Obnoxious People Quotes

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.

Most people are full of themselves and speak only the obnoxiously superficial, in other words they're annoying as hell

You're going to meet many people with domineering personalities: the loud, the obnoxious, those that noisily stake their claims in your territory and everywhere else they set foot on. This is the blueprint of a predator. Predators prey on gentleness, peace, calmness, sweetness and any positivity that they sniff out as weakness. Anything that is happy and at peace they mistake for weakness. It's not your job to change these people, but it's your job to show them that your peace and gentleness do not equate to weakness. I have always appeared to be fragile and delicate but the thing is, I am not fragile and I am not delicate. I am very gentle but I can show you that the gentle also possess a poison. I compare myself to silk. People mistake silk to be weak but a silk handkerchief can protect the wearer from a gunshot. There are many people who will want to befriend you if you fit the description of what they think is weak; predators want to have friends that they can dominate over because that makes them feel strong and important. The truth is that predators have no strength and no courage. It is you who are strong, and it is you who has courage. I have lost many a friend over the fact that when they attempt to rip me, they can't. They accuse me of being deceiving; I am not deceiving, I am just made of silk. It is they who are stupid and wrongly take gentleness and fairness for weakness. There are many more predators in this world, so I want you to be made of silk. You are silk.

For a moment I can't help thinking how decent he is - that there's some hope for him beyond the obnoxious image he displays. Maybe deep down he is a sensitive guy, who sees us as real people with real issues. I want to say something nice. Some kind of thanks. I stand there, rehearsing it in my mind. "Oh my God," he says, "did you see that girl's tits?" Maybe not today.

I hate stand-up comics; I think funny is something you are, not something you desperately try to be in front of a roomful of obnoxious people.

Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out.

It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing? Would Great Ormond Street be so attractive a cause if its beds were riddled with obnoxious little criminals that had “brought it on themselves?

She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those people who changed diapers for free but still got treated like a rented mule.

Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass - anything and everything - the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone's ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don't understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such.

he found the idea of someone who was not only privileged, but was also sorry for himself because he thought the world didn’t really understand the problems of privileged people, deeply obnoxious.

innovators need to be disagreeable. By disagreeable, I don’t mean obnoxious or unpleasant. I mean that on that fifth dimension of the Big Five personality inventory, “agreeableness,” they tend to be on the far end of the continuum. They are people willing to take social risks—to do things that others might disapprove of.

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.

Tactus claps his hands together in laughter and draws Sevro in for an obnoxious hug. They are two very peculiar people. But I suppose snuggling in horse corpses gives a bond—makes twins of a morbid sort.

Retribution seen in natural catastrophes is manufactured by all too eager and all too pious people, each one convinced the world will end but spare them and them alone. But we all know, the world is inherited by the obnoxious, not the righteous

Hip-hop has always been controversial, and for good reason. When you watch a children's show and they've got a muppet rapping about the alphabet, it's cool, but it's not really hip-hop. The music is meant to be provocative - which doesn't mean it's necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it's dense with multiple meanings. Great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don't necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it. Instead it plants dissonance in your head. You can enjoy a song that knocks in the club or has witty punch lines the first time you hear it. But great rap retains mystery. It leaves shit rattling around in your head that won't make sense till the fifth or sixth time through. It challenges you. Which is the other reason hip-hop is controversial: People don't bother trying to get it. The problem isn't in the rap or the rapper or the culture. The problem is that so many people don't even know how to listen to the music.

He was a bit of an ass. Head strong, impulsive and definitely obnoxious. But Yadriel could see how ferociously he cared about the people who were important to him. He believed Julian would die for his friends. He probably had.

The Vikings thought they were big shots because they had boats. You know how obnoxious people get when they own a boat. They always want to go on the boat. "We're taking the boat out this weekend. It's supposed to be beautiful. Why don't you come? You never come. You're always working. You know how many people wish they would get invited to come on the boat? And you turn it down.

Our best teachers. The most toxic, obnoxious people in our lives can be our best teachers. The next time you’re in the presence of someone who irks or offends you, soften your eyes and tell yourself, “Human, no more, no less. Human, like me.” Then ask, “What are you here to teach me?

Who calls at Habetrot's chamber?' comes a whispery voice. Oak raises his eyebrows at me, as though he intends me to answer. Fine, if that's what he wants. 'Suren, whose garb has been deemed inadequate by an obnoxious prince, despite the fact I've seen people go naked to revels.' Rather than be insulted, Oak laughs delightedly.

I find it very obnoxious when people present problems with obvious solutions, dismiss the solution, and continue complaining about the problem.

You know, Sir Devlan. Many women might find the quiet type endearing," I say. "I admit, a man of few words has an attractive quality." His head turns toward me. "But seeing how you're one of the few people I have to converse with, your lack of conversational skills can be obnoxious.

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

Most of us spend too much time wishing that people would be other than they are.

The other one was filled with loud and obnoxious tourists. Always boasting on winning a sand castle competition and seeing who could get tanned first. What a whacky bunch of people.

The point I’m trying to make is that I am the most unpleasant, rude, ignorant, and all-around obnoxious arsehole that anyone could possibly have the misfortune to meet. I am dismissive of the virtuous, unaware of the beautiful, and uncomprehending in the face of the happy. So if I didn’t understand I was being asked to be the best man, it is because I never expected to be anybody’s best friend, and certainly not the best friend of the bravest and kindest and wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune of knowing. John, I am a ridiculous man, redeemed only by the warmth and constancy of your friendship. But as I am apparently your best friend, I cannot congratulate you on your choice of companion. Actually, now I can. Mary, when I say you deserve this man, it is the highest compliment of which I am capable. John, you have endured war, and injury, and tragic loss — so sorry again about that last one. So know this: Today, you sit between the woman you have made your wife and the man you have saved. In short, the two people who love you most in all this world. And I know I speak for Mary as well when I say we will never let you down, and we have a lifetime ahead to prove that. Now, on to some funny stories about John...

...I say long live the bountiful personality. Long live the people who make people mad. Long live the ones who won't listen to sense. Long live the people who are forever getting warned, "one of these times, you're going to go too far!" Long live the fiery, the unguilty, the unhumble, the dazzling, the cheerful and the brave. Even if they don't live long, even if they look obnoxious or even stupid in a certain light, they're still wonderful and magnificent to me, and they're free free free.

As porn has gone mainstream, ushered two decades ago into middle-class living rooms and dens with VCRs and now available on the Internet, it has devolved into an open fusion of physical abuse and sex, of extreme violence, horrible acts of degradation against women with an increasingly twisted eroticism. Porn has always primarily involved the eroticization of unlimited male power, but today it also involves the expression of male power through the physical abuse, even torture, of women. Porn reflects the endemic cruelty of our society. This is a society that does not blink when the industrial slaughter unleashed by the United States and its allies kills hundreds of civilians in Gaza or hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Porn reflects back the cruelty of a culture that tosses its mentally ill on the street, warehouses more than 2 million people in prisons, denies health care to tens of millions of the poor, champions gun ownership over gun control, and trumpets an obnoxious and super patriotic nationalism and rapacious corporate capitalism. The violence, cruelty, and degradation of porn are expressions of a society that has lost the capacity for empathy.

My instincts tell me that if people are going to such great lengths to stop me, I should go to even greater lengths to persevere. I would describe that as admirable, yet strangely most people consider it annoying and obnoxious.

She’d been hunting for an indescribable thrill, a feeling she remembered from nights out with her friends, but she’d misunderstood where the feeling came from. It wasn’t about drinking and partying in some dingy club. It had been about the people. The constant laughter they shared, too high on each other to care that they were being obnoxious. Group trips to the bathroom like a small army unit, where the mission objective was helping each other squat over filthy toilets without their dresses touching the seat. Belonging.

It is not easy—perhaps not even desirable—to judge other people by a consistent standard. Conduct obnoxious, even unbearable, in one person may be readily tolerated in another; apparently indispensable principles of behaviour are in practice relaxed—not always with impunity—in the interests of those whose nature seems to demand an exceptional measure.

And didst thou imbibe mighty potions from the fruit of the grape (...)? And hast thou one Ache, this morning (...) appertaining unto Head, and much repentance in thy Soul forsooth?

Accepting people's quirks or flaws doesn't just take changing them off your to-do list—it also gives you the time and energy to change the things you can.

I knew what I needed, but asking for specific emotional things felt impossible and obnoxious. He was a human being. He should just instinctively know how to take care of an emotionally exhausted, sick, post-abortion wife. He ought to just know, I thought. I shouldn’t have to fucking ask.

I’m quite aware of what I am, Kit. I know how people look at me. I’m the guy you see in some bar, being loud and obnoxious. I’m the jock at your college, throwing a basketball onto your desk as you’re trying to study. I know I am. But I want more than that now. I’m too old to be playing games any more.

For a moment I can’t help thinking how decent he is—that there’s some hope for him beyond the obnoxious image he displays. Maybe deep down he is a sensitive guy, who sees us as real people with real issues.

She also keeps talking about the Billie Holiday record she bought for me. And she says she wants to expose me to all these great things. And to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be exposed to all these great things if it means that I'll have to listen to Mary Elizabeth talk about all the great things she exposed me to all the time. It almost feels like of the three things involved: Mary Elizabeth, me, and the great things, only the first one matters to Mary Elizabeth. I don't understand that. I would give someone a record so they could love the record, not so they would always know that I gave it to them.

The many ... whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible." "Public opinion deserves ... to be esteemed as much as to be despised; to be despised for its concrete consciousness and expression, to be esteemed for its essential fundamental principle, which only shines, more or less dimly, through its concrete expression." "The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as freedom to do what one pleases. Such a view belongs to the uneducated crudity and superficiality of naïve thinking." "In public opinion all is false and true, but to discover the truth in it is the business of the great man. The great man of his time is he who expresses the will and the meaning of that time, and then brings it to completion; he acts according to the inner spirit and essence of his time, which he realizes. And he who does not understand how to despise public opinion, as it makes itself heard here and there, will never accomplish anything great." "The laws of morality are not accidental, but are essentially Rational. It is the very object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of men, and in their dispositions, should be duly recognized; that it should have a manifest existence, and maintain its position. It is the absolute interest of Reason that this moral Whole should exist; and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes who have founded states - however rude these may have been." "Such are all great historical men, whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will of the World Spirit. ... World historical men - the Heroes of an epoch - must be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to satisfy themselves, not others." "A World-Historical individual is devoted to the One Aim, regardless of all else. It is even possible that such men may treat other great, even sacred interests inconsiderately; conduct which is indeed obnoxious to moral reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many an innocent flower or crush to pieces many an object in its path.

Some individuals have what can be considered to be an ‘abusive personality.’ Although they can be somewhat charming at times and sometimes manage to put on a false front in public when it is absolutely necessary, their basic personality is characterized by: 1. A need to dominate and control others 2. A tendency to blame others for all their problems and to take all their frustrations out on other people. 3. Verbal abuse 4. Frequent emotional and sometimes physical outbursts, and 5. An overwhelming need to retaliate and hurt other for real and imagined slights or affronts They insist on being ‘respected’ while giving no respect to others. Their needs are paramount, and they show a blatant disregard for the needs and feelings of others. These people wreak havoc with the lives of nearly every person they come in contact with. They verbally abuse their coworkers or employees, they are insulting and obnoxious to service people, they constantly blame others when something goes wrong. When this type of person becomes intimately involved with a partner, there is absolutely nothing that partner can do to prevent abuse from occurring. Their only hope is to get as far away from the person as possible.

Bossy means “given to ordering people around, highhanded, domineering, overly authoritative, dictatorial, abrasive.” ...Could it be that girls are called bossy when they’re… well, bossy? Could it be that boys are also called bossy for the same reason?

I headed to the waiting area next to the train airlock and joined a crowd of tourists. All the seats were taken and dozens more people stood around. Several families had obnoxious kids bouncing off the walls. In this case, “bouncing off the walls” is not just a figure of speech. The overstimulated kids were literally bouncing off the walls. Lunar gravity is the worst thing to ever happen to parents.

There is ample reason to question whether low self-esteem is to blame for violence. Think of the obnoxious, hostile, or bullying people you have known—were they humble, modest, and self-effacing? (That's mainly what low self-esteem is like.) Most of the aggressive people I have known were the opposite: conceited, arrogant, and often consumed with thoughts about how they were superior to everyone else.

Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick -- you will go far.' If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples.

We also have a growing population of unwelcome out-of-town wildlife species that have come here and clearly intend to stay. Two invasive species in particular have caused serious concern: Burmese pythons, and New Yorkers. The New Yorkers have been coming here for years, which is weird because pretty much all they do once they get to Florida is bitch about how everything here sucks compared to the earthly paradise that is New York. They continue to root, loudly, for the Jets, the Knicks, the Mets, and the Yankees; they never stop declaring, loudly, that in New York the restaurants are better, the stores are nicer, the people are smarter, the public transportation is free of sharks, etc. The Burmese pythons are less obnoxious, but just as alarming in their own way.

Listen to very few people obnoxious enough to give advice.

Fame, like being in love, can at times bring with it the conceited (and obnoxious) belief that you are a somebody person in a world of nobody people.

There was something obnoxious, he thought, in people who introduced themselves by their surnames while calling one by one’s first.

Although airing your grievances with others may help you feel less alone and on rare occasions gets you good advice, more often than not it keeps you stuck in a bad mood.

There was something obnoxious, he thought, in people who introduced themselves by their surnames while calling one by one's first.

Another word I’ve added to “the list” is “conversation,” as in “We need to have a national conversation about_________.” This is employed by the left to mean “You need to listen to me use the word ‘diversity’ for an hour.” The right employs obnoxious terms as well—“libtard,” “snowflake,” etc.—but because they can be applied to me personally it seems babyish to ban them. I’ve outlawed “meds,” “bestie,” “bucket list,” “dysfunctional,” “expat,” “cab-sav,” and the verb “do” when used in a restaurant, as in “I’ll do the snails on cinnamon toast.” “Ugh,” Ronnie agrees. “Do!—that’s the worst.” “My new thing,” I told her, “is to look at the menu and say, ‘I’d like to purchase the veal chop.’” A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. “My bad,” for example, and “I’ve got your back” and “You go, girlfriend.” They’re the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.

By the second day, the song lyrics had faded, but in their place came darker irritations. Gradually, I started to become aware of a young man sitting just behind me and to the left. I had noticed him when he first entered the mediation hall, and had felt a flash of annoyance at the time: something about him, especially his beard, had struck me as too calculatedly dishevelled, as if he were trying to make a statement. Now his audible breathing was starting to irritate me, too. It seemed studied, unnatural, somehow theatrical. My irritation slowly intensified - a reaction that struck me as entirely reasonable and proportionate at the time. It was all beginning to feel like a personal attack. How much contempt must the bearded meditator have for me, I seethed silently, deliberately to decide to ruin the serenity of my meditation by behaving so obnoxiously? Experienced retreat-goers, it turns out, have a term for this phenomenon. The call it 'vipassana vendetta'. In the stillness tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever's available. Being on retreat had temporarily separated me from all the real causes of distress in my life, and so, apparently, I was inventing new ones. As I shuffled to my narrow bed that evening, I was still smarting about the loud-breathing man. I did let go of the vendetta eventually - but only because I'd fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep

If we’re being completely honest, I don’t even think you should have to be “a couple” in the classical sense to get married. I want people to be able to marry as many of their platonic friends as they want. If I’m Phoebe (and I am), why shouldn’t I be able to marry both Monica and Rachel? I mean we all (basically) live together, we’re functionally co-dependent, and we all find Ross obnoxious. Sounds like marriage material to me . . .

There's a reason for everything. Every human behaviour, every human thought, every human emotion, every human reaction - doesn't matter what it looks like on the outside - reflects a desire to be loved or to love. And as Marshall Rosenberg who teaches Non-Violent Communication said "very often we make these communications..." he calls it a "the tragic communication of a need". So that it doesn't matter how people behave or speak, underneath it there is a basic human need. That human need was at some point frustrated in their early development. And that person has been all their life trying to have that need met, doesn't matter how they behaved. Even if they behaved in the most agressive and inhuman and obnoxious fashion, there's always a reason for it. So that means when somebody comes for help, then you have to see that need and that real human being underneath the words and underneath the behavior. In other words, you have to see the person more clearly than they see themselves. Not so that you can deliver your opinion to them and have them accept it, but so that you can mirror them back to their true selves.

The easiest person to like is a SanPhleg. The overpowering and often obnoxious tendencies of a Sanguine are offset by the gracious, easygoing Phlegmatic. SanPhlegs are happy-go-lucky people whose carefree spirit and good humor make them lighthearted entertainers. Helping people is their regular business, along with various forms of sales. The least extrovertish of the Sanguines, they often react to their environment and circumstances rather than being proactive and self-motivated.

What the hell are you proud of? Proud to live in the country with the most intrusive, obnoxious, abusive tax collectors in the world? Proud to live in a country that has a higher percentage of people in prison than any other country in the world? Proud to be ruled by a government that has started and perpetuated more military conflicts in more areas of the world than any other in history? Proud to live in a country where the politicians and bankers have seen to it that you, your children, and your children’s children will forever be their indentured servants, to be forever herded and fleeced like sheep? Proud to live in a country where the biggest slimeballs on the planet tell you what you can eat, what you can drink, what you can drive, what you can build, where you can work, what you can produce, and what you can think?

Apparently one of the problems they had solved was bribery. You couldn’t bribe a Rat-priest. (Well, you probably could, but only by offering to donate the money to the poor.) They were all genuinely good people who wanted to make the world a better place, and how obnoxious was that?

... television looks to be an absolute godsend for a human subspecies that loves to watch people but hates to be watched itself. For the television screen affords access only one-way. A psychic ball-check valve. We can see Them; They can’t see Us. We can relax, unobserved, as we ogle. I happen to believe this is why television also appeals so much to lonely people. To voluntary shut-ins. Every lonely human I know watches way more than the average U.S. six hours a day. The lonely, like the fictive, love one-way watching. For lonely people are usually lonely not because of hideous deformity or odor or obnoxiousness—in fact there exist today support- and social groups for persons with precisely these attributes. Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly. Let’s call the average U.S. lonely person Joe Briefcase. Joe Briefcase fears and loathes the strain of the special self-consciousness which seems to afflict him only when other real human beings are around, staring, their human sense-antennae abristle. Joe B. fears how he might appear, come across, to watchers. He chooses to sit out the enormously stressful U.S. game of appearance poker. But lonely people, at home, alone, still crave sights and scenes, company. Hence television. Joe can stare at Them on the screen; They remain blind to Joe. It’s almost like voyeurism.

There is a boy in the neighborhood...whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out three years ago, when he was first arrested. He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help...He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows at last that he has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us in this regard. We are all unlovable. More tan that, the action of this boy's life points beyond itself, it points to the Gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us though we have nothing acceptable to offer him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.

Why are you willing to flip hamburgers, sell health insurance or babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper? People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of their collective imagination. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted.

A goodly soup, i'troth," he said, and he Trothed at the chicken, and Trothed at the waiter, and Trothed at both the waitresses (even the one who was not serving at the table at which they were sitting), and Trothed at the cheese, and Trothed at the furnishing of the dining-room (which met with his approval), and Trothed and Trothed and Trothed.

If we were to make a list of people we don’t like—people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt—we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can’t face. If we were to come up with one word about each of the troublemakers in our lives, we would find ourselves with a list of descriptions of our own rejected qualities.

The prescription for spiritual transformation has often been too individualistically oriented. We are encouraged to engage in spiritual disciplines so that we might have the power to do what we can’t do by will power alone. But what happens when people don’t have the “will power” to engage spiritual disciples on a consistent basis? Our character is left untended. “In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deepest channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You’ll become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy, and you and they will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else.”[1] So what are we to do?

What do you and Chris even talk about?” he asks. “You have nothing in common.” “What do we talk about?” I counter. Peter laughs. “Point taken.” He pushes away from the wall and puts his head in my lap, and I go completely still. I try to make my voice sound normal as I say, “You’re in a really strange mood today.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “What kind of mood am I in?” Peter sure loves to hear about himself. Normally, I don’t mind, but today I’m not in the mood to oblige him. He already has too many people in his life telling him how great he is. “The obnoxious kind,” I say, and he laughs. “I’m sleepy.” He closes his eyes and snuggles against me. “Tell me a bedtime story, Covey.” “Don’t flirt,” I tell him. His eyes fly open. “I wasn’t!” “Yes, you were. You flirt with everyone. It’s like you can’t help yourself.” “Well, I don’t ever flirt with you.” Peter sits back up and checks his phone, and suddenly I’m wishing I didn’t say anything at all.

When people say things that we find offensive, civic charity asks that we resist the urge to attribute to immorality or prejudice views that can be equally well explained by other motives. It asks us to give the benefit of doubts, the assumption of goodwill, and the gift of attention. When people say things that agree with or respond thoughtfully to our arguments, we acknowledge that they have done so. We compliment where we can do so honestly, and we praise whatever we can legitimately find praiseworthy in their beliefs and their actions. When we argue with a forgiving affection, we recognize that people are often carried away by passions when discussing things of great importance to them. We overlook slights and insults and decline to respond in kind. We apologize when we get something wrong or when we hurt someone's feelings, and we allow others to apologize to us when they do the same. When people don't apologize, we still don't hold grudges or hurt them intentionally, even if we feel that they have intentionally hurt us. If somebody is abusive or obnoxious, we may decline to participate in further conversation, but we don't retaliate or attempt to make them suffer. And we try really hard not to give in to the overwhelming feeling that arguments must be won - and opponents destroyed - if we want to protect our own status or sense of worth. We never forget that our opponents are human beings who possess innate dignity and fellow citizens who deserve respect.

After so many years, I was used to it. It was just another remark in a long, long list of offensive, obnoxious, ignorant, destructive things said to me and others by people with some power or sway. But the truth of the matter is this: It wasn’t OK. And it wasn’t OK for me to be OK with it. For me to put up with it. To laugh it off, to excuse it, to use it as a cocktail-party tale. It wasn’t OK for me. And it isn’t OK for my amazing nieces, for my brave colleagues, for the women coming up behind me.

Brain-like in function and speed, the internet connected over one-third of the global population. Three million searches every minute; one-hundred-trillion emails every year; more Facebook users than people in North America, all with with personal photos, videos, apps, and chats. There were dozens of dating sites, an immersive universe called 2nd Life that boasted a country-sized GDP, a slew of viruses, obnoxious advertising, more than a billion photos of naked women, and seventy-two hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This was the environment where the friendship flourished.

I think this is why we at House for All Sinners and Saints sometimes say that we are religious but not spiritual. Spiritual feels individual and escapist. But to be religious (despite all the negative associations with that word) is to be human in the midst of other humans who are as equally messed up and obnoxious and forgiven as ourselves. It allows us, when confronted both with assholes in SUVs or by our own intolerances, to hold up bread in our mind’s eye and say, “Child of  God.” And sometimes it can look a whole lot like using imperfect love to help keep each other’s guts from exploding.

Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of philanthropy when she beheld this very large and very loud excrescence on the little party. Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner. Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures: ‘Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be blessed!’ still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye. You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary opinion. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn’t, or conscientiously couldn’t, be concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of names. Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your own account. You were to go to the offices of the Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name down as a Member and a Professing Philanthropist. Then, you were to pay up your subscription, get your card of membership and your riband and medal, and were evermore to live upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr. Honeythunder said, and what the Treasurer said, and what the sub-Treasurer said, and what the Committee said, and what the sub-Committee said, and what the Secretary said, and what the Vice-Secretary said. And this was usually said in the unanimously-carried resolution under hand and seal, to the effect: ‘That this assembled Body of Professing Philanthropists views, with indignant scorn and contempt, not unmixed with utter detestation and loathing abhorrence’—in short, the baseness of all those who do not belong to it, and pledges itself to make as many obnoxious statements as possible about them, without being at all particular as to facts.

At first, I was almost offended by the nonchalance with which people probed my soul. Within five minutes of meeting a new hallmate, I’ve been asked how often I pray, which is not something I’m used to. But after answering enough of these questions, I’m starting to realize that in the evangelical world, prying can be an indicator of compassion. In Liberty’s theology, there are only two categories of people: believers and nonbelievers, people headed to heaven and people condemned to hell. So Rodrigo’s attempt to suss out my faith isn’t intended to be obnoxious. He just wants to make sure I’m safe.

Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift; their property could not be seized even for debt, — while the plebeian, overwhelmed by taxes and statute-labor, was continually tormented, now by the king’s tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit property; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the conditions of ownership to be alike for all; they thought that every one should enjoy and freely dispose of his possessions his income and the fruit of his labor and industry. The people did not invent property; but as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exercised by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of property — statute-labor, mortmain, maîtrise, and exclusion from public office — have disappeared; the conditions of its enjoyment have been modified: the principle still remains the same. There has been progress in the regulation of the right; there has been no revolution.

Every day," I said, "every day I go to work and I see my granddad. I see the drunks and the addicts, the people who have fallen right off the edge of the earth. I see people who have made every bad move anyone could make, made every major mistake there was to be made, and by the time I see them, they are paying for it, sometimes with their lives. That's why they came to the ER. "When you work in emergency medicine, you are seeing patients who are the least common denominator as far as human beings go; people who are heartbreakingly stupid and ditty and drunk and high and obnoxious--unbelievably obnoxious. These people have all flowed out of the darkest side of life. And when you are finished with them, that's mostly where they'll return. So each of you who is thinking you want to go into emergency medicine will have to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to do this?'" I tapped my chest. "I know the answer for myself--every day I work I'm taking care of someone who is just like my grandfather, someone just like my mother. But everyone in this room needs to ask himself or herself, 'Do I want to spend the rest of my life with addicts and idiots and drunks and psychotics? Is this what will make me happy?'" I peered at all of them over the top of the microphone. "Very few sane people answer yes.

If we were to make a list of people we don’t like—people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt—we would find out a lot about those aspects of ourselves that we can’t face. If we were to come up with one word about each of the troublemakers in our lives, we would find ourselves with a list of descriptions of our own rejected qualities, which we project onto the outside world. The people who repel us unwittingly show us the aspects of ourselves that we find unacceptable, which otherwise we can’t see. They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of granite boulders.

Everyone here has a different gripe, large or small. The bad fish, for instance, which I’m told is caught in polluted rivers and can be deadly. The biggest complaint, though, is the lack of queuing. “It’s not first-come, first-served, it’s most-obnoxious, first-served,” says Abby. The lack of trust is another popular gripe. “Friends don’t even trust friends. If bad things happen to their friends, people think, ‘Good, maybe it won’t happen to me,’ ” says one volunteer. Corruption is another theme. Paying professors for passing grades is widespread, so much so that Moldovans won’t go to doctors under thirty-five years old. They suspect—with good reason—that they bought their degrees. Thus, the radius of mistrust is widened.

After a week passed it had dawned on me what I was and, more importantly, that I needed to do a little more research before climbing into one of you people. For one, certain religions will make life a living hell for a demon. Exorcisms are obnoxious. I mean, who the hell are these grown men believing in a fucking invisible entity occupying human bodies? To me the concept of a demon should be no different than any other monster myth out there—Yeti, Chupacabra, Robert Pattinson. Disregard for a moment the fact that I happen to exist. No one should believe in me. It’s stupid. There’s as much evidence to support my existence as any other silly legend. And yet, someone decided there should be trained “professionals” dedicated to the holy mission of pissing me off.

Of course it’s bound to cause a great deal of very disagreeable talk. Especially ‘round the church! Are you gentlemen Episcopalian? PORTER: No, ma’am. Catholic, Miss Collins. MISS COLLINS: Oh. Well, I suppose you know in England we’re known as the English Catholic church. We have direct Apostolic succession through St. Paul who christened the Early Angles—which is what the original English people were called—and established the English branch of the Catholic church over there. So when you hear ignorant people claim that our church was founded by—by Henry the Eighth—that horrible, lecherous old man who had so many wives—as many as Blue-beard they say! —you can see how ridiculous it is and how thoroughly obnox-ious to anybody who really knows and understands Church History!

Street food, she saw. Silky pasta, doughy pizza, steaming pho, obnoxiously tall burgers. Benches had been nestled behind the Royal Festival Hall, and they were filled with people eating personal feasts from paper plates: vast thalis; racks of sticky, black ribs; half lobsters with melting garlic butter and bread. Rows of diners craning to read menus wound between food trucks; queues intermingled, new arrivals negotiating for space. Piglet looked around, the National behind her. She had left the office early, she reasoned; she had time before finding a place to work. She edged forward, walking among the tables. The benches were full, some having to stand, juggling their fried chicken with their phones. There were young men who talked too loudly, laughed with their mouths full, and wore round, tortoiseshell glasses; glamorous women in their fifties and sixties, lunching and drinking; and au pairs with charges no older than twelve who ate salt beef bagels, cacio e pepe, and laksa.

In other words, money isn’t a material reality – it is a psychological construct. It works by converting matter into mind. But why does it succeed? Why should anyone be willing to exchange a fertile rice paddy for a handful of useless cowry shells? Why are you willing to flip hamburgers, sell health insurance or babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper? People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of their collective imagination. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted. When a wealthy farmer sold his possessions for a sack of cowry shells and travelled with them to another province, he trusted that upon reaching his destination other people would be willing to sell him rice, houses and fields in exchange for the shells. Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. What created this trust was a very complex and long-term network of political, social and economic relations. Why do I believe in the cowry shell or gold coin or dollar bill? Because my neighbours believe in them. And my neighbours believe in them because I believe in them. And we all believe in them because our king believes in them and demands them in taxes, and because our priest believes in them and demands them in tithes. Take a dollar bill and look at it carefully. You will see that it is simply a colourful piece of paper with the signature of the US secretary of the treasury on one side, and the slogan ‘In God We Trust’ on the other. We accept the dollar in payment, because we trust in God and the US secretary of the treasury. The crucial role of trust explains why our financial systems are so tightly bound up with our political, social and ideological systems, why financial crises are often triggered by political developments, and why the stock market can rise or fall depending on the way traders feel on a particular morning.

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Civic charity is easy to talk about but tremendously difficult to practice - mainly because a lot of people don't reciprocate. Some people will be rude and obnoxious and will laugh at us when we try to engage with them charitably. They will see our generosity as a sign of weakness and take advantage of our good nature to abuse us further. We will forgive them the requisite seventy times seven times, and they will keep on offending us. Charity always works this way, both the civic kind and the 'love-other-people-like-God-loves-you' kind. We need not think, however, that we are shirking our duties or abandoning our causes when we decline to angrily denounce those on the other side or to treat them like subhuman imbeciles. Charitable engagement does not always change people's hearts and minds, but the number of times it has done so is not zero - which gives charity a better track record than anger, contempt, and derision. Ultimately, though, mature and thoughtful people do not allow the way other people treat them to determine how they treat other people; when we do this, we surrender an enormous amount of power to people who do not wish us well.

Cowry shells and dollars have value only in our common imagination. Their worth is not inherent in the chemical structure of the shells and paper, or their colour, or their shape. In other words, money isn’t a material reality – it is a psychological construct. It works by converting matter into mind. But why does it succeed? Why should anyone be willing to exchange a fertile rice paddy for a handful of useless cowry shells? Why are you willing to flip hamburgers, sell health insurance or babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper? People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of their collective imagination. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted. When a wealthy farmer sold his possessions for a sack of cowry shells and travelled with them to another province, he trusted that upon reaching his destination other people would be willing to sell him rice, houses and fields in exchange for the shells. Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

Are you angry when someone’s armpits stink or when their breath is bad? What would be the point? Having such a mouth and such armpits, there’s going to be a smell emanating. You say, they must have sense, can’t they tell how they are offending others? Well, you have sense too, congratulations! So, use your natural reason to awaken theirs, show them, call it out. If the person will listen, you will have cured them without useless anger. No drama nor unseemly show required.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.28 The person sitting next to you on the plane, the one who is loudly chattering and knocking around in your space? The one you’re grinding your teeth about, hating from the depth of your soul because they’re rude, ignorant, obnoxious? In these situations, you might feel it takes everything you have to restrain yourself from murdering them. It’s funny how that thought comes into our heads before, you know, politely asking them to stop, or making the minor scene of asking for a different seat. We’d rather be pissed off, bitter, raging inside than risk an awkward conversation that might actually help this person and make the world a better place. We don’t just want people to be better, we expect it to magically happen—that we can simply will other people to change, burning holes into their skull with our angry stare. Although when you think about it that way, it makes you wonder who the rude one actually is.

... television looks to be an absolute godsend for a human subspecies that loves to watch people but hates to be watched itself. For the television screen affords access only one-way. A psychic ball-check valve. We can see Them; They can’t see Us. We can relax, unobserved, as we ogle. I happen to believe this is why television also appeals so much to lonely people. To voluntary shut-ins. Every lonely human I know watches way more than the average U.S. six hours a day. The lonely, like the fictive, love one-way watching. For lonely people are usually lonely not because of hideous deformity or odor or obnoxiousness—in fact there exist today support- and social groups for persons with precisely these attributes. Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly. Let’s call the average U.S. lonely person Joe Briefcase. Joe Briefcase fears and loathes the strain of the special self-consciousness which seems to afflict him only when other real human beings are around, staring, their human sense-antennae abristle. Joe B. fears how he might appear, come across, to watchers. He chooses to sit out the enormously stressful U.S. game of appearance poker. But lonely people, at home, alone, still crave sights and scenes, company. Hence television. Joe can stare at Them on the screen; They remain blind to Joe. It’s almost like voyeurism.

Shyness is not necessarily a problem. It can be a very nice aspect of your personality. Many introverted celebrities, such as Chelsea Clinton and the late Princess Diana, are considered sophisticated and classy because of their reserved personalities. Shyness can make you appear intelligent, discreet, and circumspect. Shy people are valued as good listeners and are more likely to be considered kindhearted, conscientious, and trustworthy. They rarely are overaggressive or obnoxious and usually try not to act in ways that hurt others. A degree of shyness also allows you to be cautious and judge situations before jumping into them. You can stand back, observe, make careful decisions, and then act deliberately. With all of these positive qualities, it is no surprise that between 10 and 20 percent of those who consider themselves shy like their personalities and don’t want to change. They are comfortable with being quiet and are confident that when they do have something to say others will pay attention. Distinguishing social anxiety from normal shyness is sometimes difficult. It has to do with the level of distress and impairment associated with social fears. If you prefer being quiet and listening to others and you feel comfortable with that role, you probably don’t have social anxiety. On the other hand, if you don’t speak up because you are afraid others won’t like what you say or you are terrified of sounding foolish, you most likely have a degree of social anxiety.

What does one wear to a ranch early in the morning? I wondered. I was stumped. I had enough good sense, thank God, to know my spiked black boots--the same boots I’d worn on basically every date with Marlboro Man thus far--were out of the question. I wouldn’t want them to get dirty, and besides that, people might look at me funny. I had a good selection of jeans, yes, but would I go for the dark, straight-leg Anne Kleins? Or the faded, boot-cut Gaps with contrast stitching? And what on earth would I wear on top? This could get dicey. I had a couple of nice, wholesome sweater sets, but the weather was turning warmer and the style didn’t exactly scream “ranch” to me. Then there was the long, flax-colored linen tunic from Banana Republic--one I loved to pair with a chunky turquoise necklace and sandals. But that was more Texas Evening Barbecue than Oklahoma Early-Morning Cattle Gathering. Then there were the myriad wild prints with sparkles and stones and other obnoxious adornments. But the last thing I wanted to do was spook the cattle and cause a stampede. I’d seen it happen in City Slickers when Billy Crystal fired up his cordless coffee grinder, and the results weren’t the least bit pretty. I considered cancelling. I had absolutely nothing to wear. Every pair of shoes I owned was black, except for a bright yellow pair of pumps I’d bought on a whim in Westwood one California day. Those wouldn’t exactly work, either. And I didn’t own a single shirt that wouldn’t loudly broadcast *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* I wanted to crawl under my covers and hide.

The division of Europe into a number of independent states, connected, however, with each other by the general resemblance of religion, language, and manners, is productive of the most beneficial consequences to the liberty of mankind. A modern tyrant, who should find no resistance either in his own breast, or in his people, would soon experience a gentle restraint from the example of his equals, the dread of present censure, the advice of his allies, and the apprehension of his enemies. The object of his displeasure, escaping from the narrow limits of his dominions, would easily obtain, in a happier climate, a secure refuge, a new fortune adequate to his merit, the freedom of complaint, and perhaps the means of revenge. But the empire of the Romans filled the world, and when the empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of Imperial despotism, whether he was condemned to drag his gilded chain in rome and the senate, or to were out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or the frozen bank of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean, inhospitable deserts, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent kings, who would gladly purchase the emperor's protection by the sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive. "Wherever you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, "remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror.

You will also be tempted to try to hold onto a sense of presence, to make a steady state of it. It will not work. If you are lucky, you’ll just miss the moment and be frustrated. If you are successful in holding on, things will be much worse. At some point you will discover that what you are holding is not real; it is something you yourself have contrived. You will also discover that you have been suppressing and deceiving yourself in order to keep it. . . . In trying to maintain a state, we are naturally expressing our deep desire for wakeful presence in love. But it is a wrong way of expressing it. This way becomes willful so quickly and insidiously that we lose touch with our relationship with grace . . . And grace, thank God, is not dependent upon our state of mind. Some traditions would disagree with my advice. Much of the spirituality of the early Christian desert, for example, advised using all one’s mental strength to hold onto remembrance of Christ. Some Hindu and Buddhist disciplines encourage a similar forcefulness. Such effortful concentration may have a place in monastic settings and can be helpful as a temporary mental stretch before yielding into simple presence. But I do not recommend it as a steady diet for people who live in the world of families, homes, and workplaces. I have tried it myself, and it only created great trouble for me. I became depressed and irritable inside and absolutely obnoxious around friends and family. . . . I suggest you become familiar with the feeling you have inside when you make a resolution or strive to cling to something . . . Get to know the feeling well, so that whenever you feel it you can stop what you’re doing, take a breath, relax, yield a little, and let your real self turn to the real God. . . Seek to encourage yourself instead of manipulating yourself. Cultivate your receptivity to the little interior glances instead of grasping for them. Live, love, and yearn with unbearable passion, but don’t try to make it happen and don’t try to hold on when it does happen.

From: Bernadette Fox To: Manjula Kapoor Oh! Could you make dinner reservations for us on Thanksgiving? You can call up the Washington Athletic Club and get us something for 7 PM for three. You are able to place calls, aren’t you? Of course, what am I thinking? That’s all you people do now. I recognize it’s slightly odd to ask you to call from India to make a reservation for a place I can see out my window, but here’s the thing: there’s always this one guy who answers the phone, “Washington Athletic Club, how may I direct your call?” And he always says it in this friendly, flat… Canadian way. One of the main reasons I don’t like leaving the house is because I might find myself face-to-face with a Canadian. Seattle is crawling with them. You probably think, U.S./Canada, they’re interchangeable because they’re both filled with English-speaking, morbidly obese white people. Well, Manjula, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass—anything and everything—the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that’s how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone’s ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don’t understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such. Yes, I’m done. If the WAC can’t take us, which may be the case, because Thanksgiving is only two days away, you can find someplace else on the magical Internet. * I was wondering how we ended up at Daniel’s Broiler for Thanksgiving dinner. That morning, I slept late and came downstairs in my pajamas. I knew it was going to rain because on my way to the kitchen I passed a patchwork of plastic bags and towels. It was a system Mom had invented for when the house leaks.

When I Want a Gentle and Quiet Spirit Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. 1 PETER 3:3-4 IT’S GOOD TO TAKE CARE of yourself and make a consistent effort to always look good for your husband. But while you tend to your health and do what you should to stay attractive to him in what you wear and how you care for your skin and hair, you cannot neglect your inner self, where your lasting and ever-increasing beauty is found. The Bible says that the beauty of a gentle and quite spirit cannot be lost and is always pleasing to God. Having a quiet spirit doesn’t mean you barely talk above a whisper. God has given you a voice, and He intends for you to use it. But it is the quiet and peaceful spirit behind your voice that communicates you are not in an internal uproar. A gentle spirit doesn’t mean you are weak. It means that you aren’t brash, obnoxious, or rude. It means you are godly in nature and have love and respect for the people around you. What is in your heart shows on your face. The attractiveness of inner peace and gentleness in you will always manifest as beauty externally as well. And that is appealing to everyone—especially your husband. Pray that God’s Spirit in you will be the most important part of who you are, and that you will reflect the beauty of the Lord, which is beyond compare. His gentle and quiet Spirit in you will be more attractive to others than anything else. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would give me a gentle and quiet spirit, which I know is precious in Your sight. Enable me to have the inner beauty that is incorruptible, which comes from Your Spirit of peace dwelling in me. Only You can fill me with all I need in order to become as You want me to be. Show me how to always be attractive to my husband in the way I dress and look, but more importantly, help me to remember and understand where true and lasting beauty comes from. Enable me to be perceived by him and others as beautiful because of Your beautiful reflection in me. Help me to never be offensive or undesirable to be around. Keep me from allowing anyone to bring out the worst in me. Let the beauty of Your Spirit in me shine through and above all the fleshly parts of me that I am still dealing with and trying to allow You to perfect. Fill my heart with Your love, peace, and joy so that they are what always show on my face. Pour Your Spirit over me and in me so that what is seen on my face is not anger, concern, worry, or sadness, but rather contentment, calm, peace, and happiness. I depend on You to accomplish this in me because I know I cannot achieve this on my own. I worship You, Lord, as the Savior, Restorer, and Beautifier of my life. In Jesus’ name I pray.

People have an idea of what writers are: crazy; intellectual; moody; slightly more interesting than other people. Sometimes you just have to throw a chair, set something on fire, let loose with a random string of profanities, (or at least wear an obnoxious hat) just so they don’t feel cheated.

Yes. Do you know people who are really nice, but when they get together with somebody in particular, they become obnoxious jerks?

Too many people live vicariously through popular performers, arrogant actors, and obnoxious athletes, instead of living vicariously living through their children as God intended. More importantly, do we live vicariously through others, rather than allowing Jesus to live vicariously through us?

Don’t you realize what that sonofabitch did to me?” “He kissed you. So what? That’s still no reason to leave before the barbecue.” “Gus,” she screeched. “I don’t want to be kissed.” “Oh for God’s sake, kissin’ won’t hurt you none.” “You’re missing the point.” “What point?” He stepped closer. “That you were kissed or that Neale did the kissin’?” She glared at him, her eyes narrowing. “People are going to talk.” “About what?” He pulled the blanket from her gloved hands. “A harmless little kiss?” “It’s not harmless.” She paced before the man, her hands flinging wide. “You saw him, sauntering up there as bold as you please in that obnoxious way of his. Making the asinine assumption I’d be delighted by his…his…” “Kiss?” Gus said.

How many piercings do you have?” I ask. He starts to count on his fingers. He stops at seven. “Seven?” “Where?” He points to each nipple, then his ears, then the shell of his ear. And then his gaze goes down to his crotch. He’s not smiling, and his eyes narrow as though he’s waiting to see my reaction. I gasp and nearly choke on my inhale. “Down there?” I whisper, a grin tugging at my lips. He nods, taking a sip of his root beer. “Did they hurt?” I suddenly have the most obnoxious desire to see every last one. He shrugs. “Can you do one for me?” I ask. Then I rush on to say, “Not today. Or any time soon. I don’t have enough money.” “Where would you want it?” he asks. I’ve only had my ears pierced and never thought of doing any other part of my body. My nipples go hard just thinking about it. “Did your nipples hurt?” I whisper. Then I realize he can’t tell I’m whispering, since he’s just reading my lips. “It hurts a little when you do it, but it goes away. Just like any other piercing.” I can’t stop thinking about the one down there. Heat creeps up my cheeks again. “I could pierce you. Anywhere you want,” he says. This time his face floods with color. “Anywhere?” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them, he only opens one, and he looks at me like he’s wincing when he says carefully, “Anywhere.” He looks at my boobs again and licks his lips. “Take your pick.” Suddenly, I’m curious. “You do a lot of those?” I don’t know why that bothers me. “The… ones…down there?” He shrugs. I don’t like the idea of him touching anyone’s private places. Not at all. Although the idea of him touching mine… I squirm in my seat, and he arches an eyebrow at me. “Something wrong?” he asks. He’s smirking. I shake my head, biting my lips together. “Can anyone get a piercing like that?” I point toward my lap. I don’t know why I’m being so bold about this, but I’m curious. “Most people can.” He plays with the salt shaker. “We’d have to take a look to see what type of piercing would be best for you.” My face flames at the thought of him taking a look down there. He pushes my root beer toward me and says, “Drink. Before you pass out.” He’s grinning, though, and I’ve never seen such a look of confidence on a man. The awkwardness of a moment before has passed. And he’s enjoying making me squirm.

Our basic nature is to act, and not be acted upon. As well as enabling us to choose our response to particular circumstances, this empowers us to create circumstances. Taking initiative does not mean being pushy, obnoxious, or aggressive. It does mean recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.

Welcome to politics, Mr. Beutcher. Power comes from the people. If they are behind you, there is nothing you can't accomplish. You can lie, cheat, and steal, be rude and obnoxious and ruthless, but none of that matters so long as they give their support.

fucking country. Why? Because they won’t get the fuck out of Muslim land. Your country is bombing in the Muslim land for what?  You have enemies already fighting enemies. Americans are like, so fucking stupid sometimes.” His hands exploded at his temples like he couldn’t comprehend it. “Leave the fucking Middle East, let the other Middle Eastern countries fight ISIS and kick your fucking feet up and watch. You think everyone hates your country because you’re affluent? It’s comical. I spent seven months is Switzerland - Zurich - when I did work for my uncle…” This was news to Gaby. “…That place is fucking money. Ferraris, Bentleys, it’s nothing. You see them like you see the Volkswagen here. $32 for a hamburger. That kind of money… People don’t hate Americans for their money; they hate them because they’re obnoxious and can’t mind their fucking business. Just fucking stupid.” Gaby

Fine, then just tell me what I need to do. It’s your specialty, right? Turning a diamond in the rough into a polished gem.” She regarded him skeptically. “Assuming there’s a precious stone under that exterior.” “Ha. You know it, sugar pie.” “New rule,” she said. “Don’t go around calling women names like sugar pie.” “If I called men names like that, people would think I’m queer.” “And don’t say queer.” “Everybody says queer. It’s even in the name of that show.” “It’s a matter of context. And judgment. Just do yourself a favor and don’t use that word.” “What should I use? Ho-mo-sexual?” He separated the word into obnoxious-sounding syllables. “How about you avoid the subject altogether? People can go for long periods of time without debating sexual orientation.” She assessed him with her eyes. “Unless this is a preoccupation of yours.” He snorted. “Right. You slay me, lady. You really do. First, you rag on me for being a Lothario. Which, by the way, I looked up. I’m nothing like that guy. He was banging anything in hoop skirts. And I’m not. I don’t have that problem. At the moment, my biggest problem is you. And you’re supposed to be helping me.” “I am, but I need some cooperation from you.” “You got it,” he said, polishing off the doughnut. “Sugar pie.

Much of our ministry is pervaded with judgments. Often quite unconsciously we classify our people as very good, good, neutral, bad, and very bad. These judgments influence deeply the thoughts, words, and actions of our ministry. Before we know it, we fall into the trap of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Those whom we consider lazy, indifferent, hostile, or obnoxious we treat as such, forcing them in this way to live up to our own views. And so, much of our ministry is limited by the snares of our own judgments. These self-created limits prevent us from being available to people and shrivel up our compassion. “Do not judge and you will not be judged yourselves” is a word of Jesus that is indeed very hard to live up to. But it contains the secret of a compassionate ministry. This becomes clear in many stories from the desert. Abba Moses, one of St. Anthony’s followers, said to a brother: “To die to one’s neighbor is this. To bear your own faults and not to pay attention to anyone else wondering whether they are good or bad. Do no harm to anyone, do not think anything bad in your heart towards anyone, do not scorn the man who does evil, do not put confidence in him who does wrong to his neighbor, do not rejoice with him who injures his neighbor. . . . Do not have hostile feelings towards anyone and do not let dislike dominate your heart.

People might think they’re making rational decisions, but often, without even knowing it, they are essentially making emotional decisions. But where does emotion stop and thinking begin? Even to put it in these terms feels obnoxious and misguided. Such distinctions are artificial. Thinking and emotion are completely intertwined. To believe otherwise is to block so many genuine possibilities. In Western democratic politics the rational decision is supposed to rule the day. What could democracy possibly mean if people are unable to make rational decisions as to what is best for the society they are a part of? However, as we know, current electoral politics, much like advertising, often plays directly to the emotions of the voter. I’m not saying this is only a bad thing. What I’m getting at is how we all need to understand this process so much more. And how in further understanding it we might begin to change the ways it does and doesn’t work on us.

Nothing tempers Coriolanus’s obnoxiousness, and yet the play is oddly sympathetic to him, at least compared with the others of his class. The patricians urge him to set aside his most deeply held convictions for the purpose of getting elected. They want him to lie and to pander and to play the demagogue. Once he is securely in office, there will be plenty of time for him to resume his actual stance and to roll back the concessions that have been made to the poor. It is the most familiar of political games: the plutocrat, born into every privilege and inwardly contemptuous of those beneath him, who mouths the rhetoric of populism during the electoral campaign, abandoning it as soon as it has served his purposes. The Romans had boiled it all down to a conventional performance, comparable to a well-coiffed politician’s donning of a hard hat at a rally held at a construction site: the candidate for office would set aside his richly dyed robes and, entering the marketplace, put on a threadbare white garment, “the napless vesture of humility” (2.1.222). Then, if he had any battle scars, he would show them, like a résumé, and solicit the people’s votes.

In the case of the war between the States it would have been the exact truth if the South had said,—"We do not want to live with you Northern people any longer; we know our institution of slavery is obnoxious to you, and, as you are growing numerically stronger than we, it may at some time in the future be endangered. So long as you permitted us to control the government, and with the aid of a few friends at the North to enact laws constituting your section a guard against the escape of our property, we were willing to live with you. You have been submissive to our rule heretofore; but it looks now as if you did not intend to continue so, and we will remain in the Union no longer." Instead of this the seceding States cried lustily,—"Let us alone; you have no constitutional power to interfere with us." Newspapers and people at the North reiterated the cry. Individuals might ignore the constitution; but the Nation itself must not only obey it, but must enforce the strictest construction of that instrument; the construction put upon it by the Southerners themselves. The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.