed flabs! Like this smug pup Malcolm Tasbrough, hanging around Sissy! Aah! "Wouldn't it be hell if that stuffed shirt, Edgeways, and that political Mae West, Gimmitch, were right, and we need all these military monkeyshines and maybe a fool war (to conquer some sticky-hot country we don't want on a bet!) to put some starch and git into these marionettes we call our children? Aah!

On 28 June 1914 the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, a heartland of the South Slavs. Philosophers refer to ‘the inevitable accident’, and this was a very accidental one. Some young Serb terrorists had planned to murder him as he paid a state visit. They had bungled the job, throwing a bomb that missed, and one of them had repaired to a café in a side street to sort himself out. The Archduke drove to the headquarters of the governor-general, Potiorek (where he was met by little girls performing folklore), and berated him (the two men were old enemies, as the Archduke had prevented the neurasthenic Potiorek from succeeding an elderly admirer as Chief of the General Staff). The Archduke went off in a rage, to visit in hospital an officer wounded by the earlier bomb. His automobile moved off again, a Count Harrach standing on the running board. Its driver turned left after crossing a bridge over Sarajevo’s river. It was the wrong street, and the driver was told to stop and reverse. In reverse gear such automobiles sometimes stalled, and this one did so - Count Harrach on the wrong side, away from the café where one of the assassination team was calming his nerves. Now, slowly, his target drove up and stopped. The murderer, Gavrilo Princip, fired. He was seventeen, a romantic schooled in nationalism and terrorism, and part of a team that stretches from the Russian Nihilists of the middle of the nineteenth century, exemplified especially in Dostoyevsky’s prophetic The Possessed and Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes. Austria did not execute adolescents and Princip was young enough to survive. He was imprisoned and died in April 1918. Before he died, a prison psychiatrist asked him if he had any regrets that his deed had caused a world war and the death of millions. He answered: if I had not done it, the Germans would have found another excuse.

Christianity has been the means of reducing more languages to writing than have all other factors combined. It has created more schools, more theories of education, and more systems than has any other one force. More than any other power in history it has impelled men to fight suffering, whether that suffering has come from disease, war or natural disasters. It has built thousands of hospitals, inspired the emergence of the nursing and medical professions, and furthered movement for public health and the relief and prevention of famine. Although explorations and conquests which were in part its outgrowth led to the enslavement of Africans for the plantations of the Americas, men and women whose consciences were awakened by Christianity and whose wills it nerved brought about the abolition of slavery (in England and America). Men and women similarly moved and sustained wrote into the laws of Spain and Portugal provisions to alleviate the ruthless exploitation of the Indians of the New World. Wars have often been waged in the name of Christianity. They have attained their most colossal dimensions through weapons and large–scale organization initiated in (nominal) Christendom. Yet from no other source have there come as many and as strong movements to eliminate or regulate war and to ease the suffering brought by war. From its first centuries, the Christian faith has caused many of its adherents to be uneasy about war. It has led minorities to refuse to have any part in it. It has impelled others to seek to limit war by defining what, in their judgment, from the Christian standpoint is a "just war." In the turbulent Middle Ages of Europe it gave rise to the Truce of God and the Peace of God. In a later era it was the main impulse in the formulation of international law. But for it, the League of Nations and the United Nations would not have been. By its name and symbol, the most extensive organization ever created for the relief of the suffering caused by war, the Red Cross, bears witness to its Christian origin. The list might go on indefinitely. It includes many another humanitarian projects and movements, ideals in government, the reform of prisons and the emergence of criminology, great art and architecture, and outstanding literature.

Who is going to fight them off, Randy?” “I’m afraid you’re going to say we are.” “Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren’t going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn’t very nice, but it’s a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis.” “Tactical cunning, like Odysseus and the Trojan Horse, or—” “Both that, and technological cunning. From time to time there is a battle that is out-and-out won by a new technology—like longbows at Crecy. For most of history those battles happen only every few centuries—you have the chariot, the compound bow, gunpowder, ironclad ships, and so on. But something happens around, say, the time that the Monitor, which the Northerners believe to be the only ironclad warship on earth, just happens to run into the Merrimack, of which the Southerners believe exactly the same thing, and they pound the hell out of each other for hours and hours. That’s as good a point as any to identify as the moment when a spectacular rise in military technology takes off—it’s the elbow in the exponential curve. Now it takes the world’s essentially conservative military establishments a few decades to really comprehend what has happened, but by the time we’re in the thick of the Second World War, it’s accepted by everyone who doesn’t have his head completely up his ass that the war’s going to be won by whichever side has the best technology. So on the German side alone we’ve got rockets, jet aircraft, nerve gas, wire-guided missiles. And on the Allied side we’ve got three vast efforts that put basically every top-level hacker, nerd, and geek to work: the codebreaking thing, which as you know gave rise to the digital computer; the Manhattan Project, which gave us nuclear weapons; and the Radiation Lab, which gave us the modern electronics industry. Do you know why we won the Second World War, Randy?” “I think you just told me.” “Because we built better stuff than the Germans?” “Isn’t that what you said?” “But why did we build better stuff, Randy?” “I guess I’m not competent to answer, Enoch, I haven’t studied that period well enough.” “Well the short answer is that we won because the Germans worshipped Ares and we worshipped Athena.” “And am I supposed to gather that you, or

Meanwhile, scientists are studying certain drugs that may erase traumatic memories that continue to haunt and disturb us. In 2009, Dutch scientists, led by Dr. Merel Kindt, announced that they had found new uses for an old drug called propranolol, which could act like a “miracle” drug to ease the pain associated with traumatic memories. The drug did not induce amnesia that begins at a specific point in time, but it did make the pain more manageable—and in just three days, the study claimed. The discovery caused a flurry of headlines, in light of the thousands of victims who suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Everyone from war veterans to victims of sexual abuse and horrific accidents could apparently find relief from their symptoms. But it also seemed to fly in the face of brain research, which shows that long-term memories are encoded not electrically, but at the level of protein molecules. Recent experiments, however, suggest that recalling memories requires both the retrieval and then the reassembly of the memory, so that the protein structure might actually be rearranged in the process. In other words, recalling a memory actually changes it. This may be the reason why the drug works: propranolol is known to interfere with adrenaline absorption, a key in creating the long-lasting, vivid memories that often result from traumatic events. “Propranolol sits on that nerve cell and blocks it. So adrenaline can be present, but it can’t do its job,” says Dr. James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine. In other words, without adrenaline, the memory fades. Controlled tests done on individuals with traumatic memories showed very promising results. But the drug hit a brick wall when it came to the ethics of erasing memory. Some ethicists did not dispute its effectiveness, but they frowned on the very idea of a forgetfulness drug, since memories are there for a purpose: to teach us the lessons of life. Even unpleasant memories, they said, serve some larger purpose. The drug got a thumbs-down from the President’s Council on Bioethics. Its report concluded that “dulling our memory of terrible things [would] make us too comfortable with the world, unmoved by suffering, wrongdoing, or cruelty.… Can we become numb to life’s sharpest sorrows without also becoming numb to its greatest joys?” Dr. David Magus of Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics says, “Our breakups, our relationships, as painful as they are, we learn from some of those painful experiences. They make us better people.” Others disagree. Dr. Roger Pitman of Harvard University says that if a doctor encounters an accident victim who is in intense pain, “should we deprive them of morphine because we might be taking away the full emotional experience? Who would ever argue with that? Why should psychiatry be different? I think that somehow behind this argument lurks the notion that mental disorders are not the same as physical disorders.

But perhaps the best and most memorable way to explain the conflict that arose between honoring traditional honor, and honoring one’s individual psyche, can be conveyed in a story from World War II. In 1943, coming off his dazzling victories in the Sicily campaign, George S. Patton stopped by a medical tent to visit with the wounded. He enjoyed these visits, and so did the soldiers and staff. He would hand out Purple Hearts, pump the men full of encouragement, and offer rousing speeches to the nurses, interns, and their patients that were so touching in nature they sometimes brought tears to many of the eyes in the room. On this particular occasion, as Patton entered the tent all the men jumped to attention except for one, Private Charles H. Kuhl, who sat slouched on a stool. Kuhl, who showed no outward injuries, was asked by Patton how he was wounded, to which the private replied, “I guess I just can’t take it.” Patton did not believe “battle fatigue” or “shell-shock” was a real condition nor an excuse to be given medical treatment, and had recently been told by one of the commanders of Kuhl’s division that, “The front lines seem to be thinning out. There seems to be a very large number of ‘malingerers’ at the hospitals, feigning illness in order to avoid combat duty.” He became livid. Patton slapped Kuhl across the face with his gloves, grabbed him by his collar, and led him outside the tent. Kicking him in the backside, Patton demanded that this “gutless bastard” not be admitted and instead be sent back to the front to fight. A week later, Patton slapped another soldier at a hospital, who, in tears, told the general he was there because of “his nerves,” and that he simply couldn’t “stand the shelling anymore.” Enraged, Patton brandished his white-handled, single-action Colt revolver and bellowed: Your nerves, Hell, you are just a goddamned coward, you yellow son of a bitch. Shut up that goddamned crying. I won’t have these brave men here who have been shot seeing a yellow bastard sitting here crying…You’re a disgrace to the Army and you’re going back to the front lines and you may get shot and killed, but you’re going to fight. If you don’t I’ll stand you up against a wall and have a firing squad kill you on purpose. In fact I ought to shoot you myself, you God-damned whimpering coward.

That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, (Eph 3:16-17) I pray for you as a special child of a loving God. May every storm that has been raging in your life be abated today! May you experience calmness in every area of your life! May calmness come into your marriage, business, finances and health! May Jehovah grant you according to the riches of his glory, strength in the inner man by His Spirit! The riches of his glory are never run down; they are never depleted and never valueless. As this touches you, may intelligence be your portion, wisdom to confound the world. May knowledge become a part of your life as a member of the family of God here on earth! May you become conscious of the indwelling Christ! He lives in you; He is in every fibre of your being. He is in your bones, hair, muscles, gluttons, nerves and blood. I banish everything that is trying to invade these areas. May Christ sit as king in you, not pain, not cancer, not diabetes or any other evil disease known to man and not known to man! I command victories without number in your life. As Christ is crowned king in your life, the world will know whose you are. I pray that every place you were mocked be eradicated today. Every place were voices have been raised to mock you and to pull you down be exterminated today as you walk strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man. As the word says, He will give His angels charge over you. May angels come into battle on your behalf! I pray for the release of warring angels to fight for you, prosperity angels to gather wealth for you, angels of peace to enforce order in all the storms in your life. I pray that you be granted VIP access into secret treasures. May your prayers overcome huddles and may answers to your requests be quick and immediate. I put lines of demarcation against the devil in your life. No demon will come near your house. There is no weapon, no magic charm and no sorcery that is manufactured against you that will prosper. May your fear factor be replaced with a faith factor as you overcome every obstacle in Jesus’ name! Declaration I declare, you will not die but live to proclaim the might works of God. Your life will be a testimony for the world to witness the glory of the Lord.

You might well wonder how on earth, after all their countless betrayals and cruelties, men like Agathocles could sit safe on their thrones for years and even defend themselves against foreign enemies without their citizens ever conspiring against them; and this while many others, equally ready to use cruelty, weren’t even able to hold on to their power in peacetime, never mind in war. I think it’s a question of whether cruelty is well or badly used. Cruelty well used (if we can ever speak well of something bad) is short-lived and decisive, no more than is necessary to secure your position and then stop; you don’t go on being cruel but use the power it has given you to deliver maximum benefits to your subjects. Cruelty is badly used when you’re not drastic enough at the beginning but grow increasingly cruel later on, rather than easing off. A leader who takes the first approach has a chance, like Agathocles, of improving his position with his subjects and with God too; go the other way and you have no chance at all. It’s worth noting that when you take hold of a state, you must assess how much violence and cruelty will be necessary and get it over with at once, so as not to have to be cruel on a regular basis. When you’ve stopped using violence your subjects will be reassured and you can then win them over with generosity. If you don’t do all it takes at the beginning, because you were badly advised or didn’t have the nerve, then you’ll always have to be wielding the knife; and you’ll never be able to count on your subjects, since with all the violence you’re handing out they won’t be able to count on you. So get the violence over with as soon as possible; that way there’ll be less time for people to taste its bitterness and they’ll be less hostile. Favours, on the other hand, should be given out slowly, one by one, so that they can be properly savoured. Most of all, though, a ruler should have the kind of relationship with his subjects where nothing that can happen, good or bad, will force him to change his approach, because if hard times demand it, your cruelty will come too late, while any concessions you make will be seen as wrung out of you and no one will be impressed. 9 Monarchy with public support Now let’s turn to our second case, where a private citizen becomes king in his own country not by crime or unacceptable violence, but with the support of his fellow-citizens. We can call this a monarchy with public support and to become its king you don’t have to be wholly brilliant or extraordinarily lucky, just shrewd in a lucky way. Obviously, to take control of this kind of state you need the support of either the common people or the wealthy families, the nobles. In

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.

We live in the present, but our happiness relies heavily on the future. Our mood is as much expectation as experience. Just like in the army, where life in the trenches worked the same way. It was the quiet that jangled the nerves. It was the lead-up before the push more than the push itself. To this day, I grow more faint at the scent of gun oil than I do at the sight of blood.

Outraged British officials described the attempt to kill the Skripals as the first use of a nerve agent on European soil since World War II. Initially

12 September, 1873 Log: As I write this passage, grey tendrils of smoke fill the living space inside the lighthouse. They writhe in the air as if they are restricted while they search for an escape. They are trapped here, just like me. So I roll a little more smoke around in my mouth then let it drift up and out of my nostrils to join its fellow in his misery. In truth though, smoking seems to be the only thing that can calm my nerves now. The only thing that can take my mind off the things I’ve seen — but even then only a little. I remember sighing right before I stood and walked over to take the steps to the top of the lighthouse, and my hand trembled as I clutched my pipe close to my chest — as if it were able to protect me.

However perfect the machines, war in the last analysis is fought by men, whose nerves must remain steady to direct the machines, whose courage must remain high when they as well as their machines are in danger, whose discipline and training must be such that they work together.

I told her I was impotent from old war wounds,” Bennett said. “That calmed her nerves considerably.” Taken aback, Christopher had brought himself to ask gingerly, “Are you?” “Hell no,” came Bennett’s indignant reply. “I only said it because she was so skittish around me. And it worked.” Christopher had given him a sardonic glance. “Are you ever going to tell Audrey the truth?” A mischievous smile had played at the corners of Bennett’s lips. “I may let her cure me soon,” he admitted.

Every nerve in my body says to run after Thaddeus and tell him everything. But I know there's no way he can know the truth.

In war, love is a luxury. It comes at a high price... This brand of marriage, I guess, takes steady nerves.

In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there’s one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking by itself will lead to addiction — in other words, that the cause of addiction resides in the power of the drug over the human brain. It is one of the bedrock fables sustaining the so-called “War on Drugs.” It also obscures the existence of a basic addiction process of which drugs are only one possible object, among many. Compulsive gambling, for example, is widely considered to be a form of addiction without anyone arguing that it’s caused by a deck of cards. The notion that addiction is drug-induced is often reinforced. Clearly, if drugs by themselves could cause addiction, we would not be safe offering narcotics to anyone. Medical evidence has repeatedly shown that opioids prescribed for cancer pain, even for long periods of time, do not lead to addiction except in a minority of susceptible people. During my years working on a palliative care ward I sometimes treated terminally ill cancer patients with extraordinarily high doses of narcotics — doses that my hardcore addict clients could only dream of. If the pain was alleviated by other means — for example, when patient was successfully given a nerve block for bone pain due to malignant deposits in the spine — the morphine could be rapidly discontinued. Yet if anyone had reason to seek oblivion through narcotic addiction, it would have been these terminally ill human beings. An article in the Canadian Journal of Medicine in 2006 reviewed international research covering over six thousand people who had received narcotics for chronic pain that was not cancerous in origin. There was no significant risk of addiction, a finding common to all studies that examine the relationship between addiction and the use of narcotics for pain relief. “Doubts or concerns about opioid efficacy, toxicity, tolerance, and abuse or addiction should no longer be used to justify withholding opioids,” concluded a large study of patients with chronic pain due to rheumatic disease. We can never understand addiction if we look for its sources exclusively in the actions of chemicals, no matter how powerful they are.

It was then, after my presentations to thirty-two generals, that I first began to see how similar the approach to leadership problems was throughout our civilization. After two days of presentations, a three-star general, the commander of an entire Army corps—two panzer divisions—stood up and said to me, “You know, one of our problems is that the sergeant-majors coddle the new recruits, and we keep telling them that such helpfulness will not make them very good soldiers in the field.” And then he turned to his fellow officers and said, “But from what Ed has been saying here the past two days, we’re not going to have any more luck changing the sergeant-majors than they are having trying to change the new recruits.” Now this man had three stars on his shoulder; how much more authority would you want? He commanded more weapons of destruction than exploded in all of World War II; how much more power do you need? Yet neither his authority nor his power were enough to ensure a “command presence.” And I began to think about similar frustrations reported to me by imaginative psychiatrists who were frustrated by head nurses, creative clergy who were stymied by church treasurers, aggressive CEOs who were hindered by division chiefs, mothers who wished to take more responsible stands with their children but who were blindsided by their chronically passive husbands, not to mention my experience of watching nine eager Presidents sabotaged by a chronically recalcitrant Congress. Eventually I came to see that this “resistance,” as it is usually called, is more than a reaction to novelty; it is part and parcel of the systemic process of leadership. Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the “territory” is a family or an organization. And a leader’s capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is—that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution’s specific issues, makeup, or goals—is the key to the kingdom. My

Compare Holland with Russia; you see only marshy and sterile islands in the former, which rise from the center of the ocean: a small republic which is only 48 miles length by 40 wide. But this small body is the very nerve-center of the region: immense people live in it, and these industrious people are both powerful and rich. They shook the yoke of the Spanish domination, which was then the most formidable monarchy of Europe. The trade of this republic extends to the ends of the world; and new trade appears almost immediately; it can maintain in times of war an army fifty thousand men, without counting a many and well maintained fleet.

Acknowledgements I must acknowledge my debt to so many people and sources. I learnt about the activities of those extraordinarily brave women of the SOE from Marcus Binney’s book: The Women Who Lived for Danger and about what it was like to be a spy from The Spy Wore Red by Aline Countess of Romanones. To find out more about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I read A War of Nerves by Ben Shephard. Phil Kemp from the Yorkshire Air Museum kindly allowed me to clamber around inside the only reconstructed Halifax Bomber in the World. He told me the lipstick story. An ex-soldier who had served in Bosnia gave me more intimate details about suffering from PTSD.

This was the beginning of Hitler's new-style diplomacy. His victories in Central Europe were won without the sword – they were won by power politics and opportunism, by bluff, by coercion, by psychological operations and by nerve-war. On each occasion he carefully gauged his potential enemies. He satisfied himself that the western powers would not fight, provided he made each claim sound reasonable enough. The west was weak and unready, and he was not.

Nerves are good. They tell you that this is something you care about. That you want to get it right.

The implants were removed, via the nasal cavity, from the nerve centers of the brain - some of her nerves were damaged in the process. This nerve damage resulted in a near-death experience following which, when she

Remember from Chapter 1 that when I say “killing you,” I mean it literally. When you are mentally and emotionally at war with yourself, it changes your physiology. It takes years off your life and makes you so much more susceptible to disease. How? Your immune cells are closely related to your nerve cells and there is instant communication between the two types of cell. For every thought you have, you have an instantaneous change in your physical body. If you are thinking negative and self-defeating thoughts about yourself, you will have a corresponding negative and defeating physiology. It might take the form of increased endocrine activity, chronic adrenaline arousal, elevated blood pressure, or even a heart attack.

He held her against him and hid his face in her hair. She heard him whisper something that might have been her name, and she stroked his back. He was trembling a little—with nerves, she knew. She was doing it too. “We could have done this long ago,” she said at last, her voice wobbling. He shook his head and murmured, “Not like this, I think.” “No, you’re right. Not like this. For a cute guy, you’re pretty smart.” He laughed breathlessly and backed off a bit to look at her, smoothed the hair off her forehead with one hand. “All I know of love, I learned from you, Eddi McCandry. And you’ve been at pains to teach me since I first saw you.” “I have? Hm. Didn’t know that.” “Well, to be honest, neither did I, at the outset.” She felt his chest move with silent laughter. “Proof of my ignorance on the subject, surely.

July 3; Lee rose by starlight, as he had done the previous morning, with equally fervent hopes of bringing this bloodiest of all his battles to a victorious conclusion before sunset. Two months ago today, Chancellorsville had thundered to its climax, fulfilling just such hopes against longer odds, and one month ago today, hard on the heels of a top-to-bottom reorganization occasioned by the death of Stonewall Jackson, the Army of Northern Virginia had begun its movement from the Rappahannock, northward to where an even greater triumph had seemed to be within its reach throughout the past 40-odd hours of savage fighting. Today would settle the outcome, he believed, not only of the battle — that went without saying; flesh and blood, bone and sinew and nerve could only stand so much — but also, perhaps, of the war; which, after all, was why he had come up here to Pennsylvania in the first place. (p. 525).

For example, having been in the rare position of working in the fields of both healing and management, I could not help but notice that the batting average in the war on cancer and the batting average in the struggle to heal chronically troubled institutions are remarkably similar, with cancer perhaps a little ahead. I have been struck by how families, corporations, and other kinds of institutions are constantly trying to cure their own chronic ills through amputations, “strong medicine,” transfusions, and other forms of surgery only to find that, even when successful for the moment, the excised tumor returns several years later in “cells” that never knew the “cells” that left. “New blood” rarely thwarts malignant processes, anywhere. Indeed, with both cancer and institutions, malignant cells that appear to be dead can often revive if they receive new nourishment. Or, to put the problem another way, when we say something has gone into remission, where do we think it has gone?

Both wolves and Fae claimed Luna as their patron goddess—had gone to war over whom she favored in millennia long past. And while the wolves’ connection to her had been carved into the statue with stunning detail, the nod to the Fae had been missing for two years. Maybe the Autumn King had a point about restoring the Fae to glory. Not in the haughty, sneering way his father intended, but … the lack of Fae heritage on the statue raked down Ruhn’s nerves.

But the peculiar difficulty imposed on you by the war is another matter, and of it I would again repeat what I have been saying in one form or another ever since I started—do not let your nerves and emotions lead you into thinking your predicament more abnormal than it really is.

The fire in the hearth to her left was warm and relaxing. She let it soothe her nerves as she tried to slowly release the pain of loss that had taken root. Then she noticed the vase of wilted flowers sitting on the mantel and started crying. They had been a gift from Ayrion on his last day before heading to war. She didn’t have the heart to toss them out, even though the petals had all but fallen off and the stems were hanging over the sides like willow branches

People who don’t know our military very well sometimes seem amazed whenever men like Jordan Haerter and Jonathan Yale make the headlines. On April 22, 2008, those two enlisted Marines were standing watch at a checkpoint outside a joint U.S.-Iraqi barracks in Ramadi when a large truck began accelerating toward their position. Their checkpoint controlled entry to a barracks in the Sufiyah district that housed fifty Marines from the newly arrived First Battalion, Ninth Regiment. They were alert to the VBIED threat and quickly and accurately assessed the situation before them—all the more impressive given that the level of violence in the city generally wasn’t what it had been a few years earlier. Both Marines opened fire immediately, Haerter with an M4 and Yale with a machine gun. Still the truck rushed toward them. Nearby, dozens of Iraqi police fired on the truck as well—but only briefly before their instincts for survival kicked in. Expecting a huge blast, they fled the area. But those two Marines stood their ground, pouring fire into the truck until it coasted to a halt in front of them—and exploded. Later estimates pegged the size of that IED at two thousand pounds or more. The blast damaged or destroyed two dozen houses and knocked down the walls of a mosque a hundred yards away. An Iraqi who witnessed the attack, interviewed by a Marine general afterward, choked back a sob and said, “Sir, in the name of God, no sane man would have stood there and done what they did. No sane man. They saved us all.” Lieutenant General John F. Kelly, who investigated the incident to document the Navy Crosses they were to receive, said, “In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording [of a security camera nearby], they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder-width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons.” Yale, from Burkeville, Virginia, and Haerter, from Sag Harbor, New York, were decorated in 2009 for their steady nerves and heroism in the last six seconds of their lives, saving at least fifty people living

Taylor spent a week at Point Isabel building the earthworks he should have finished a month before, then, on May 7, started back to relieve the fort. His West Pointers begged him not to take the massive train, which could be brought up later in complete safety, but he had no patience with textbook soldiers.… Well, what did he have? A sound principle: attack. A less valuable one which was to serve him just as well in this war: never retreat. Total ignorance of the art of war. And an instinct, if not for command, at least for leadership. He had been hardened in years of petty frontier duty, he had no nerves and nothing recognizable as intelligence, he was afraid of nothing, and he was too unimaginative to know when he was being licked, which was fortunate since he did not know how to maneuver troops. Add to this a dislike of military forms and procedures and a taste for old clothes and you have a predestinate candidate for the Presidency. The army and even some of the West Pointers worshiped him.

Faust also discusses the belief in salvation as a factor in nerving soldiers to face death with equanimity and as a source of comfort to their families. She cites the funeral sermon for a Massachusetts officer killed at Petersburg, in which the clergyman defined death as “the middle point between two lives.” But she seems inclined at times to view this conviction as the equivalent of grasping at straws—or, to change the metaphor, of whistling past the graveyard. Instead of a deeply held belief, it was for many soldiers and their families, she writes, the product of “distress and desire” to make tolerable the intolerable prospect of death. She also suggests the provocative idea that the vision of death as the middle point between two lives was a nineteenth-century version of a death-denying culture.