November Nature Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to November Nature. Here they are! All 86 of them:

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.
Gustave Flaubert (November)
I trust the red sun setting, the leafless November trees. On Monday morning I look foward fearlessly to Friday’s eve. But humans are not as reliable as nature, as trees. I wonder if you’ll come back; I trust only that you leave.
Ellen Wittlinger (Hard Love)
At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwards, , or else the trunk would twist and turn like a body being bent by the wind. At night, when I woke up and the moon and the stars were out, I would see in the sky things that filled me simultaneously with dread and longing. I remember that once, one Christmas Eve, I saw a great naked women, standing erect, with rolling eyes; she must have been a hundred feet high, but along she drifted, growing ever longer and ever thinner, and finally fell apart, each limb remaining separate, with the head floating away first as the rest of her body continued to waver
Gustave Flaubert (November)
One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn’t feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called “Locking.” That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren’t Winter. They’re Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be?
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young)
I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious – your heart, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings,But the more difficult the labour and hardship, the higher the reward,” Count Leo Tolstoi to Valeria Arsenev, his fiance. November 2, 1856
Leo Tolstoy
Nature, who has played so many queer tricks upon us, making us so unequally of clay and diamonds, of rainbow and granite, and stuffed them into a case, often of the most incongruous, for the poet has a butcher’s face and the butcher a poet’s; nature, who delights in muddle and mystery, so that even now (the first of November, 1927) we know not why we go upstairs, or why we come down again, our most daily movements are like the passage of a ship on an unknown sea, and the sailors at the mast-head ask, pointing their glasses to the horizon: Is there land or is there none? to which, if we are prophets, we make answer “Yes”; if we are truthful we say “No”; nature, who has so much to answer for besides the perhaps unwieldy length of this sentence, has further complicated her task and added to our confusion by providing not only a perfect ragbag of odds and ends within us—a piece of a policeman’s trousers lying cheek by jowl with Queen Alexandra’s wedding veil—but has contrived that the whole assortment shall be lightly stitched together by a single thread. Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind. Instead of being a single, downright, bluff piece of work of which no man need feel ashamed, our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings, a rising and falling of lights.
Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
As the years go by those relationships are tested, and only then do you realize their true nature. Only after they've been tested through weddings, moves, funerals, divorces, births and other stages in life are you able to judge them. Until then, 'best friend', 'good guy', etc are only labels. In the end, it's interesting; often surprising to see the results.
Benjamin J. Carey (Barefoot in November)
I leaned out one last time and caught a snowflake on my tongue. They tasted so good, so pure and so divine, like nothing I had ever tasted from the sky. It was as if happiness spread through your body with the cold, but then disappeared and brought depression, all in less then two seconds. It was unbelievable, and yet, addicting.
Shannon A. Thompson (November Snow)
It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and generosity.
Claire Holden Rothman (The Heart Specialist)
I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn't a sign. Of course, if this were a detective story, there'd have been a convenient shower exactly an hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along—and came to the jolly conclusion that any person in any blessed flat in the blessed row might have done it.
Dorothy L. Sayers (Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1))
On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.
Mary Rose O'Reilley (The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd)
I believe we need wilderness in order to be more complete human beings, to not be fearful of the animals that we are, an animal who bows to the incomparable power of natural forces when standing on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, an animal who understands a sense of humility when watching a grizzly overturn a stump with its front paw to forage for grubs in the lodgepole pines of the northern Rockies, an animal who weeps over the sheer beauty of migrating cranes above the Bosque del Apache in November, an animal who is not afraid to cry with delight in the middle of a midnight swim in a phospherescent tide, an animal who has not forgotten what it means to pray before the unfurled blossom of the sacred datura, remembering the source of all true visions. As we step over the threshold of the twenty-first century, let us acknowledge that the preservation of wilderness is not so much a political process as a spiritual one, that the language of law and science used so successfully to define and defend what wilderness has been in the past century must now be fully joined with the language of the heart to illuminate what these lands mean to the future.
Terry Tempest Williams (Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert)
No sun—no moon! No morn—no noon— No dawn— No sky—no earthly view— No distance looking blue— No road—no street—no "t'other side the way"— No end to any Row— No indications where the Crescents go— No top to any steeple— No recognitions of familiar people— No courtesies for showing 'em— No knowing 'em! No traveling at all—no locomotion, No inkling of the way—no notion— "No go"—by land or ocean— No mail—no post— No news from any foreign coast— No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility— No company—no nobility— No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member— No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, November!
Thomas Hood
As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of nature survive during the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no less than the ruins of temples.
Henry David Thoreau (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod)
BRUCE STERLING Homo sapiens declared extinct, Nature, November 11, 1999: Since I've been asked to offer an epitaph," the highly distributed poetware continued, "I believe that we should rearrange the Great Wall of China to spell out (in Chinese of course, since most of them were always Chinese) -- 'THEY WERE VERY, VERY CURIOUS, BUT NOT AT ALL FAR-SIGHTED.
Bruce Sterling
...across the snowy field the barn light gleams - it's the loneliness of November twilight...
John Geddes (A Familiar Rain)
How I wish to fly with the geese away from dreary November days, the "freeze-up," and cruel winter. Away from loneliness, isolation, and anxiety bred by blizzards. Most every local person I've talked to grudgingly admits to an autumn apprehension. It is part and parcel of an Adirondacker's psychological makeup. The geese contaminate us with this strange depression on their southbound flight and cure us with their northbound. In between, we try to tolerate winter, each in his or her own way.
Anne LaBastille (Woodswoman I: Living Alone in the Adirondack Wilderness)
The dark, twisting clouds that had settled over Vendona’s streets seemed to open up and glide past the winking moon. The wind moaned slowly as it died while the trees began dancing with a melody only known to nature. The city became alive, and time raced forward as the sky warmed slightly. It was no longer snowing.
Shannon A. Thompson (November Snow)
Epicurus says the obvious, that we need each pleasure up to the degree that we feel no pain from the absence of it.
Haris Dimitriadis (EPICURUS and THE PLEASANT LIFE: A Philosophy of Nature Kindle Edition– November 30, 2022 - Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition)
Already she is adapting herself, as she will adapt herself to very new régime. This morning I even heard her talking reverently about 'Der Führer' to the porters' wife. If anybody were to remind her that, at the elections last November, she voted communist,she would probably deny it hotly, and in perfect good faith. She is merely acclimatizing herself, in accordance with a natural law, like an animal which changes its coat for the winter. Thousands of people like Frl. Schroeder are acclimatizing themselves. After all, whatever government is in power, they are doomed to live in this town.
Christopher Isherwood
The friendship Epicurus referred to is that between people who share explicit trust, those who seek to forward the affairs of those they call friends. Those for whom friendship is not an unhealthy competition.
Haris Dimitriadis (EPICURUS and THE PLEASANT LIFE: A Philosophy of Nature Kindle Edition– November 30, 2022 - Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition)
Next morning I had to get outside, and so began a period of long walks in the park. Early November continued bright, with the last sun of the year shining low and coppery over the woods. Striding through heaps of rusty autumn leaves, I ached to see beauty dying all around me. I felt completely alone in that rambling wilderness, save for the crows cawing in their rookeries and the wrens bobbing from hedge to hedge. I began to make studies in my book of the delicate lines of drying grasses and frilled seed pods. I looked for some lesson on how best to live from Nature, that every year died and was renewed, but none appeared.
Martine Bailey (A Taste for Nightshade)
Though North Carolina’s constitution guaranteed free elections, folks struggling to make ends meet on hourly pay simply could not afford to miss a day—or even an hour—and risk losing their fragile employment. They certainly didn’t have time to travel to their county board of elections months prior to November, make sure their paperwork was in order, and then get off work again on a weekday to vote at their local precinct. Due to the highly mobile nature of low-wage work, many working poor people told us that they were often hours away from their precinct on Election Day, building someone else’s home or cleaning a school miles away from their own children.
William J. Barber II (The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear)
How curious it is that in nature, the most vibrant colors are those that precede death. The delicate pinks and blues of spring are wan in comparison to the dramatic crimson of the hawthorn berries or the bloody gashes of the buckthorn leaves in late November. Stars blaze pale in their infancy, but in old age they melt and simmer in reds and oranges just as the oaks and maples do. Youth, it seems, is a state of diffuse abundance, while death’s approach concentrates.
Jacqueline Holland (The God of Endings)
It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man’s handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end.
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story)
No matter how valuable something good may be, it is desirable only if it contributes to happiness. An Epicurean maxim stresses this point in a dramatic tone: “The good and the virtues and the like are worthy of honor when they bring joy. If they do not bring joy, let it go.
Haris Dimitriadis (EPICURUS and THE PLEASANT LIFE: A Philosophy of Nature Kindle Edition– November 30, 2022 - Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition)
All the cartoonists at heart liked him, and there was seldom or never anything bitter or really unfriendly in their portrayals of him; they were uniformly good-natured.” Caricatures even transformed his failure during a mid-November bear hunt into a triumph, conjuring an image of the president steadfastly refusing to shoot a small bear furnished for the occasion. As renditions of the original Clifford Berryman cartoon proliferated, the bear dwindled in size until he appeared as a tiny cub, prompting toy store owners to market stuffed bears in honor of Teddy Roosevelt. Soon the Teddy bear became one of the most cherished toys of all time.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it… It is merely confessing that it ‘is not worth the trouble.’ Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation and the uselessness of suffering. — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus. (Penguin Classic November 26, 2013) Originally published 1942.
Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays)
Nature, who has played so many queer tricks upon us, making us so unequally of clay and diamonds, of rainbow and granite, and stuffed them into a case, often of the most incongruous, for the poet has a butcher’s face and the butcher a poet’s; nature, who delights in muddle and mystery, so that even now (the first of November 1927) we know not why we go upstairs, or why we come down again, our most daily movements are like the passage of a ship on an unknown sea, and the sailors at the mast-head ask, pointing their glasses to the horizon; Is there land or is there none? to which, if we are prophets, we make answer ‘Yes’; if we are truthful we say ‘No’; nature, who has so much to answer for besides the perhaps unwieldy length of this sentence, has further complicated her task and added to our confusion by providing not only a perfect rag-bag of odds and ends within us — a piece of a policeman’s trousers lying cheek by jowl with Queen Alexandra’s wedding veil — but has contrived that the whole assortment shall be lightly stitched together by a single thread.
Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
Influenza is caused by three types of viruses, of which the most worrisome and widespread is influenza A. Viruses of that type all share certain genetic traits: a single-stranded RNA genome, which is partitioned into eight segments, which serve as templates for eleven different proteins. In other words, they have eight discrete stretches of RNA coding, linked together like eight railroad cars, with eleven different deliverable cargoes. The eleven deliverables are the molecules that comprise the structure and functional machinery of the virus. They are what the genes make. Two of those molecules become spiky protuberances from the outer surface of the viral envelope: hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. Those two, recognizable by an immune system, and crucial for penetrating and exiting cells of a host, give the various subtypes of influenza A their definitive labels: H5N1, H1N1, and so on. The term “H5N1” indicates a virus featuring subtype 5 of the hemagglutinin protein combined with subtype 1 of the neuraminidase protein. Sixteen different kinds of hemagglutinin, plus nine kinds of neuraminidase, have been detected in the natural world. Hemagglutinin is the key that unlocks a cell membrane so that the virus can get in, and neuraminidase is the key for getting back out. Okay so far? Having absorbed this simple paragraph, you understand more about influenza than 99.9 percent of the people on Earth. Pat yourself on the back and get a flu shot in November. At
David Quammen (Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic)
The politicians were in full bay, particularly those of his own party who had been urging, without success, his support of antislavery legislation which he feared would lose him the border states, held to the Union so far by his promise that no such laws would be passed. It also seemed to these Republicans that entirely too many Democrats were seated in high places, specifically in the cabinet and the army; and now their anger was increased by apprehension. About to open their campaigns for reëlection in November, they had counted on battlefield victories to increase their prospects for victory at the polls. Instead, the main eastern army, under the Democrat McClellan—“McNapoleon,” they called him—had held back, as if on purpose, and then retreated to the James, complaining within hearing of the voters that the Administration was to blame. Privately, many of the Jacobins agreed with the charge, though for different reasons, the main one being that Lincoln, irresolute by nature, had surrounded himself with weak-spined members of the opposition party. Fessenden of Maine put it plainest: “The simple truth is, there was never such a shambling half-and-half set of incapables collected in one government since the world began.
Shelby Foote (The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville)
Where the weather is concerned, the Midwest has the worst of both worlds. In the winter the wind is razor sharp. It skims down from the Arctic and slices through you. It howls and swirls and buffets the house. It brings piles of snow and bonecracking cold. From November to March you walk leaning forward at a twenty-degree angle, even indoors, and spend your life waiting for your car to warm up, or digging it out of drifts or scraping futilely at ice that seems to have been applied to the windows with superglue. And then one day spring comes. The snow melts, you stride about in shirtsleeves, you incline your face to the sun. And then, just like that, spring is over and it’s summer. It is as if God has pulled a lever in the great celestial powerhouse. Now the weather rolls in from the opposite direction, from the tropics far to the south, and it hits you like a wall of heat. For six months, the heat pours over you. You sweat oil. Your pores gape. The grass goes brown. Dogs look as if they could die. When you walk downtown you can feel the heat of the pavement rising through the soles of your shoes. Just when you think you might very well go crazy, fall comes and for two or three weeks the air is mild and nature is friendly. And then it’s winter and the cycle starts again. And you think, “As soon as I’m big enough, I’m going to move far, far away from here.
Bill Bryson (The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America)
First, if you participate in Movember, fuck you. Second, if you want to raise money for prostate cancer (a noble cause), do it the old-fashioned way, by either begging for it or exerting yourself physically for donations. Sitting on your ass and letting nature take its course above your upper lip is not the same thing as running a 10K at a local high school or breaking out the set of power tools your dad gave you as a housewarming present collecting dust in your garage and using them to go out and build a habitat for humanity. Maybe I can raise money for rectal cancer by getting people to pledge a dollar every time I take a shit. And third no one wants to see that horrific seventies pornstache growing like a caterpillar with cerebral palsy zigzagging across your face; you look like you're about to go door to door informing people that you're a registered sex offender who's just moved in next door and would their kids like to come out and was your windowless van for a dollar? Fuck Movember. And November.
Ari Gold (The Gold Standard: Rules to Rule By)
Again, what wells up in our inmost being today is very strongly luciferic. How can we train ourselves rightly in this direction? By diving into it with our ahrimanic nature, that is to say, by trying to avoid all illusions about our own inner life and impulses and observing ourselves just as we observe the outer world. Modern people must realize how urgent it is to educate themselves in this way. Anyone who has an observant eye in these matters will often come across circumstances of which the following is an example.
Rudolf Steiner (Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman: Human Responsibility for the Earth, 5 lectures, November 1919 (CW 191, 193))
The Court usually begins to issue opinions in November and proceeds to hand down opinions throughout the term. But naturally, the least controversial cases, those that produce unanimous or near-unanimous decisions, get decided first. Complicated cases or those that, for one reason or another, produce numerous concurring and dissenting opinions take longer, perhaps much longer, and only the pressure of an impending July 4 weekend may spur the justices to make the last-minute compromises necessary to bring a decision out by the end of June.
Linda Greenhouse (The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
It is the pomegranate that gives 'fesenjoon' its healing capabilities. The original apple of sin, the fruit of a long gone Eden, the pomegranate shields itself in a leathery crimson shell, which in Roman times was used as a form of protective hide. Once the pomegranate's bitter skin is peeled back, though, a juicy garnet flesh is revealed to the lucky eater, popping and bursting in the mouth like the final succumber of lovemaking. Long ago, when the earth remained still, content with the fecundity of perpetual spring, and Demeter was the mother of all that was natural and flowering, it was this tempting fruit that finally set the seasons spinning. Having eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld, Persephone, the Goddess of Spring's high-spirited daughter, had been forced to spend six months of the year in the eternal halls of death. Without her beautiful daughter by her side, a mournful Demeter retreated to the dark corners of the universe, allowing for the icy gates of winter to finally creak open. A round crimson herald of frost, the pomegranate comes to harvest in October and November, so 'fesenjoon' is best made with its concentrate during other times of the year.
Marsha Mehran (Pomegranate Soup (Babylon Café #1))
Eating a meal in Japan is said to be a communion with nature. This particularly holds true for both tea and restaurant kaiseki, where foods at their peak of freshness reflect the seasonal spirit of that month. The seasonal spirit for November, for example, is "Beginning Anew," because according to the old Japanese lunar calendar, November marks the start of the new tea year. The spring tea leaves that had been placed in sealed jars to mature are ready to grind into tea. The foods used for a tea kaiseki should carry out this seasonal theme and be available locally, not flown in from some exotic locale. For December, the spirit is "Freshness and Cold." Thus, the colors of the guests' kimonos should be dark and subdued for winter, while the incense that permeates the tearoom after the meal should be rich and spicy. The scroll David chose to hang in the alcove during the tea kaiseki no doubt depicted winter, through either words or an ink drawing. As for the flowers that would replace the scroll for the tea ceremony, David likely would incorporate a branch of pine to create a subtle link with the pine needle-shaped piece of yuzu zest we had placed in the climactic dish. Both hinted at the winter season and coming of New Year's, one of David's underlying themes for the tea kaiseki. Some of the guests might never make the pine needle connection, but it was there to delight those who did.
Victoria Abbott Riccardi (Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto)
And you, Clara Westhoff, how simply and well you endured, lived through the experience, and made it a forward step in your young existence! So great was your love that it was able to forgive the great dying, and your eye was so sure, even then, that it conceived beauty in all the new colors, feelings, and gestures of the earth, and that all coming to an end seemed for your feeling only a pretext under which Nature wanted to unfold beauties yet unrevealed. Just as the eyes of angels rest on a dying child, delighting in the similar transfiguration of its half-released little face, so without concern you saw in the dying earth the smile and the beauty and the trust in eternity." ―from letter to Clara Westhoff Schmargendorf (Sunday, November 18, 1900)
Rainer Maria Rilke
Captain Ernst Roehm, on the staff of the Army’s District Command VII in Munich, had joined the party before Hitler. He was a stocky, bull-necked, piggish-eyed, scar-faced professional soldier—the upper part of his nose had been shot away in 1914—with a flair for politics and a natural ability as an organizer. Like Hitler he was possessed of a burning hatred for the democratic Republic and the “November criminals” he held responsible for it. His aim was to re-create a strong nationalist Germany and he believed with Hitler that this could be done only by a party based on the lower classes, from which he himself, unlike most Regular Army officers, had come. A tough, ruthless, driving man—albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual—he helped to organize the first Nazi strong-arm squads which grew into the S.A., the army of storm troopers which he commanded until his execution by Hitler in 1934.
William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. ROMANS 12:21 NOVEMBER 22 People talk about the evils of our society—the breakdown of morality, the rising incidence of crime, the growing paganism of our generation, and the dishonesty rampant in human affairs. Sometimes people say, “It’s so bad that you can never do anything about it. These things are so deeply rooted in the wickedness of human nature that you can never eradicate them. It’s an impossibility.” It is my humble judgment that the remedy for these social impossibilities is for individuals to be so stimulated and motivated, to become so identified with God, that they become part of His process of overcoming impossiblilities. “Here I stand; I can do no other,” said Martin Luther. It was he himself, individually, who stood for principles so forcefully that he initiated great changes in the social order. Individuals overcome impossibilities.
Norman Vincent Peale (Positive Living Day by Day)
Dear Mr. Vermylen: Your company has been one of our good customers for fourteen years. Naturally, we are very grateful for your patronage and are eager to give you the speedy, efficient service you deserve. However, we regret to say that it isn’t possible for us to do that when your trucks bring us a large shipment late in the afternoon, as they did on November 10. Why? Because many other customers make late afternoon deliveries also. Naturally, that causes congestion. That means your trucks are held up unavoidably at the pier and sometimes even your freight is delayed. That’s bad, but it can be avoided. If you make your deliveries at the pier in the morning when possible, your trucks will be able to keep moving, your freight will get immediate attention, and our workers will get home early at night to enjoy a dinner of the delicious macaroni and noodles that you manufacture. Regardless of when your shipments arrive, we shall always cheerfully do all in our power to serve you promptly. You are busy. Please don’t trouble to answer this note.
Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends and Influence People)
I would wish to be provided with medication with which to end my life at the time of my choosing. There may be considerable pain that factors into my decision, or it may be that I fear loss of my ability to lead what to my mind is a meaningful life. If I’m unable to feed myself, to toilet myself, to stand or walk on my own, to make rational choices, I want my family to understand that it’s time for me to go—that it’s my decision for myself and no one else’s. I respect the arguments made by Dr. Byock and those who believe that life should end naturally. However, I’ve known of too many instances where “naturally” meant after years of suffering, not only for the individual but for the family. And I do believe the family must be taken into account. I wouldn’t wish to put my family through the extended ordeal of my dying. When the time comes to end my life, I will give thanks for all I have had, for all I have been given, and hope to go peacefully, with the help of a physician. On November 5, 2014, barely five months after John died, Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of
Diane Rehm (On My Own: A Memoir)
Mind control survivors have identified doctors used by the CIA under Project MKULTRA as having used different aliases. I have personally spoken and corresponded with many of these child Cold War survivors. It seems colors were one of the most commonly used themes. Many survivors have identified Josef Mengele as using the aliases Dr. Green, Dr. Black, Dr. Swartz (black in German), Father Joseph, or Vaterchen (daddy) when he did their programming. The experiments and programming he used on us were of such a heinous nature, that they were not unlike some of those performed at Auschwitz. In 1937, Mengele was appointed research assistant at the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity. Mengele provided "experimental materials" to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology from twins including eyes, blood, and other body parts from Auschwitz. Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945 before the Russians liberated the camp. French government documents state that the Americans captured Mengele in 1946. According to the French, Mengele "was released without explanation by the Americans on November 19, 1946." The French claimed that American authorities confirmed the Mengele arrest and release on Feb. 29, 1947. 
Carol Rutz (A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People)
November 1 SINGING YOUR OWN PRAISES “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” —A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh As an introvert, you might have grown up feeling anything but grateful for your personality. You tried to cure your introversion by mimicking extroverted behavior. Of course, this didn’t work because you can’t fix what isn’t broken. You are an introvert. You like people, but sometimes you like your alone time more. You think deeply and choose your words carefully. You enjoy different pastimes than the extrovert down the street. None of this makes you a bad person. In fact, there are billions of other people who share your preferences. So, let’s try a different approach, shall we? Let’s try on a little self-acceptance for size. Instead of trying to fix or cure, let’s celebrate our strengths. For the longest time, I saw my quietness as a fatal flaw, a sign that I was not friendly or feminine enough. Now, I see it as just another piece of the intricate mosaic that is my personality. Alongside my quietness, there is also intuition, wisdom, and an ability to read between the lines. Sure, I speak slowly and pause often, but I am singing on the inside. Those who matter can hear my silent song. This month’s entries will help you to see the beauty in your introverted nature and guide you toward singing your own praises (quietly, of course).
Michaela Chung (The Year of the Introvert: A Journal of Daily Inspiration for the Inwardly Inclined)
For we do not know what type of instinct Mr. Eden has for idealistic values. He has never revealed this. The company he keeps does not speak for this. Above all, the civilization of his country is not of a nature that could perhaps impress us. I do not even wish to speak of the man across the ocean. Their instinct for idealistic values is certainly less than ours. We have in all likelihood given the world more idealistic values than that society frequented by Mr. Eden. The same applies to the countries that have tied themselves to us. In part, they look back onto civilizations in comparison with which the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon island-country is truly infinitely young, not to say infantile. In regard to material values, I do believe that they indeed have a very fine instinct for this. But we also have it. There is, however, a difference: we will make sure, under all circumstances, that the material values of Europe will in the future benefit the European people instead of an extra continental, small, international clique of financiers. That is our unshakable and merciless decision. The people of Europe are not fighting so that, afterwards, a couple of folk can again come along with their “fine instincts,” pillage mankind, and leave behind millions of unemployed, only so that they can fill their safes. We had a good reason why we distanced ourselves from the gold standard. We wanted to eliminate one of the prerequisites for this type of economic outlook and enterprise. And this is certain: Europe will emerge from this war far more economically sound than before. For a great part of the continent which has previously been organized against Europe will now be put into the service of the European nations. Adolf Hitler – speech in the Löwenbräukeller Munich, November 8, 1942
Adolf Hitler
19 “WHEN HE HAS COME” “When He has come, He will convict the world of sin . . . .” John 16:8     Very few of us know anything about conviction of sin. We know the experience of being disturbed because we have done wrong things. But conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit blots out every relationship on earth and makes us aware of only one—“Against You, You only, have I sinned . . .” (Psalm 51:4). When a person is convicted of sin in this way, he knows with every bit of his conscience that God would not dare to forgive him. If God did forgive him, then this person would have a stronger sense of justice than God. God does forgive, but it cost the breaking of His heart with grief in the death of Christ to enable Him to do so. The great miracle of the grace of God is that He forgives sin, and it is the death of Jesus Christ alone that enables the divine nature to forgive and to remain true to itself in doing so. It is shallow nonsense to say that God forgives us because He is love. Once we have been convicted of sin, we will never say this again. The love of God means Calvary—nothing less! The love of God is spelled out on the Cross and nowhere else. The only basis for which God can forgive me is the Cross of Christ. It is there that His conscience is satisfied.     Forgiveness doesn’t merely mean that I am saved from hell and have been made ready for heaven (no one would accept forgiveness on that level). Forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a newly created relationship which identifies me with God in Christ. The miracle of redemption is that God turns me, the unholy one, into the standard of Himself, the Holy One. He does this by putting into me a new nature, the nature of Jesus Christ. November 20 THE FORGIVENESS OF GOD “In Him we have . . . the forgiveness of sins . . . .” Ephesians 1:7     Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy. The only ground on which God can forgive our sin and reinstate us to His favor is through the Cross of Christ. There is no other way! Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony at Calvary. We should never take the forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and our sanctification in simple faith, and then forget the enormous cost to God that made all of this ours.     Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ. To
Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
When I spoke to you here the last time, my old party comrades, I did so fully conscious of victory as hardly a mortal has been able to do before me. In spite of this, a concern weighed heavily on me. It was clear to me that, ultimately, behind this war was that incendiary who has always lived off the quarrels of nations: the international Jew. I would no longer have been a National Socialist had I ever distanced myself from this realization. We followed his traces over many years. In this Reich, probably for the first time, we scientifically resolved this problem for all time, according to plan, and really understood the words of a great Jew who said that the racial question was the key to world history. Therefore, we knew quite well-above all, I knew-that the driving force behind these occurrences was the Jew. And that, as always in history, there were blockheads ready to stand up for him: partly spineless, paid characters, partly people who want to make deals and, at no time, flinch from having blood spilled for these deals. I have come to know these Jews as the incendiaries of the world. After all, in the previous years, you saw how they slowly poisoned the people via the press, radio, film, and theater. You saw how this poisoning continued. You saw how their finances, their money transactions, had to work in this sense. And, in the first days of the war, certain Englishmen-all of them shareholders in the armament industry-said it openly: “The war must last three years at least. It will not and must not end before three years.”-That is what they said. That was only natural, since their capital was tied up and they could not hope to secure an amortization in less than three years. Certainly, my party comrades, for us National Socialists, this almost defies comprehension. But that is how things are in the democratic world. You can be prime minister or minister of war and, at the same time, own portfolios of countless shares in the armament industry. Interests are explained that way. We once came to know this danger as the driving force in our domestic struggle. We had this black-red-golden coalition in front of us; this mixture of hypocrisy and abuse of religion on the one hand, and financial interests on the other; and, finally, their truly Jewish-Marxist goals. We completely finished off this coalition at home in a hard struggle. Now, we stand facing this enemy abroad. He inspired this international coalition against the German Volk and the German Reich. First, he used Poland as a dummy, and later pressed France, Belgium, Holland, and Norway to serve him. From the start, England was a driving force here. Understandably, the power which would one day confront us is most clearly ruled by this Jewish spirit: the Soviet Union. It happens to be the greatest servant of Jewry. Time meanwhile has proved what we National Socialists maintained for many years: it is truly a state in which the whole national intelligentsia has been slaughtered, and where only spiritless, forcibly proletarianized subhumans remain. Above them, there is the gigantic organization of the Jewish commissars, that is, established slaveowners. Frequently people wondered whether, in the long run, nationalist tendencies would not be victorious there. But they completely forgot that the bearers of a conscious nationalist view no longer existed. That, in the end, the man who temporarily became the ruler of this state, is nothing other than an instrument in the hands of this almighty Jewry. If Stalin is on stage and steps in front of the curtain, then Kaganovich and all those Jews stand behind him, Jews who, in ten-thousandfold ramifications, control this mighty empire. Speech in the Löwenbräukeller Munich, November 8, 1941
Adolf Hitler (Collection of Speeches: 1922-1945)
I used to walk out, at night, to the breakwater which divides the end of the harbor form the broad moor of the salt marsh. There was nothing to block the wind that had picked up speed and vigor from its Atlantic crossing. I’d study the stars in their brilliant blazing, the diaphanous swath of the milk Way, the distant glow of Boston backlighting the clouds on the horizon as if they’d been drawn there in smudgy charcoal. I felt, perhaps for the first time, particularly American, embedded in American history, here at the nation’s slender tip. Here our westering impulse, having flooded the continent and turned back, finds itself face to face with the originating Atlantic, November’s chill, salt expanses, what Hart Crane called the “unfettered leewardings,” here at the end of the world.
Mark Doty (Heaven's Coast: A Memoir)
In ordinary times the Jhelum river flows gently between high stable banks of deep soil, and until the stream shrinks in November, navigation, in spite of the absence of a proper tow-path, is easy. But in the winter the river above Sriiiagar is blocked by shoals, and the boatmen often have to dig out a channel for the heavy grain barges. In times of flood the river overtops its natural banks, and when the flood is high the water pours over the artificial embankments which have been constructed on either side of the river. Great damage is then caused to the crops of maize and linseed, and sometimes stacks of wheat, barley, and rape-seed are swept away. The loss caused by floods is always greatest below Srinagar, as the fall of the country is slight and the flood-water remains on the land rotting the crops. Above Srinagar the fall of the river and the slope of the country cause the flood-water to run down quickly and the crops often recover. In former times the villages lying along the river were obliged to keep the artificial embankments in repair, and flood-gates existed which let out the water of the mountain streams, and protected the country against the floods of the Jhelum. For many years this obligation had not been enforced, and under my supervision the embankments below Srinagar were repaired, and the normal floods of 1892 were kept in check. Above Srinagar the question of repairing embankments is complicated by the presence of the city, the safety of which must not be endangered. It is unfortunate that Srinagar should have been built on its present site. It is not only exposed to constant danger from floods, but is itself the cause of floods, because it checks the drainage of the country. The old Hindus were wise for they chose high land for their cities, and ancient Srinagar stood on ground secure from floods. Akbar, the first of the Mughal rulers, selected the slopes of the Hari-Parbat for his city Nagar, but his successors, without thought for the future, closed the Dal lake to the floods of the Jhelum, and thereby robbed the river of one of the escapes for its flood-water. Later the Pathans built their palace on the left bank of the Jhelum and prevented the river from escaping to the west, and now all the flood-water from the south of the valley must pass through the narrow waterway of Srinagar. There the channel of the river is narrowed by stone embankments, by the piles of encroaching city magnates, and the flow is further
Anonymous
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith, Adam) - Your Highlight on page 1 | location 54-60 | Added on Thursday, 13 November 2014 06:53:21 Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is everywhere in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed. The second book, therefore, treats of the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually accumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, according to the different ways in which it is employed.
Anonymous
November 16: Saint Gertrude   Gertrude was born of a noble family at Eisleben, in Saxony.  At five years of age, she offered her virginity and herself to Jesus Christ, in the Benedictine nunnery at Rodersdorf.  From that time forth she was utterly estranged from earthly things, ever striving for things higher, and began to lead a kind of heavenly life.  To learning in human letters she added knowledge of the things of God.  In the thought thereof she earnestly desired, and soon reached, the perfection of a Christian soul.  Of Christ, and of the things in his life, she spake oftentimes with movings of spirit.  The glory of God was the one end of all her thoughts, and to that her every longing and her every act were given.  Though God had crowned her with so many and so noble gifts both of nature and of grace, her belief regarding herself was so humble that she was used to number as among the greatest of the wonders of his goodness that he had always in his mercy borne with one who was so utterly unworthy. In the thirtieth year of her age she was elected Abbess of Rodersdorf, where she had professed herself in the religious life, and afterwards of Helfta.  This office she bore for forty years in love, wisdom, and zeal for strict observance, so that the house seemed like an ideal ensample of a sisterhood of perfect nuns.  To each one she was a mother and a teacher, and yet would be as the least of all, being in sooth in all lowliness among them as she that served.  That she might be more utterly God's only, she tormented her body with sleeplessness, hunger, and other afflictions, but withal ever true to herself, stood forth a pattern of innocency, gentleness, and long-suffering.  The salvation of her neighbours was her constant earnest endeavour, and her godly toil bore abundant fruit.  The love of God oftentimes threw her into trances, and she was given the grace of the deepest contemplation, even to union of spirit with God. Christ himself, to shew what such a bride was to him, revealed that he had in the heart of Gertrude a pleasant dwelling-place.  The Virgin Mother of God she ever sought with deep reverence as a mother and warden whom she had received from Jesus himself, and from her she had many benefits.  Toward the most Divine Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the sufferings of the Lord, her soul was moved with love and gratitude, so that she sometimes wept abundantly.  She helped with daily gifts and prayers the souls of the just condemned to the purifying fire.  She wrote much for the fostering of godliness.  She was glorified also by revelations from God, and by the gift of prophecy.  Her last illness was rather the wasting of a home-sickness to be with God than a decay of the flesh, and she left this life in the year of our Lord 1292.  God made her bright with miracles both during her life and after her death.
Hermenegild (November Saints from the Roman Breviary)
Los Angeles counties, Pacific Grove, Monterey and at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz. They can normally be seen between November and March, but experts say the majority have already left the groves, partly due to warm winter temperatures. How many monarchs are left:
Anonymous
On February 11, 1951, the Central Association of Physicians for Nature Cure Methods (Zentralverband der Ärzte für Naturheilverfahren) was formed with Brauchle as its first president. He maintained his private practice in Schönenberg near Schönau in the Black Forest from 1960 until his death on November 21, 1964. Brauchle had been a member of the Research Council of the Emerson University, Los Angeles; Honorary Member of the
Anonymous
AFGHAN WAR LOGS (EXTRACTS) These logs consist of a short report on every incident regarded as noteworthy by American troops in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009. Around 90,000 incidents are reported in the document passed to WikiLeaks, though only around 75,000 were released. These seven entries detail incidents of civilian casualties caused by British troops in October, November and December 2008. Like other similar reports throughout the logs, they give an insight into the chaotic nature of the battlefield and the constant risk – and consequences of – mistakes by coalition troops. Some of the information in each report has been removed and some acronyms have been expanded for the sake of readability, but each original report can be identified by its number and read in full on the WikiLeaks website. Some of the logs were redacted by WikiLeaks on release.
Julian Assange (Julian Assange - The Unauthorised Autobiography)
Peer Reviews Many accountants are asking whether preparation of financial statement engagements trigger a peer review requirement. Here are three questions and answers to help clarify whether your CPA firm is subject to peer review. Question 1 Are public accounting firms required to participate in a peer review program if they only issue financial statements using the preparation guidance in SSARS 21? Based on the AICPA’s rules, the answer is no. But check with your state board of accountancy. Some states require participation in a peer review program even if the AICPA does not. Question 2 If my firm participates in a peer review program, will the financial statement work performed under the preparation guidance be subject to potential review? Yes, the financial statements prepared using the preparation guidance will be included in the scope of the peer review. Question 3 Will compilations be included in peer reviews? Yes. When a peer review is performed, compilations will be included in the scope of the engagement. The issuance of a compilation report does trigger the requirement for a peer review. AICPA Guidance The February 2015 Peer Review Update, a monthly AICPA newsletter, included the following: “On November 18, 2014, the Peer Review Board (PRB) issued an exposure draft, which proposed that firms that only perform preparation engagements under AR-C Section 70 – Preparation of Financial Statements (issued as part of Statement on Standards for Accounting and Review Services (SSARS) No. 21, Statement on Standards for Accounting and Review Services: Clarification and Recodification) would not be required to enroll in the AICPA peer review program (Program). However, it also proposed that a firm’s preparation engagements would be included in the scope of a peer review when the firm either elects to enroll in the program (e.g., to comply with licensing or other requirements) or is already enrolled due to other engagements it performs. This proposal was issued in order to address the effect of these engagements on the scope of the Program. The PRB considered comments raised by the peer review community about the proposal and elected to adopt the proposed guidance changes. The changes are effective for peer reviews commencing on or after February 1, 2015.” Tracking Preparation of Financial Statement Engagements Since the preparation service will be included in the scope of peer reviews, consider that firms enrolled in a peer review program need to track the number of preparation services provided. Otherwise, the peer reviewer will not be able to determine the firm’s mix of work; the peer reviewer uses the total population of a firm’s work to select the sample of engagements to be reviewed. Create a method to track financial statement engagements performed under the preparation standard as early as possible. Peer reviews commencing on or after February 1, 2015, are to include preparation engagements. Given the nature of the preparation service—one that gets turned around quickly—it would be easy for a firm to lose track of how many financial statements were issued using this option. Peer Reviews - A Simple Summary •According to AICPA rules, firms that only perform preparation of financial statement services are not required to enroll in the AICPA peer review program (check with your state board of accountancy to see if their rules are different) •For accounting firms subject to peer review, preparation engagements will be included in the scope of peer reviews •Set up a method to track your preparation engagements; peer reviewers need to know how many preparation engagements your firm issues
Charles Hall (Preparation of Financial Statements & Compilation Engagements)
Brennan’s identification with the land, and with a persona that seems as solid and enduring as the earth itself, made him the natural choice to play Karp in The North Star (November 4, 1943). Karp, a Ukrainian peasant, is unbowed by the brutal German assault on his village at the beginning of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Counterpointed with Brennan, Erich von Stroheim exerts all of his aristocratic bearing as a German surgeon disdainful of his second-in-command, played by Martin Kosleck (himself a refugee from Hitler’s Germany who often played Nazis). Brennan’s daughter, Ruthie, working under the name Lynn Winthrop, made her screen debut as Karp’s granddaughter, who takes up arms against the invading Germans. She ended her career early when she married. When I mentioned the film to Mike Brennan, he immediately said his father did not like it: “It had too much Commie in it.” Directed by Lewis Milestone, and written by Stalinist Lillian Hellman, this three-million-dollar Goldwyn production was, at the time, considered part of the war effort aimed at bolstering America’s solidarity with its Soviet allies.
Carl Rollyson (A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan (Hollywood Legends))
Not long after this attempt, the issue arose again. A conference on November 8 instructed Joseph Smith to review the commandments and 'correct those errors or mistakes which he may discover by the holy Spirit.' Correcting 'errors' in language supposedly spoken by God again raised the question of authenticity. If from God, how could the language be corrected? Correction implied Joseph's human mind had introduced errors; if so, were the revelations really his productions? The editing process uncovered Joseph's anomalous assumptions about the nature of revealed words. He never considered the wording infallible. God's language stood in an indefinite relationship to the human language coming through the Prophet. The revealed preface to the Book of Commandments specified that the language of the revelations was Joseph Smith's: 'These commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.' They were couched in language suitable to Joseph's time. The idioms, the grammar, even the tone had to be combrehensible to 1830s Americans. Recognizing the pliability of the revealed words, Joseph freely edited the revelations 'by the Holy Spirit,' making emendations with each new edition. He thought of his revelations as imprinted on his mind, not graven in stone. With each edition, he patched pieces together and altered the wording to clarify meaning. The words were both his and God's.
Richard L. Bushman (Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling)
The politeness of a Scorpios born on November 20 hides the tense, emotional and demanding nature of their personality. Despite being stubborn and proud, you’re much more cooperative and compromising than many of your fellow zodiac signs. you’re an idealist, but at the same time you perfectly understand all the shortcomings of attributes. After you try and settle an argument, you act sort of a diplomat, with all the tact you’ll be able to, and don’t seek to shock anyone with the reality.
November 20 – Zodiac Sign
It was the third day of “you’re the only single person here.” Couple’s retreat had a way of reinvigorating Singlehood Awareness that seemed to naturally occur around the holidays, specifically November through February 14th, except the retreat offered a more concentrated formula.
Denise M. Jones (Montgomery's Diary)
On the night of November 10, 1619, while in Germany, he had certain dreams which he interpreted as a divine sign that his destiny was to found a unified science of nature.
Ingo Swann (Psychic Sexuality: The Bio-Psychic "Anatomy" of Sexual Energies)
To set the scene: Madzy Brender à Brandis was a young mother with two small children, trying to survive through years of hardship and danger – and some unexpected pleasures. In May 1942, after her husband was suddenly taken prisoner and sent to a German camp, she began writing a diary to record the details of her life – for her husband to read when he returned, if he returned. She called it “this faithful book.” Here are some passages: 28 October 1944 [when the electricity was cut off because of lack of fuel for the generating plants]: “We have to use the daylight to its utmost, and we figure this out already in the morning. [At the end of the afternoon] We flew faster and faster to use the last bits of daylight, lay the table, lay everything ready so that at 5:30 we could eat in the dusk until we couldn’t find our mouths any more. Blackout and one candle, finished eating and washed the dishes. Read to children in pyjamas and then they to bed. Then unraveled a knitted baby blanket [so that the yarn could be used to knit other things] and at 9:00 blew out the candle and continued by moonlight. But now I’m going to bed, tired but satisfied with my efforts, though very sad about all the misery.” 1 November 1944 [after a threat of having the house demolished]: “Well, our house is still standing. I filled a laundry bag with many things, and everything is standing ready [in case there was a need to evacuate]. Because there is much flying again. At one moment an Allied fighter plane flew over very low; just then three German soldiers were walking past our house and one, “as a joke,” shot his gun at the plane. Tje! What a scare we had!” 24 December 1944 [addressing her husband, still in the camp]: “The whole house is in wonderful peace and I’m sitting by the fire, which gives me just enough light to write this. [The upper door of the small heater, when opened, gave a bit of light.] My Dicks, I don’t have to tell you how very much I miss you on this evening. It is a gnawing sense of longing. But beyond that there is a sorrow in me, a despair about everything, that pervades my whole being. Besides that, however, I’ve already for days seen the light of Christ coming closer and in these days that gives me hope. So does the waxing moon, the hard frost, the bright sun – in a word, all the light in nature after that endless series of misty, rainy, dark days. And so I sit close to my unsteady little light, that constantly abandons me, and think of you. It’s as though you are very close to me. I’m so grateful for everything that I have: your love, the two children, and everything around me.” 12 February 1945 [during the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45, after one of her trips to forage for food]: “Today I went to Rika in Renswoude: 1¼ hours cycling there, 2½ hours walking back pushing a broken-down bicycle and with 25 pounds of rye [the whole grain, not flour] through streaming rain, while there was constant booming of artillery and bombing in the distance.
Marianne Brandis (This Faithful Book: A Diary from World War Two in the Netherlands)
Orgone is the name given by Wilhelm Reich to a vital energy found on the earth. It is also called the Fifth Element. Wilhelm Reich was a psychoanalyst, a protégé of Freud, practicing in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s. Wilhelm Reich's discovery of orgone began with his research of a physical bio-energy basis for Sigmund Freud's theories of neurosis in humans. Wilhelm Reich believed that traumatic experiences blocked the natural flow of life-energy in the body, leading to physical and mental disease. Wilhelm Reich concluded that the libidinal-energy that Freud discussed was the primordial-energy of life itself, connected to more than just sexuality. Orgone was everywhere and Reich measured this energy-in-motion over the surface of the earth. He even determined that its motion affected weather formation. Reich also studied the effects of the fascist society he lived in on individuals' emotional processing, and worked to promote more freedom. On November 3, 1957, Wilhelm Reich died in his jail cell of a heart failure.
Laurence Galian (666: Connection with Crowley)
On November 25, 2011, outdoor clothing company Patagonia took out a full-page ad in The New York Times with the headline: “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” Though some cynics saw the headline as a publicity stunt by a high-priced brand that many people can’t afford, it is in the details of the ad that we can find clues about the kind of culture Patagonia has and that inspired such an ad in the first place. In the body copy of the ad, Patagonia did something most other companies would consider unthinkable. They explained, in plain language, the environmental cost of making their product, in this case the bestselling R2 Fleece. The copy read: “To make this jacket required 135 liters water, enough to meet the daily needs (three glasses a day) of 45 people. Its journey from its origin as 60% recycled polyester to our Reno warehouse generated nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, 24 times the weight of the finished product. This jacket left behind, on its way to Reno, two-thirds its weight in waste.” “There is much to be done and plenty for us all to do,” the ad concludes. “Don’t buy what you don’t need. Think twice before you buy anything. … Join us … to reimagine a world where we take only what nature can replace.
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
River Rafting in Rishikesh is one of the most thrilling water based adventure sports that gives you an up close splatter of untamed nature in a world where the royal river is what you are up adjacent to. Aboard a raft, when the water wave hits your face for the first time; you be familiar with that it will take a little more than a few ounces of bravery to tame the river beast and indeed this duel next to mother nature will enrich your life forever, even if tried only once in a life time…The modern raft is a boat that is inflated comprising of a very durable and thick coated rubberized or vinyl fabric and also has a number of air chambers. The chief apparatus required for rafting are a life jacket ,Safety helmet, Safety Helmet, Paddles, River guide and a Self-Bailing Raft, etc. It is a very daring activity and it may appear a very perilous sport, but once you knowledge it, you will certainly realize the actual thrill of rafting. The best time for water river rafting is spiral summer to February to May and in winter September to November. You probably think that there is completely no way to extreme sports such as rafting can be fun at all. This is false, because all you need for a great sport like this is fun to be an expert to take manages of all rafting. It is a fun place to take part in all the summer sports, when it's nice and warm and all you need is a movement related to the water to take temperatures down. It is also a thrilling sport that many people can participate at the same time. Friends and family can get together and everybody can have a brilliant day of fun. As you begin your boat journey, you will encounter a number of rapids, which you will be necessary to sail over. Uttarakhand adventure is well known rafting company in Rishikesh. This excursion will roughly be two hours long, and will make you use all your power and skill to keep the boat under control. Water will stay splash all over you, and will keep you invigorated and bouncing if you start feeling tired due to the corporeal work that you will do. As an extreme sport, rafting certainly has its drawbacks, but not all make games? The best way to take safety measures so that you can avoid fatal accidents is to acquire a knowledgeable scout who is qualified for the chore and the best gear for rafting. For example, you should always have a life jacket on the obverse rafting, in the unfortunate event that the boat capsize; you'll be able to stay afloat and hope to swim to defense. Also, if you are unsure of your rafting skills, rapids and waterfalls stay away from very high.
uttarakhand adventure
Whatever the future may hold for Nature, its past—indeed, its very existence—owes much to religious and political discontent. In the nineteenth century, academics at the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge were required to belong to the conventional Church of England. Those barred from these institutions for reasons of religion or politics—Catholics, Jews, atheists, and dissenters of every stripe—washed up, perhaps inevitably, in London, where, in 1828, University College was founded. It was a group of such London-based academics, centered on Thomas Henry Huxley—an early champion of Darwinian evolution—who found themselves with nothing to read. The group, known as the X Club (Ladies’ Night was known as the XYves), had been devotees of a periodical called The Reader. But when that folded, the X Club persuaded Scottish publisher Alexander MacMillan to underwrite a scientific magazine. And so, on November 4, 1869, Nature was born, and the MacMillan family has published it ever since.
Henry Gee (Nature Futures 1: Science Fiction from the Leading Science Journal)
Sibling rivalry is natural. God’s love is supernatural.
Our Daily Bread Ministries (Our Daily Bread - October/November/December 2017)
mankind” (Donald B. DeYoung, “Design in Nature: The Anthropic Principle,” Impact, no. 149 [November 1985]: p. ii). A change in the rate of Earth’s rotation around the sun or on its axis would be catastrophic. The Earth would become either too hot or too cold to support life. If the moon were much nearer to the Earth, huge tides would inundate the continents. A change in the composition of the gases that make up our atmosphere would also be fatal to life. A slight change in the mass of the proton would result in the dissolution of hydrogen atoms. That would result in the destruction of the universe, because hydrogen is its dominant element.
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Colossians and Philemon MacArthur New Testament Commentary (MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series Book 22))
Despite the strong historical evidence that Jefferson was anti-slavery, probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks to accepting this fact today is the widespread modern belief that Jefferson fathered children with slave Sally Hemings. In November 1998, Nature magazine first announced that DNA evidence proved this, and most are familiar with this finding. However, most don’t know that only eight weeks later, that announcement was recalled, with the admission that the DNA test actually had not proven that Jefferson fathered any children with Hemings. As it turns out, no DNA sample from the Thomas Jefferson family line had been used in the testing. It does seem that if someone wanted to test Jefferson’s paternity, his own DNA should probably be used.
David Barton (The American Story: The Beginnings)
We received the President’s written responses in late November 2018.4 In December 2018, we informed counsel of the insufficiency of those responses in several respects.5 We noted, among other things, that the President stated on more than 30 occasions that he “does not ‘recall’ or ‘remember’ or have an ‘independent recollection’“ of information called for by the questions.6 Other answers were “incomplete or imprecise.”7 The written responses, we informed counsel, “demonstrate the inadequacy of the written format, as we have had no opportunity to ask follow-up questions that would ensure complete answers and potentially refresh your client’s recollection or clarify the extent or nature of his lack of recollection.
Robert S. Mueller III (The Mueller Report)
Up until November 16, 1850, Thoreau’s destiny had been to craft an authentic life in the face of a society growing less and less authentic, and he did this principally by attending to the divinity within and around human nature. Now, almost at a single stroke, he would become America’s premier chronicler of Nature, specifically by attending scrupulously to its rhythmicity.
Kevin Dann (Expect Great Things: The Life and Search of Henry David Thoreau)
The Mordvinic material on this Goddess speaks for itself and requires very little analysis that hasn’t been done already. Ange Patyai completes and reinforces this chapter’s topics perfectly. The Slavic Mokosh / Paraskevi can be inferred to be a close relative of the Mordvin Ange Patyai, and perhaps more distantly to Frau Holle and the Cailleach. She was a Goddess of fertility, birth, and of the guardian spirits assigned at birth (which could share many qualities with her). She had a major winter festival in November or December, but was probably celebrated prominently during the warm half of the year as well - thus casting doubt on any simplistic generalizations about her seasonal nature.
T. D. Kokoszka (Bogowie: A Study of Eastern Europe's Ancient Gods)
The case came to court on November 1 at Liverpool County Court, where Judge Thomas concluded that since the musicians were not signed to the ship’s articles they were not legally crew members. Therefore, they were not employees of White Star. They were employees of C. W. & F. N. Black, but they couldn’t successfully sue the Blacks because there was no evidence of negligence on their part. Thomas declared: “The ship owners did not treat the bandsmen as members of the crew. Their duties on board were in the nature of supplying a luxury, and their engagement was not directly by the owners. In these circumstances it would be a wrong application of the word ‘seaman’ to say they came within the act.
Steve Turner (The Band That Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic)
NOVEMBER 1 • Order is a lovely thing; On disarray it lays its wing, Teaching simplicity to sing. —Anna Hempstead Branch Things and events have their own order. It’s human to want to impose order from the outside—our order; but often, our attempt to put things in order resembles the old man who tried to push the river. It never went any faster, and if he stopped pushing, it got there just the same. Some people seem to have a knack for order. It could be that they’ve learned to let things take their own shape. If order is natural, then maybe disorder is what we create with our human fussing. It could be, too, that disorder is in the eye of the beholder—especially if the beholder is a perfectionist. Serenity is the ability to appreciate natural order. Today I’ll try to be light on my feet and get out of my own way.
Karen Casey (The Promise of a New Day: Meditations for Reflection and Renewal (Hazelden Meditations))
Turkey’s deteriorating relationship with Russia after two of its F-16s shot down a Russian SU-24 fighter-bomber over Syria on November 24, 2015, gave Erdogan a new incentive to improve relations with Israel. Russia supplies more than half of Turkey’s natural gas, and Vladimir Putin has shown that he’s willing to use Russia’s energy resources as a geopolitical weapon. Israel, meanwhile, is developing a potentially huge reserve of natural gas, the appropriately named Leviathan field, in the eastern Mediterranean.
Derek P. Gilbert (The Great Inception: Satan's Psyops from Eden to Armageddon)
I met Chris at the Student Union. We both used to study there between our 9:30 and 11:30 classes. I had seen him on campus before. He was always wearing this yellow sweatshirt and giant headphones. The kind of headphones that say, “I may not take my clothes seriously. I may not have brushed or even washed my hair today. But I pronounce the word ‘music’ with a capital ‘M.’ Like God.” So I had noticed him before. He had Eddie Vedder hair. Ginger brown, tangly. He was too thin (much thinner than he is now), and there were permanent smudges under his eyes. Like he was too cool to eat or sleep. I thought he was dreamy. I called him Headphone Boy. I couldn’t believe my luck when I realized we studied in the Union at the same time. Well, I studied. He would pull a paperback out of his pocket and read. Never a textbook. Sometimes, he’d just sit there with his eyes closed, listening to music, his legs all jangly and loose. He gave me impure thoughts. (...) There we were. In the Student Union. He always sat in the corner. And I always sat one row across from him, three seats down. I took to leaving my 9:30 class early so I could primp and be in my spot looking casual by the time he sauntered in. He never looked at me – or anyone else, to my relief – and he never took off his headphones. I used to fantasize about what song he might be listening to… and whether it would be the first dance at our wedding… and whether we’d go with traditional wedding photography or black and white… Probably black and white, magazine style. There’d be lots of slightly out-of-focus, candid shots of us embracing with a romantic, faraway look in our eyes. Of course, Headphone Boy already had a faraway look in his eyes, which my friend Lynn attributed to “breakfast with Mary Jane.” This started in September. Sometime in October, one of his friends walked by and called him “Chris.” (A name, at last. “Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.”) One Tuesday night in November, I saw him at the library. I spent the next four Tuesday nights there, hoping it was a pattern. It wasn’t. Sometimes I’d allow myself to follow him to his 11:30 class in Andrews Hall, and then I’d have to run across campus to make it to my class in the Temple Building. By the end of the semester, I was long past the point of starting a natural, casual conversation with him. I stopped trying to make eye contact. I even started dating a Sig Ep I met in my sociology class. But I couldn’t give up my 10:30 date with Headphone Boy. I figured, after Christmas break, our schedules would change, and that would be that. I’d wait until then to move on. All my hope was lost. And then… the week before finals, I showed up at the Union at my usual time and found Chris sitting in my seat. His headphones were around his neck, and he watched me walk toward him. At least, I thought he was watching me. He had never looked at me before, never, and the idea made my skin burn. Before I could solve the problem of where to sit, he was talking to me. He said, “Hey.” And I said, “Hi.” And he said, “Look…” His eyes were green. He kind of squinted when he talked. “I’ve got a 10:30 class next semester, so… we should probably make other arrangements.” I was struck numb. I said, “Are you mocking me?” “No,” he said, “I’m asking you out.” “Then, I’m saying yes.” “Good..,” he said, “we could have dinner. You could still sit across from me. It would be just like a Tuesday morning. But with breadsticks.” “Now you’re mocking me.” “Yes.” He was still smiling. “Now I am.” And that was that. We went out that weekend. And the next weekend. And the next. It was wildly romantic.
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
Six out of eight members of the first politburo of the Bolshevik Party created in November 1917 – Lev Kamenev, Nikolay Krestinsky, Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Andrei Bubnov, and Grigori Sokolnikov – were killed by Stalin between 1936 and 1941; only Lenin and Stalin himself died natural deaths.
Enzo Traverso (Revolution: An Intellectual History)
My biggest problem during the postwar period was the doom and gloom of its most celebrated thinkers. I didn’t share their negativity about the human condition. I had studied how primates resolve conflicts, sympathize with each other, and seek cooperation. Violence is not their default condition. Most of the time, they live in harmony. The same applies to our own species. I was shocked, therefore, in 1976 when Dawkins asserted in The Selfish Gene, “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.”6 I’d argue quite the contrary! Without our long evolution as intensely social beings, we’d be unlikely to care for our fellow humans. We have been programmed to pay attention to each other and offer help when needed. What else would be the point of living in groups? Many animals do, and they do so only because group life, which includes giving and receiving assistance, yields tremendous advantages over a solitary life. One time Dawkins and I politely disagreed in person. On a cold November morning, I took him and a cameraman up a tower at the Yerkes Field Station. It overlooked the chimps that I knew so well. I pointed out Peony, an old female. Her arthritis was so acute that we had seen younger females hurry to fetch water for her. Instead of letting Peony slowly trek to the water faucet, they’d run ahead of her to suck up a mouthful and return to spit it into her mouth, which she opened wide. They also sometimes placed their hands on her ample behind to push her up into the climbing frame so that she could join a cluster of grooming friends. Peony received this aid from individuals unrelated to her, who surely couldn’t expect any favors in return because she was not in a condition to deliver them. How to explain such behavior? And how to explain all the acts of kindness that we ourselves engage in every day, sometimes with complete strangers? Dawkins tried to salvage his theory by blaming genes, saying that they must be “misfiring.” Genes, however, are little strings of DNA devoid of intentions. They do what they do without any goals in mind, which means that they can’t be selfish or unselfish. They also can’t accidentally miss any goals.
Frans de Waal (Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist)
All in all, the process of living is the essence of life, not the successes and failures of it.
Haris Dimitriadis (EPICURUS and THE PLEASANT LIFE: A Philosophy of Nature Kindle Edition– November 30, 2022 - Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition)
Last year I saw three migrating Canada geese flying low over the frozen duck pond where I stood. I heard a heart-stopping blast of speed before I saw them. They thundered across the pond, and back, and back again. I think of this now, and my brain vibrates to the blurred bastinado of feathered bone. “Our God shall come,” it says in a psalm for Advent, “and shall not keep silence; there shall go before him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred up round about him.” It is the shock I remember. Not only does something come if you wait, but it pours over you like a waterfall, like a tidal wave. You wait in all naturalness without expectation or hope, emptied, translucent, and that which comes rocks and topples you; it will shear, loose, launch, winnow, grind. I have glutted on richness and welcome hyssop. This distant silver November sky, these sere branches of trees, shed, and bearing their pure and secret colors- this is the real world, not the world gilded and pearled. I stand under wiped skies directly, naked, without intercessors. Frost winds have lofted my body’s bones with all their restless sprints to an airborne raven’s glide. I am buoyed by a calm and effortless longing, an angled pitch of the will, like the set of the wings of the monarch which climbed a hill by falling still.
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers. In it, he notes a well-documented Canadian study that shows kids born in January tend to make better grades and score more goals in sports than those born later in the year. The reason, he deduces, is that grade-school kids who were born just after the cut-off date for the school year (January) are always a year older than the kids who were born just before it (December), thus having a full year of mental and physical advantages.   The January kids aren’t naturally brighter and more physically capable than kids born in November and December. They’re just a year older. In elementary school, one year is a lot.   The school system doesn’t see that, so the January kids get labeled as gifted, while the December kids are called slow. Once established, those categories are hard to break out of. The gifted kids get enrolled in advanced classes, increasing the pace of their education and making the gap between them and the December kids bigger.   The physically larger January kids are recruited by better PeeWee teams, then better High Schools and colleges. That’s why, as shown in Gladwell’s book, professional sports leagues – and hockey leagues in particular – have an inordinately high percentage of athletes that were born in the first three months of the year and a much lower percentage of December birthdays.
Karl Vaters (The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking that Divides Us)
Only love can dispel hate From Satsang with Giten on Buddha, November 12, 2015, in Stockholm Buddha says: SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MINDAND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOUAS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRIVES THE CART When Buddha uses the concept "impure mind", he means mind. Mind is impure, and no-mind is pure. SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MIND means to speak or act from the mind. AND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOU means that misery and suffering is the result of the mind, because the mind means unawareness. Mind will bring trouble and suffering as certain AS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRIVES THE CART. WE ARE WHAT WE THINK ALL THAT WE ARE ARISES WITH OUR THOUGHTS SPEAK OR ACT WITH A PURE MIND AND HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW YOU AS YOUR SHADOW, UNSHAKABLE When Buddha says "pure mind", he means no-mind, awareness. Happiness will follow you if you have a pure mind or no-mind. Suffering is a result of mind, of unawareness, happiness is a result of no-mind, of awareness. Happiness cannot be searched for directly, happiness can only be found if you do not search it directly. On the contrary, you have to search for awareness. When awareness comes, happiness comes of its own accord. "LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME, HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME" LIVE WITH SUCH THOUGHTS AND YOU LIVE IN HATE "LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME" ABANDON SUCH THOUGHTS AND LIVE IN LOVE Fear and hate exists in the past and the future, love exists in the moment, in the here and now. Love exists in the present moment. Fear and hate has a reference in the past. Somebody has abused you in the past, and you are carrying it like a wound. Fear and hate is a limitation. If you hate somebody, you also create a hate in the heart of that person towards you. The world lives in fear, hate, destructiveness and violence. Hate creates hell on earth, love creates a paradise on earth. True love comes from your inner being. It is spontaneously welling up of joy, which has nothing to do with the past or the future. True love is in the moment. IN THIS WORLDHATE NEVER YET DISPELLED HATE ONLY LOVE DISPELS HATE THIS IS THE LAW ANCIENT AND INEXHAUSTIBLE Hate never dispels hate, darkness cannot dispel darkness. Only love can dispel hate. The eternal law is that only love dispels hate, only light dispels darkness. Bring light into a room and the darkness disappears by itself. How can you bring light into your own being? Through becoming silent, aware, awake and conscious. That is how to bring the light in. The moment you are aware and awake, hate will not be found. It is not possible to hate somebody with awareness. You can only hate somebody in unawareness. When you are conscious, hate disappears, when you are not conscious, then hate is there. Love and hate, light and darkness, cannot exist together, because hate is the absence of love, darkness is the absence of light. YOU TOO SHALL PASS AWAY KNOWING THIS, HOW CAN YOU QUARREL We waste our life in quarreling, in conflict, when life is so short. Use your whole energy for awareness and meditation. Then you can become a light. Meditation will make you awake, because you will discover your inner being. Meditation brings an awakening. For the first time you will feel the truth of your own being.
Swami Dhyan Giten (Silence is the Way: The Teachings of Buddha. Golden Nuggets of Love, Truth and Wisdom)
So, despite its contained size, consciousness is able to influence and significantly reprogramme larger portions of the unconscious mind, where our perceptions and feelings are stored. To affect them, we must use the classic way of learning through repetition. If we can transform the deeply rooted negative beliefs and habits into positive ones through learning, the reality, which we will experience, will be adjusted accordingly.
Haris Dimitriadis (EPICURUS and THE PLEASANT LIFE: A Philosophy of Nature Kindle Edition– November 30, 2022 - Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition)
The problem is that the ISIS network defies conventional counter-terrorist tactics. Contrary to popular belief, this is not because its relies on ‘lone wolves’, who by their very nature are hard to detect. The Paris attacks of November 2015 were a well-planned operation involving around eighteen people in addition to the nine attackers.
Niall Ferguson (The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook)
A day before the November 2015 Paris attacks, President Obama was feeling a little more hopeful about the war against the Islamic State. Noting that the caliphate hadn’t made any significant territorial gains in some time, Obama said it had been “contained.”23 As we know now, this contention was obscenely countered the very next day. Terrorism has also come of age with the millennial generation. The Islamic State of today is miles from the Al Qaeda it grew out of. Its supporters aren’t coming from Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan anymore. They’re living in Belgium, France, Britain, and, as we saw with the attacks in San Benardino and Orlando, even the United States. They’re not refugees or illegal immigrants. They’re legal, passport-carrying, Western-born or naturalized citizens of our countries. So what does bombing them do now? The more you bomb over there, the more the appeal grows over here. And there’s proof of that from the last three wars: the Islamic State itself is the visible result. ISIS isn’t just a geographical entity. There are kids sitting across Western countries, right here in our cities and neighborhoods, being inspired and groomed by the group’s wide-ranging social media expertise and slickly produced propaganda videos as we speak. These kids are not coming here from Syria. They’ve always been here.
Ali A. Rizvi (The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason)
Emerson’s leading idea about history is that there is one mind, of which history is the record. Another way to put it is to say that human nature—the human mind—is and has been essentially the same in all ages and places. There are variations, of course, sometimes important and even blinding differences. But the similarities between people, even those of widely different times and places, far outweigh, in importance, the differences. If the human mind has always been essentially the same, then it has neither progressed nor declined from age to age. Chronology, therefore, is not what is important in history. All ages are equal; the world exists for the writer today just as much as it did for Homer. This way of looking at history, which sets the present as high as any past era, is a direct response to what W. J. Bate has so brilliantly described as the burden of the past, it is the basis for most of Emerson’s best work from 1835 to 1850, and it quickly became a deep and permanent conviction—and a liberating, enabling conviction for Henry Thoreau. In October of 1837, evidently at Emerson’s urging, he began to keep the journal that would be his own history, and by the third week in November he was telling himself to read Virgil to be reminded of the essential uniformity of human nature, past and present, Roman and American.
Robert D. Richardson Jr. (Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind)
Come when you should. All this will have been passing through me for you to breathe. I have gazed at it for so long, for your sake, namelessly, with the gaze of poverty, and have loved it, as if already you drank it in. And yet: when I recall that all this- myself, stars, flowers, the sharp flight of a bird out of gesturing brushwood, the clouds' haughtiness and what the wind could do to me at night, whisking me out of one being into next,-that all this, in endless succession (for I am all this, am what the potion's roar left behind in my ear, am the exquisite taste which once a ripe fruit expended on my lips),- that all this, when once you're really here, all, even back to the boy's low gaze into the chalices of high-grown flower fields, even back to one of my mother's smiles which I perhaps, thronged with your being, shall think of as something stolen-, that all this I then shall have to inexhaustibly outgive, night and day, so much unsparingly assimilated nature-, never knowing if what begins to glow in you is mine: perhaps you'll grow more beautiful entirely from your own beauty, from the profusion of restedness in your limbs, from what is sweetest in your blood,-for all I know, because there is awareness even in your hand, because your hair flatters your shoulders, because something in the dark breeze is one with you, because your forget me totally, because you don't strain to hear, because you are a woman: when I recall how I've thrust tenderness into that blood I'd never startled, the voiceless heartstream of things held dear Toledo, November 1912
Rainer Maria Rilke (Uncollected Poems)