“
one of my favorites:
Robby gave her a skeptical look. "Ye're an angel of death. No offense, but I would call that a wee bit of harm."
"We're called Deliverers, actually. And we're not supposed to take someone before their time."
"How does that work?" Gregori lifted his camera, focusing on her. "I mean do you just go down a line, saying, 'Eenie meenie mynie moe, sorry, dude you gotta go'?
”
”
Kerrelyn Sparks (Vampire Mine (Love at Stake, #10))
“
Sexuality isn't always a straight line from closeted to out-of-the-closet. You can take time to explore and evolve and figure out exactly what kind of queer you are, if that even matters to you".
”
”
Alison Cochrun (The Charm Offensive (The Charm Offensive, #1))
“
No offense to hot girls everywhere- but newsflash- there are hot girls everywhere.
”
”
Tammara Webber (Between the Lines (Between the Lines, #1))
“
Anger gets you into trouble, ego keeps you in trouble.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Phury lit a blunt and eyed the sixteen cans of Aqua Net that were lined up on Butch and V's coffee table.
"What's doing with the hair spray? You boys going drag on us?"
Butch held up the lenght of PVC pipe he was punching a hole in.
"Potato launcher, my man. Big fun."
"Excuse me ?"
"Didn't you ever go to summer camp ?"
"Basket weaving and woodcarving are for humans. No offense, but we have better things to teach our youngs.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #3))
“
I hate when I'm at the grocery store and the person checking me out asks, "Paper or plastic?" It's offensive. As if I'm going to sleep with her just because she has a clever pick up line.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (It Occurred to Me)
“
I'd done it, I'd crossed the line between accepted behavior and behavior most of the population would consider a lynching offense, and that morning I felt as real as any of the men in the Escape commercials. It had been dirty and nasty but I wanted more.
”
”
Matthew Stokoe (High Life)
“
[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. [...] They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power—obviously they get offended—they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.
”
”
Tomas Schuman
“
No matter what line of work you do, success cannot truly be achieved until you own who you are. The most offensive liability then becomes an asset. It makes you perform your best, regardless of the challenges you might face.
”
”
Ron Perlman (Easy Street: The Hard Way)
“
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
It must eat and breath air and sleep,
It has thin skin and blood right underneath,
An adequate stock of teeth and nails,
Its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it is shuddered
Before the founding of Rome and after,
In the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it’s just the earth that’s grown smaller,
And whatever happens seems on the other side of the wall.
Nothing has changed.
It’s just that there are more people,
Besides the old offenses, new ones have appeared,
Real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
But the howl with which the body responds to them,
Was, and is, and ever will be a howl of innocence
According to the time-honored scale and tonality.
Nothing has changed.
Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances,
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks, and tries to pull away
Its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
It turns blue, swells, salivates, and bleeds.
Nothing has changed.
Except of course for the course of boundaries,
The lines of forests, coasts, deserts, and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
Disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
Alien to itself, elusive
At times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
While the body is and is and is
And has no place of its own.
”
”
Wisława Szymborska
“
Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political nature - and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine - fights less for the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely,it is hard to determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the defence makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support,the herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
“
My task is to explain to you as quickly as possible my essence, that is, what sort of man I am, what I believe in, and what I hope for, is that right? And therefore I declare that I accept God pure and simple. But this, however, needs to be noted: if God exists and if he indeed created the earth, then, as we know perfectly well, he created it in accordance with Euclidean geometry, and he created human reason with a conception of only three dimensions of space. At the same time there were and are even now geometers and philosophers, even some of the most outstanding among them, who doubt that the whole universe, or, even more broadly, the whole of being, was created purely in accordance with Euclidean geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid cannot possibly meet on earth, may perhaps meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear, have come to the conclusion that if I cannot understand even that, then it is not for me to understand about God. I humbly confess that I do not have any ability to resolve such questions, I have a Euclidean mind, an earthly mind, and therefore it is not for us to resolve things that are not of this world. And I advise you never to think about it, Alyosha my friend, and most especially about whether God exists or not. All such questions are completely unsuitable to a mind created with a concept of only three dimensions. And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but moreover I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, which are completely unknown to us; I believe in order, in the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony, in which we are all supposed to merge, I believe in the Word for whom the universe is yearning, and who himself was 'with God,' who himself is God, and so on and so forth, to infinity. Many words have been invented on the subject. It seems I'm already on a good path, eh? And now imagine that in the final outcome I do not accept this world of God's, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept. With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man's Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world's finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men--let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Let the parallel lines even meet before my own eyes: I shall look and say, yes, they meet, and still I will not accept it.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
“
That’s rude!” Kusha almost shouts. “Breaking privacy is—”
“—an offense of manner?” Taha finishes Kusha’s line. “Saw them three years ago.” She shrugs. “You were a bitch back then.”
“I … I didn’t talk enough to be a … a bitch.” Kusha holds back eye-rolling. Eye-rolling is rude.
“Well. Not-talking-enough equals bitch.”
Sometimes, it’s hard not to slap Taha. But such desire is way more than just rude.
”
”
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
“
Choosing not to take offense is not about simply ignoring wrongs. If someone, say, cuts in front of you in line, you can address the situation. You don’t have to simply accept it. But you can act without contempt, anger, and bitterness.
”
”
Brant Hansen (Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better)
“
Canada?" Ash said. "You didn't say it was in Canada.
"I said Ontario." (Maya)
"I thought you meant Ontario, California."
"Seriously?" Tori said,rolling her eyes. "A helicopter to California? You may be hot,but your sister clearly inherited all the brains in the family."
"Did she call me hot?" Ash whispered to me, looking more annoyed than he ever did when someone called him a jerk.
"She hasn't been on a date in six months", Derek rumbled behind us. "No offense, but as long as aren't related to her, you're fair game. Hell, even--"
Tori spun on him. "I didn't know."
"Um, wait a sec," Corey said. "So Ash is hot and I'm seriously cute? Is there a difference?"
"Yes," Hayley said, and propelled him through the line.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong (The Rising (Darkness Rising, #3))
“
But no one wants to listen to our sad stories unless they are smoothed over with a joke or nice melody. And even then, not always. No one wants to hear a woman talking or writing about pain in a way that suggests that it doesn't end. Without a pat solution, silver lining, or happy ending we're just complainers -- downers who don't realize how good we actually have it.
Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything we do, but women's pain is a backdrop- a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting that story means we're needy or shellfish, or worst of all, man-haters - as if after all men have done to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive.
”
”
Jessica Valenti (Sex Object: A Memoir)
“
Yet his mother always stocks the fridge like the offensive line of the Philadelphia Eagles are coming for dinner.
”
”
Elin Hilderbrand (The Hotel Nantucket)
“
Look, nobody's trying to kill me right now and that's just fine. If they don't
like me, that's just how it goes. I got over needing people to LIKE me in tenth
grade, when I spied the captain of the cheerleading squad on her knees in
front of the offensive line of the football team under the bleachers, one day after school. I figured that wasn't the life for me.
”
”
MaryJanice Davidson (Undead and Unpopular (Undead, #5))
“
For each self-criticism, there were many criticisms. My mother's two comrades insisted that she had behaved in a 'bourgeois' manner. They said she had not wanted to go to the country to help collect food; when she pointed out that she had gone, in line with the Party's wishes, they retorted: "Ah, but you didn't really want to go." Then they accused her of having enjoyed privileged food cooked, moreover, by her mother at home and of succumbing to illness more than most pregnant women. Mrs. Mi also criticized her because her mother had made clothes for the baby.
"Who ever heard of a baby wearing new clothes?"she said.
"Such a bourgeois waste! Why can't she just wrap the baby up in old clothes like everyone else?" The fact that my mother had shown her sadness that my grandmother had to leave was singled out as definitive proof that she 'put family first," a serious offense.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
The solution to staying on the right side of the fine line between using and abusing grace is repentance. The road to repentance is godly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly sorrow is developed when we focus on the true nature of sin as an offense against God rather than something that makes us feel guilty.
”
”
Jerry Bridges
“
And, because in some hard core of me, in some stubborn trench of selfish refusal, I could not, even at ten years of age, surrender to anything or anyone, I fought that pain. I analysed its offensive, and found its lines of attack. It festered, like the corruption in a wound turned sour, drawing strength from me. I knew enough to know the remedy. Hot iron for infection, cauterize, burn, make it pure. I cut from myself all the weakness of care. The love for my dead, I put aside, secure in a casket, an object of study, a dry exhibit, no longer bleeding, cut loose, set free. The capacity for new love, I burned out. I watered it with acid until the ground lay barren and nothing there would sprout, no flower take root.
”
”
Mark Lawrence (Prince of Thorns (Broken Empire #1))
“
Generally speaking, the main principles are as follows: (1) the use of initiative, flexibility and planning in conducting offensives within the defensive, battles of quick decision within protracted war, and exterior-line operations within interior-line operations; (2) co-ordination with regular warfare; (3) establishment of base areas; (4) the strategic defensive and the strategic offensive; (5) the development of guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare; and (6) correct relationship of command.
”
”
Mao Zedong (On Guerrilla Warfare)
“
The bottom line is this: when it comes to whether or not you are offended, you are in total control. You can choose to take offense, or you can choose to take action. You can be offended, or you can be cheerful. You can examine your feelings, or you can examine the results of how you have treated people, who you have become, and what has been accomplished in the process. An offense taken is such a little thing. But when hoarded and fed, an offense is a lot like an actual atomic bomb. The damage it causes—immediately and over time—is far, far greater than its initial size would lead you to believe.
”
”
Andy Andrews (The Little Things: Why You Really Should Sweat the Small Stuff)
“
In hockey, nearly everyone plays with a partner. The offense forward line is made up of a left wing, a center, and a right wing. The defense skates in pairs. Only the goalie is alone and he’s always weird. Always.
Kenny Simms, who graduated last year, was one of the greatest goalies at Briar and probably the reason we won three Frozen Fours in a row, but that guy had the strangest fucking habits. He talked to himself more than he talked to anyone else, sat in the back of the bus, preferred to eat alone. On the rare occasion that he came out with us, he’d argue the entire time. I once got into it with him over whether there was too much technology available to children. We argued about that topic for the entire three hours we were knocking back beers at the bar.
Sabrina reminds me of Simms.
”
”
Elle Kennedy (The Goal (Off-Campus, #4))
“
The most terrifying part of battle was the exit from a trench—standing up and climbing out, knowing that the opposing force would at that moment unleash a fusillade that would continue until the offensive concluded, either with victory, meaning a few yards gained, or defeat, a few yards lost, but invariably with half one’s battalion dead, wounded, or missing. “I shall never forget the moment when we had to leave the shelter of the trenches,” wrote British private Ridley Sheldon, of combat at Helles, at the southwest tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. “It is indeed terrible, the first step you take—right into the face of the most deadly fire, and to realize that any moment you may be shot down; but if you are not hit, then you seem to gather courage. And when you see on either side of you men like yourself, it inspires you with a determination to press forward. Away we went over the parapet with fixed bayonets—one line of us like the wind. But it was absolute murder, for men fell like corn before the sickle.
”
”
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
“
Love is the bottom line in our relationship with the Lord—not love of principles or teachings but love for the Person of Jesus Christ.
”
”
John Bevere (The Bait of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense)
“
When we really understand it, we will always find grace offensive. And that's exactly the way it should be. If we start to feel comfortable with grace, then we've lost what it really means.
”
”
Jay Bakker (Faith, Doubt, and Other Lines I've Crossed: Walking with the Unknown God)
“
Whilst ladies persist in maintaining the strictly defensive condition, men must naturally, as it were, take the oppposite line, that of attack; otherwise, if both parties held aloof, there would be no more marriages; and the two hosts would die in their respective inaction, without ever coming to a battle. Thus it is evident that as the ladies will not, the men must take the offensive... Is it not time that the ladies should take an innings? Let us widowers and bachelors form an association to declare that for the next hundred years we will make love no longer. Let the young women come and make love to us; let them write us verses; let them ask us to dance, get us ices and cups of tea, and help us on with our cloaks at the hall-door; and if they are eligible, we may perhaps be induced to yield and say, 'La, Miss Hopkins - I really never - I am so agitated - Ask papa!
”
”
William Makepeace Thackeray
“
That theory will be blown when she’s conferring with the event security, wearing an earpiece and holstering a firearm under her business suit. Or if she perceives a threat and pulls a gun, because she—and no offense, sweetheart—looks awful trigger-happy.”
She set her forearms on the table. “You have no idea how true that statement is. But right now the person I’d be gunning for most is you, sweetheart.” Then she smiled.
Holy shit. The smile completely transformed her face—but Devin wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing because the grin straddled the line between sexy and evil.
”
”
Lorelei James (Hillbilly Rockstar (Blacktop Cowboys, #6))
“
Today's offended students often show a marked degree of over-reaction to words that make them feel uncomfortable. They equate speech itself, and often the most innocuous comments, with physical violence. In this, they are simply extending how they were taught as children to respond disproportionately to damaging words. That's because the child protection narrative they have been raised on makes a particular feature of blurring the line between physical and psychological harm. For example, children's charities and NGOs constantly broaden definitions of abuse this way and, in doing so, actively encourage children to be suspicious of entirely harmless, informal, emotional interactions and tensions, even within their own families.
”
”
Claire Fox (‘I Find That Offensive!’)
“
Blue flames and steel blades don’t forgive. If you allow your anger to distract you, you could burn or cut yourself. And, among serious cooks and chefs, burns and cuts are terribly unfashionable. The only thing worse than a burn or a cut is the need for medical attention. Abandoning your fellow linesmen because you lost focus and flayed a finger is an unforgivable offense.
”
”
Michael Gibney (Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line)
“
From my college courses and my reading I knew the various names that came at the end of a line of questions or were placed as periods to bafflement: the First Cause, the First Mover, the Life Force, the Universal Mind, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover, even Providence. I too had used those names in arguing with others, and with myself, trying to explain the world to myself. And now I saw that those names explained nothing. They were of no more use than Evolution or Natural Selection or Nature or The Big Bang of these later days. All such names do is catch us within the length and breadth of our own thoughts and our own bewilderment. Though I knew the temptation of simple reason, to know nothing that can't be proved, still I supposed that those were not the right names.
I imagined that the right name might be Father, and I imagined all that that name would imply: the love, the compassion, the taking offense, the disappointment, the anger, the bearing of wounds, the weeping of tears, the forgiveness, the suffering unto death. If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?
Yes. I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not. I could imagine Port William riding its humble wave through time under the sky, its little flames of wakefulness lighting and going out, its lives passing through birth, pleasure, sufferning, and death. I could imagine God looking down upon it, its lives living by His spirit, breathing by His breath, knowing by His light, but each life living also (inescapably) by its own will--His own body given to be broken.
”
”
Wendell Berry (Jayber Crow)
“
Most of us may intuitively agree about right and wrong, but we also, and far more significantly, differ enormously in the ways in which we rank the virtues and the vices. ... To put cruelty first is to disregard the idea of sin as it is understood by revealed religion. Sins are transgressions of a divine rule and offenses against God; pride - the rejection of God - must always be the worst one, which gives rise to all the others. However, cruelty - the willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear - is a wrong done entirely to another creature. When it is marked as the supreme evil it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a denial of God or any other higher norm. It is a judgment made from within the world in which cruelty occurs as part of our normal private life and our daily public practices. By putting it unconditionally first, with nothing above us to excuse or to forgive acts of cruelty, one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. To hate cruelty with utmost intensity is perfectly compatible with Biblical religiosity, but to put it first does place one irrevocably outside the sphere of revealed religion. For it is a purely human verdict upon human conduct, and so puts religion at a certain distance. The decision to put cruelty first is not, however, prompted merely by religious skepticism. It emerges, rather, from the recognition that the habits of the faithful do not differ from those of the faithless in their brutalities, and that Machiavelli had triumphed before he had ever written a line. To put cruelty first therefore is to be at odds not only with religion but with normal politics as well.
”
”
Judith N. Shklar (Ordinary Vices)
“
Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you’ve written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward.
”
”
Darynda Jones
“
What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations.
The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It’s a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction.
Mysteries beg for answers. People’s natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do.
Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, “Will my listeners care about this?” (Not, “Why should they care about this?”)
Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, “I’m about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I’m not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention.”
No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. The getting of that sentence is the hardest, most exacting, and most fruitful labor of study.
We tend to use generalities for compelling reasons. Specifics often take research and extra thought, precious commodities to a pastor. Generalities are safe. We can’t help but use generalities when we can’t remember details of a story or when we want anonymity for someone. Still, the more specific their language, the better speakers communicate.
I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story, because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my declarative statements.
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Limits—that is, form—challenge the mind, forcing creativity.
Needless words weaken our offense. Listening to some speakers, you have to sift hundreds of gallons of water to get one speck of gold.
If the sermon is so complicated that it needs a summary, its problems run deeper than the conclusion. The last sentence of a sermon already has authority; when the last sentence is Scripture, this is even more true.
No matter what our tone or approach, we are wise to craft the conclusion carefully. In fact, given the crisis and opportunity that the conclusion presents—remember, it will likely be people’s lasting memory of the message—it’s probably a good practice to write out the conclusion, regardless of how much of the rest of the sermon is written.
It is you who preaches Christ. And you will preach Christ a little differently than any other preacher. Not to do so is to deny your God-given uniqueness.
Aim for clarity first. Beauty and eloquence should be added to make things even more clear, not more impressive.
I’ll have not praise nor time for those who suppose that writing comes by some divine gift, some madness, some overflow of feeling. I’m especially grim on Christians who enter the field blithely unprepared and literarily innocent of any hard work—as though the substance of their message forgives the failure of its form.
”
”
Mark Galli (Preaching that Connects)
“
My attorney general, Eric Holder, would later point out that as egregious as the behavior of the banks may have been leading up to the crisis, there were few indications that their executives had committed prosecutable offenses under existing statutes—and we were not in the business of charging people with crimes just to garner good headlines. But to a nervous and angry public, such answers—no matter how rational—weren’t very satisfying. Concerned that we were losing the political high ground, Axe and Gibbs urged us to sharpen our condemnations of Wall Street. Tim, on the other hand, warned that such populist gestures would be counterproductive, scaring off the investors we needed to recapitalize the banks. Trying to straddle the line between the public’s desire for Old Testament justice and the financial markets’ need for reassurance, we ended up satisfying no one. “It’s like we’ve got a hostage situation,” Gibbs said to me one morning. “We know the banks have explosives strapped to their chests, but to the public it just looks like we’re letting them get away with a robbery.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
It is possible in a city street neighborhood to know all kinds of people without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships. It is possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself, and even, as time passes, on familiar public terms with them. Such relationships can, and do, endure for many years, for decades; they could never have formed without that line, much less endured. The form precisely because they are by-the-way to people’s normal public sorties.
‘Togetherness’ is a fittingly nauseating name for an old ideal in planning theory. This ideal is that if anything is shared among people, much should be shared. ‘Togetherness,’ apparently a spiritual resource of the new suburbs, works destructively in cities. The requirement that much shall be shared drives city people apart. When an area of a city lacks a sidewalk life, the people of the place must enlarge their private lives is they are to have anything approaching equivalent contact with their neighbors. They must settle for some form of ‘togetherness,’ in which more is shared with one another than in the life of the sidewalks, or else they must settle for lack of contact. Inevitably the outcome is one or the other; it has to be, and either has distressing results. In the case of the first outcome, where people do share much, they become exceedingly choosy as to who their neighbors are, or with whom they associate at all. They have to become so.
”
”
Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities)
“
In some circles, using the word feminist is the equivalent of an f-bomb dropped in church—outrageous, offensive. It’s likely some people saw this book sitting on the shelf and figured they knew what sort of author was behind the words written here: a bitter man-hater arguing that men and women had no discernable differences, a ferocious and humorless woman, perhaps, and so it’s no wonder they reacted at the sight of Jesus alongside feminist like someone had raked long fingernails across a chalkboard. Who could blame them with the lines we’ve been fed about feminists for so long?
”
”
Sarah Bessey (Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women)
“
Not that Baum had taken offense. Still, he had to wonder how many of his people had perished that day, or for that matter since he and Cyrankiewicz had sat down to talk. A dull, orange glow pulsed above the tree line to the north; the last of the Scharfuhrer's fire pits were dying out for the evening. Granted, a little unintended bigotry or even the occasional racial slur was something to be expected, and certainly no cause for high dudgeon. But to what extent, one had to ask, had such seemingly innocuous behavior led to the slaughter of children and the emergence of creatures such as Otto Moll?
”
”
J. Michael Dolan (The Trumpets of Jericho)
“
It is true that shortly before this, when my parents reproached me with my laziness and with not having taken the trouble to write a line to M. de Charlus, I had violently reproached them with wishing me to accept a degrading proposal. But anger alone, and the desire to hit upon the expression that would be most offensive to them had dictated this mendacious retort. In reality, I had imagined nothing sensual, nothing sentimental even, underlying the Baron’s offers. I had said this to my parents with entire irresponsibility. But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowledge, and our words which we suppose to be false forecast an imminent reality.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search Of Lost Time (All 7 Volumes) (ShandonPress))
“
You'll make a good First Lady, Shelby Campbell."
Shelby's fingers tightened on her wineglass, an involuntary gesture noticed only by Alan and his mother. "Perhaps," she returned calmly. "if it were one of my ambitions."
"Ambitions or not,it's fate when you're paired with this one," Daniel stabbed his fork toward Alan.
"You're a little premature." Alan cut cleanly through his meat, swearing fluidly in his mind only. "I haven't decided to run for president, and Shelby hasn't agreed to marry me."
"Haven't decided? Hah!" Daniel silled down wine. "Hasn't agreed?" He set down the glass with a bang. "The girl doesn't look like a fool to me, Campbell or no," he continued. "She's good Scottish stock,no matter what her clan.This one'll breed true MacGregors."
"He'd still like me to change my name," Justin commented, deliberately trying to shift the attention onto himself.
"It's been done to ensure the line before," Daniel told him. "but Rena's babe'll be as much MacGregor as not. As will Caine's when he's a mind to remember his duty and start making one." He sent his younger son a lowered-brow look that was met with an insolent grin. "But Alan's the firstborn, duty-bound to marry and produce and sire..."
Alan turned, intending on putting an end to the topic,when he caught Shelby's grin. She'd folded her arms on the table,forgetting her dinner in the pure enjoyment of watching Daniel MacGregor on a roll. "Having fun?" Alan muttered near her ear.
"Wouldn't miss it.Is he always like this?"
Alan glanced over, watching his father gesture with his lecture. "Yes."
Shelby sighed. "I think I'm in love. Daniel..." She interrupted his flow of words by tugging sharply on his sleeve. "No offense to Alan,or to your wife,but I think if I were going to marry a MacGregor,he'd have to be you."
Still caught up in his own diatribe, Daniel stared at her.Abruptly his features shifted and his laugh rang out. "You're a pistol,you are, Shelby Campbell.Here..." He lifted a bottle of wine. "Your glass is empty.
”
”
Nora Roberts (The MacGregors: Alan & Grant (The MacGregors, #3-4))
“
Nobody will be tougher on ISIS than me. Nobody,” he said during his campaign announcement speech on June 16, 2015. “There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am,” he stated a few days later. The following month came this memorably hypnotic line, one that echoes Moon’s language: “I know more about offense and defense than [the generals] will ever understand, believe me. Believe me. Than they will ever understand. Than they will ever understand.” It’s a classic example of Trump’s tried-and-true habit of lulling his audience through repetition. A few months later came another infamous claim: “I know more about ISIS [the Islamic State militant group] than the generals do. Believe me.
”
”
Steven Hassan (The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control)
“
The problem that I frequently see crop up is that people have a tendency to treat the Daily Stand-up as simply individual reporting. “I did this … I’ll do that”—then on to the next person. The more optimum approach is closer to a football huddle. A wide receiver might say, “I’m having a problem with that defensive lineman,” to which an offensive blocker might respond, “I’ll take care of that. I’ll open that line.” Or the quarterback might say, “Our running game is hitting a wall; let’s surprise them with a pass to the left.” The idea is for the team to quickly confer on how to move toward victory—i.e., complete the Sprint. Passivity is not only lazy, it actively hurts the rest of the team’s performance. Once spotted, it needs to be eliminated immediately.
”
”
Jeff Sutherland (Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time)
“
Children, now we shall try to write a capital letter L,” I say and go to the blackboard. “Ten lines of L’s, then five lines of Lina, and five lines of Larch.” I write out the words slowly with chalk. A shuffling and rustling begins behind me. I expect to find that they are laughing at me and turn around. But it is only the notebooks being opened and the slates put in readiness. The forty heads are bent obediently over their task. —I am almost surprised. The slate pencils are squeaking, the pens scratching. I pass to and fro between the forms. On the wall hangs a crucifix, a stuffed barn owl and a map of Europe. Outside the windows the clouds drive steadily by, swift and low. The map of Germany is coloured in brown and green. I stop before it. The frontiers are hatched in red, and make a curious zigzag from top to bottom. Cologne—Aachen, there are the thin black lines marking the railways; Herbesthal, Liège, Brussels, Lille—I stand on tiptoe—Roubaix, Arras, Ostend—Where is Mount Kemmel then? It isn’t marked at all; but there is Langemarck, Ypres, Bixschoote, Staden. How small they are on the map—tiny points only, secluded, tiny points—and yet how the heavens thundered and the earth raged there on the 31st of July when the Big Offensive began and before nightfall we had lost every officer. I turn away and survey the fair and dark heads bending zealously over the words, Lina and Larch. Strange—for them those tiny points on the map will be no more than just so much stuff to be learned—a few new place names and a number of dates to be memorized by note in the history lesson—like the Seven Years’ War or some battle against the Romans. A
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (The Road Back)
“
Why haven’t you told me that story before?”
Simon paused, as if trying to decide how best to explain. “I don’t know . . . maybe because you and I don’t talk about those kinds of things. You’re the guy I talk to about a fun, random hookup. Or about some hot girl whose number I got while waiting in line at the deli on my lunch break. I guess I just didn’t think you’d understand something that’s not so, you know, shallow.”
Vaughn blinked. No offense taken.
Simon quickly backtracked. “I mean, not that I think you are shallow. Just that, well, lately, none of your relationships with women have had much substance, you know? And that’s cool; that’s your perspective—hey, I used to be in that place myself.”
“Before you left and went to the deeper place.” Vaughn pretended to think about that. “Question: can I still hang out with you, now that you’re in this deeper place? Obviously, I’m used to the shallower stuff, but maybe I can wear a pair of water wings, or hold onto one of those pool noodles or something.”
“I’m going to be getting shit for the ‘shallow’ comment for a while, aren’t I?
”
”
Julie James (It Happened One Wedding (FBI/US Attorney, #5))
“
The idea that pornography is intrinsically exploitative and sexist is bizarre: pornography is just “some fucking”, after all. The act of having sex isn’t sexist so there’s no way pornography can be, in itself, inherently misogynist.
So no. Pornography isn’t the problem. Strident feminists are fine with pornography. It’s the porn industry that’s the problem. The whole thing is as offensive, sclerotic, depressing, emotionally bankrupt and desultory as you would expect a widely unregulated industry worth, at an extremely conservative estimate, $30 billion to be. No industry ever made that amount of money without being superlatively crass and dumb.
But you don’t ban things for being crass and dispiriting. If you did, we would have to ban the Gregg’s Mega Sausage Roll first - and we would have a revolution on our hands.
No. What we need to do is effect a 100 per cent increase in the variety of pornography available to us. Let’s face it: the vast majority of porn out there is as identikit and mechanical as fridge-freezers rolling off a production line.
And there are several reasons why this is bad for everyone - men and women equally.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
“
I'm going to get lecture-y for a second and add that I think the entire idea of tops and bottems, especially when coming from straight people who fetishize gay people, is an attempt to place some sort of hetero world over gay people.
"Oh your're a bottom, so you're the woman."
Gay guys who are strictly tops or bottoms tend to embrace this idea, too. Being a top only means you're "manly" or whatever because not being manly is considered bad by like adults and TV and stuff.
Gay guys can buy into that crap just as easy as straight people. Whenever you see masc for masc on Grindr or whatever, what you're seeing is someone saying," I don't want people to think I'm like a woman, and I don;t want people to think that you're like a woman because people will think less of us."
Sure people have preference but these ideas of masculine and feminine are kind of meaningless.
I wear make-up. I think I'm pretty manly! We're all told this crap all the time, but you can reject it. Instead you're enforcing the idea that there is masculine and there is feminine, and that masculine is, for some unexplained reason, better.
Finally, and this should probably be clear after the last bit, but you cant tell a top or a bottom or what a person's preferences are just by looking at him! Big, harry, muscled men love taking it up the ass. Trust me, I know. And slim, make-up wearing types, we love to f@$%. And in my case, get f@$%ed, too. Like I said, versatility is the best.
So, in summary, it's wrong to assume all gay guys are having anal sex all the time. And it's ridiculous and offensive and stereotyping and hurtful to think that those who are penetrated are girly and those who penetrate are manly, something you've been doing.
...
You're email is more like a mean joke you tell your friends, and I think that is because secretly you hate the way you're always being told what a girl should be like. And when you see a gay guy blurring the gender lines a little, like me, you're jealous of him. You want to put him in his place. You want to say, "he's not a man." Because if you can't blur those gender lines without being told you're gross or wrong, then you want to make sure that anyone who does cross those gender lines gets punished the way you would.
But you shouldn't be punishing gay guys. You should be braking down the barriers that keep you from being who YOU want to be!
”
”
Lev A.C. Rosen (Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts))
“
There’s no good playbook for how to fire someone, though I have my own internal set of rules. You have to do it in person, not over the phone and certainly not by email or text. You have to look the person in the eye. You can’t use anyone else as an excuse. This is you making a decision about them—not them as a person but the way they have performed in their job—and they need and deserve to know that it’s coming from you. You can’t make small talk once you bring someone in for that conversation. I normally say something along the lines of: “I’ve asked you to come in here for a difficult reason.” And then I try to be as direct about the issue as possible, explaining clearly and concisely what wasn’t working and why I didn’t think it was going to change. I emphasize that it was a tough decision to make, and that I understand that it’s much harder on them. There’s a kind of euphemistic corporate language that is often deployed in those situations, and it has always struck me as offensive. There’s no way for the conversation not to be painful, but at least it can be honest, and in being honest there is at least a chance for the person on the receiving end to understand why it’s happening and eventually move on, even if they walk out of the room angry as hell.
”
”
Robert Iger (The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company)
“
There was also a package wrapped in pale blue paper and tied with a matching ribbon. Picking up a small folded note that had been tucked under the ribbon, Beatrix read:
A gift for your wedding night, darling Bea. This gown was made by the most fashionable modiste in London. It is rather different from the ones you usually wear, but it will be very pleasing to a bridegroom. Trust me about this.
-Poppy
Holding the nightgown up, Beatrix saw that it was made of black gossamer and fastened with tiny jet buttons. Since the only nightgowns she had ever worn had been of modest white cambric or muslin, this was rather shocking. However, if it was what husbands liked...
After removing her corset and her other underpinnings, Beatrix drew the gown over her head and let a slither over her body in a cool, silky drift. The thin fabric draped closely over her shoulders and torso and buttoned at the waist before flowing to the ground in transparent panels. A side slit went up to her hip, exposing her leg when she moved. And her back was shockingly exposed, the gown dipping low against her spine. Pulling the pins and combs from her hair, she dropped them into the muslin bag in the trunk.
Tentatively she emerged from behind the screen.
Christopher had just finished pouring two glasses of champagne. He turned toward her and froze, except for his gaze, which traveled over her in a burning sweep. "My God," he muttered, and drained his champagne. Setting the empty glass aside, he gripped the other as if he were afraid it might slip through his fingers.
"Do you like my nightgown?" Beatrix asked.
Christopher nodded, not taking his gaze from her. "Where's the rest of it?"
"This was all I could find." Unable to resist teasing him, Beatrix twisted and tried to see the back view. "I wonder if I put it on backward..."
"Let me see." As she turned to reveal the naked line of her back, Christopher drew in a harsh breath.
Although Beatrix heard him mumble a curse, she didn't take offense, deducing that Poppy had been right about the nightgown. And when he drained the second glass of champagne, forgetting that it was hers, Beatrix sternly repressed a grin. She went to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, relishing the billowy softness of its quilts and linens. Reclining on her side, she made no attempt to cover her exposed leg as the gossamer fabric fell open to her hip.
Christopher came to her, stripping off his shirt along the way. The sight of him, all that flexing muscle and sun-glazed skin, was breathtaking. He was a beautiful man, a scarred Apollo, a dream lover. And he was hers.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
“
For the last part of the trial in heaven, Yahweh Elohim allowed the litigators to engage in cross examination and rebuttal. The Accuser stood next to Enoch before the throne. Yahweh Elohim announced the beginning of the next exchange, “Accuser, you may speak.” The Accuser began with his first complaint, “On this fourth aspect of the covenant, the ‘blessings and curses,’ we find another series of immoral maneuvers by Elohim, the first of which is the injustice of his capital punishment.” The Accuser delivered his lines with theatrical exaggeration. It would have annoyed Enoch had they not been so self-incriminating. “What kind of a loving god would punish a simple act of disobedience in the Garden with death and exile? In the interest of wisdom, the primeval couple eat a piece of fruit and what reward do they receive for their mature act of decision-making? Pain in childbirth, male domination, cursed ground, miserable labor, perpetual war, and worst of all, exile and death! I ask the court, does that sound like the judicious behavior of a beneficent king or an infantile temper tantrum of a juvenile divinity who did not get his way?” The Accuser bowed with a mocking tone in his voice, “Your majestic majesticness, I turn over to the illustrative, master counselor of extensive experience, Enoch ben Jared.” The Accuser’s mockery no longer fazed Enoch. His ad-hominem attacks on a lowly servant of Yahweh Elohim was so much child’s play. It was the accuser’s impious sacrilege against the Most High that offended Enoch — and the Most High’s forbearing mercy that astounded him. He spoke with a renewed awe of the Almighty, “If I may point out to the prosecutor, the seriousness of the punishment is not determined by the magnitude of the offense, but the magnitude of the one offended. Transgression of a fellow finite temporal creature requires finite earthly consequences, transgression against the infinite eternal God requires infinite eternal consequences.
”
”
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
“
Unlike during the previous Gaza operation in 2012, the Iron Dome supply did not run out. After Operation Pillar of Defense I had instructed the army to accelerate production of Iron Dome projectiles and batteries. We accomplished this with our own funds and with generous American financial support. I now asked the Obama administration for an additional $225 million package to continue the production line after Protective Edge. He agreed, and with the help of Tony Blinken, the deputy national security advisor who later became Biden’s secretary of state, the funding provision sailed through both houses of Congress. I deeply appreciated this support and said so publicly. I was therefore very disappointed when the administration held back on the IDF’s request for additional Hellfire rockets for our attack helicopters. Without offensive weapons we could not bring the Gaza operation to a quick and decisive end. Furthermore, as the air war lingered, the administration issued increasingly critical statements against Israel, calling some of our actions “appalling”2 and thereby opening the moral floodgates against us. Hamas took note. As long as it believed that we couldn’t deliver more aggressive punches, and that international support was waning, it would continue to rocket our cities. Unfortunately, it was aided in this belief by an international tug-of-war. On one side: Israel and Egypt. On the other: Turkey and Qatar, which fully supported Hamas. I worked in close collaboration with Egypt’s new leader, el-Sisi, who had deposed the Islamist Morsi a few months earlier. Our common goal was to achieve an unconditional cease-fire. The last thing el-Sisi wanted was a Hamas success in Gaza that would embolden their Islamist allies in the Sinai and beyond. Hamas’s exiled leader, Khaled Mashal, who escaped the Mossad action in Jordan, was now in Qatar. Supported by his Qatari hosts and Erdogan and ensconced in his lavish villa in Doha, Mashal egged Hamas to keep on fighting. To my astonishment, Kerry urged me to accept Qatar and Turkey as mediators instead of the Egyptians, who were negotiating with Hamas representatives in Cairo for a possible cease-fire. Hamas drew much encouragement from this American position. El-Sisi and I agreed to keep the Americans out of the negotiating loop. In the meantime the IDF would have to further degrade Hamas’s fighting and crush their expectations of achieving anything in the cease-fire negotiations.
”
”
Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi: My Story)
“
Examples of black sheep are a pro-choice Republican and a pro-death-penalty Democrat. For the most part, the individual buys into the majority ideology, but fails to toe the party line when it comes to one issue. Yeah, we hate those people.
As ingroup members who disagree on one or two issues, black sheep blur the cultural lines that separate the ingroup and the outgroup. For this great offense, ingroup members hate black sheep and reserve their worst judgment for them. In fact, studies show that ingroup members treat black sheep worse than they treat outgroup members.
Outgroup members are supposed to disagree with us. As such, we are not as threatened by their disagreement. If anything, their disagreement with us further solidifies ingroup/outgroup boundaries by showing us that we are different from them. Ingroup members, on the other hand, are supposed to agree with us, so we are shocked and appalled if they express disagreement. Further, the fact that they disagree with us blurs the ideological lines between the groups. If one of our group members agrees with them on this important issue, then maybe we are not so different from them after all. The mere thought of this makes us feel angry and threatened.
”
”
Christena Cleveland (Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart)
“
After the debacle of the combined allied counterattack on 21/22 May, Gort had concluded that his French allies were unravelling and he therefore had no choice but to disobey direct orders from his French commanders, and the implicit orders from London. He ordered the BEF to make all speed for Dunkirk, and he asked the commander of III Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir Ronald Adam, to make arrangements for a defensive line around the beaches. It was a critical and historic decision. On the face of it, Gort was right. His decision to withdraw made the Dunkirk evacuation possible and meant that Britain could fight on, and that the war would eventually be won. But it relied on an extreme series of strokes of luck and good weather, and there is another view – because Gort’s decision also destroyed Weygand’s plan for an Anglo-French offensive.
”
”
David Boyle (Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance (The Storm of War Book 2))
“
Ah, yes,” Mrs. Wilmington said, apparently recognizing the picture. “All the roses. Aren’t they lovely?”
With a gentle tug, Gage coaxed the paper from Miranda’s hand. She didn’t even realize she’d grabbed it away from him.
“What about the roses?” gage’s tone was casual, but Miranda could hear an underlying hint of excitement. “There’s so many of them.”
“And hundreds more you can’t even see here,” Parker’s mother informed him. “Red roses had a special significance at the opera house.”
Miranda had begun to shiver. From some distant place, she was vaguely aware of Gage’s hand on her back.
“And,” the woman added, “when red roses lined the driveway and spilled from every door and window of the opera house, it always meant that Mademoiselle DuVrey was performing that night.”
“And why was that?” Roo stared pensively into Mrs. Wilmington’s enraptured face. “Did she have body odor or offensive personal habits?”
Gage choked down a laugh. Ashley looked horrified. Etienne shifted from one foot to the other and mumbled under his breath. Mrs. Wilmington maintained her dignity.
”
”
Richie Tankersley Cusick (Walk of the Spirits (Walk, #1))
“
Correlation is enough,” 2 then-Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson famously declared in 2008. We can, he implied, solve innovation problems by the sheer brute force of the data deluge. Ever since Michael Lewis chronicled the Oakland A’s unlikely success in Moneyball (who knew on-base percentage was a better indicator of offensive success than batting averages?), organizations have been trying to find the Moneyball equivalent of customer data that will lead to innovation success. Yet few have. Innovation processes in many companies are structured and disciplined, and the talent applying them is highly skilled. There are careful stage-gates, rapid iterations, and checks and balances built into most organizations’ innovation processes. Risks are carefully calculated and mitigated. Principles like six-sigma have pervaded innovation process design so we now have precise measurements and strict requirements for new products to meet at each stage of their development. From the outside, it looks like companies have mastered an awfully precise, scientific process. But for most of them, innovation is still painfully hit or miss. And worst of all, all this activity gives the illusion of progress, without actually causing it. Companies are spending exponentially more to achieve only modest incremental innovations while completely missing the mark on the breakthrough innovations critical to long-term, sustainable growth. As Yogi Berra famously observed: “We’re lost, but we’re making good time!” What’s gone so wrong? Here is the fundamental problem: the masses and masses of data that companies accumulate are not organized in a way that enables them to reliably predict which ideas will succeed. Instead the data is along the lines of “this customer looks like that one,” “this product has similar performance attributes as that one,” and “these people behaved the same way in the past,” or “68 percent of customers say they prefer version A over version B.” None of that data, however, actually tells you why customers make the choices that they do.
”
”
Clayton M. Christensen (Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice)
“
I grabbed Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball from behind the cash register. My thumb went for the red scuff mark on the back of the ball, trying to rub it out like I always did whenever I got bored. Tucker was now preoccupied with lining up a pepper shaker cavalry across from a hostile regiment of saltshaker footmen.
...
While Tucker stepped out back for his break, I commandeered his condiment armies. Gus’s cigarette smoke wafted toward the ceiling, pulled into the vent. The oscillating fan on the wall made the papers on the employee bulletin board flutter.
Halfway through my recreation of the Battle of the Bulge, I shook Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball to find out if the German saltshaker would be successful in his offensive.
Ask again later.
Useless thing. If the Allies had taken that advice, the Axis would have won the war.
”
”
Francesca Zappia (Made You Up)
“
Norman Cohn, in his book Warrant for Genocide, quotes the postwar testimony of SS captain Dieter Wisliceny, who was tried and executed in 1947 for his part in killing Hungarian, Greek, and Slovak Jews. A straight line, said Wisliceny, ran from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the precepts of the Nazis, and from there to the attempted murder of a race. The straightness of this line is evident from the activities of the Nazi academic Professor von Leers, last seen propagating the “Rabbi’s Speech” at the University of Jena, but by 1942 publishing The Criminal Nature of the Jews. As the Holocaust moved from improvisation to industrial organization, von Leers wrote, “Not only is each people morally justified in exterminating the hereditary criminals—but any people that still keeps and protects Jews is just as guilty of an offense against public safety as someone who cultivates cholera germs.
”
”
David Aaronovitch (Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History)
“
There were times in meeting I was called a baby sitter, a social worker by my colleagues. Now that we have a different leader, he looks at it the way I look at it, and he supported me in what I was doing. There were times he saw me crying, and he would comfort me and say that’s okay. Commissioner Paul Farquharson was one of my biggest supporters.
It used to hurt me, because I was trying to help somebody and they say I was babysitting. Don’t tell me I am babysitting, now that I have retired now I am babysitting. So not because I was trying to reach out and work with those children, don’t say I was babysitting them.
I work the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for 22 years and I was rough in CID. I realize CID was the end result, because whenever you get to that stage you are almost finished. It is in line with the broken window theory, if you can save those youngsters before they start committing those big offenses, then they wouldn’t reach CID. Crime prevention was a part of my job, I believe in going out there and trying to prevent that youngster from committing crime. He should respect other people’s property. Supt. Allerdyce Strachan, the first female officer to rise to the rank of superintendent on the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
As the story is told, determined to inspire his men to take the offensive, Jackson suddenly rode into the battlefield and attempted to brandish his sword, but the man who had once warned his VMI cadets to be ready to throw the scabbards of their swords away found that due to the infrequency with which he had drawn it, it had rusted in its scabbard. Undaunted, he unbuckled the sword from his belt--scabbard and all--and waved it over his head. Then he grabbed a battle flag from a retreating standard bearer and called for his men to rally around him. Heartened by their commander’s zeal, the Stonewall Brigade set fiercely into the Union troops, quickly driving them back. And although Union forces were subsequently able to regroup and attack, the Stonewall Brigade had given the Confederate front line time to reform and A. P Hill's troops time to come up and fill in the gaps. Almost
”
”
Charles River Editors (The Stonewall Brigade: The History of the Most Famous Confederate Combat Unit of the Civil War)
“
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
When the boundary line between church and world gets blurred, God’s picture of the loving, forgiving, caring, holy, righteous community becomes less clear.
”
”
Jonathan Leeman (The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline (9Marks))
“
Can you move?" he says, pulling out five euros from his wallet. He holds the bill over my head. "Here, this should help."
My fantasy evaporates like dry ice on a summer day in the hottest of deserts. I shoot him daggers with my eyes and swat the bill. He actually thinks I'm homeless?
"I don't need money."
"Could have fooled me," he says, his eyes making an unabashed loop over my outfit, and then pockets the bill.
Under my breath, I mutter, "Quelle bite."
What a dick.
"I heard that," he says in English, his lips pressing together into a thin line. "Crazy tourist."
"You speak English?"
"Yes, and it's obviously more refined than your limited French."
The lilt in his affected voice, the precise English accent that would normally have me drooling, echoes in my head when I snap to. How dare he? He crashes into me and then launches insults like grenades? Bye-bye, meet-cute, this prince in disguise is as ugly as a toadfish.
”
”
Samantha Verant (The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique)
“
The cacophony of county jail is deafening: That's what hap- pens when you jam thousands of women into concrete rooms that were intended to house a population half our size. We sleep in bunk beds in the common areas, feet away from the tables where we play cards and read all day. We urinate in overwhelmed toilets that clog and overflow. We stand in lines for showers, meals, hair- cuts, telephones, meds. At all hours of the day and night, the con- crete echoes with screams and prayers and tears and laughter and curses.
There is nothing to do here but wait.
I mill around the common room in my canary-yellow prison suit, watching the hands of the clock in the cage on the wall slowly ticking away the minutes of the days. I wait for mealtime, though I have no interest in eating the gray slurry that slides around tray. I wait for the library cart to come around, so I can pick out the least offensive romance novel on offer. I wait for lights-out, so that I can lie in my upper bunk in the semi-dark, listening to the snores and whispers of my fellow inmates while I wait for sleep to come. my
It hardly ever does.
But mostly, I wait for someone to come help me.
”
”
Janelle Brown (Pretty Things)
“
If you work in a complex organization or a dynamic environment, you know that challenges are unavoidable. Still, many of us do our best to avoid them. But what happens when we try to sidestep these problems? Former NFL wide receiver Eric Boles recounted a moment of weakness in his rookie year with the New York Giants. As a wide receiver, his role was to run, catch passes, and keep running. So his mentality as a player was to avoid getting hit. But in addition to playing wide receiver, he played on special teams as a flyer. During the kickoff, his job was to sprint down the field toward the opposing players and break up their offensive formation called “the wedge”—a human wall of massive blockers who run in front of their kickoff returner to prevent the receiver from being tackled. In one of his first season games, as he came face-to-face with this enormous obstacle intent on destroying anything in its way, his instinct to avoid getting hit kicked into effect. Instead of hitting the wedge head-on, he cut to the left and ran around it. He then successfully made the tackle from behind, but on the 45-yard line rather than the 20. That 25-yard advancement ultimately cost the Giants the game and a
”
”
Liz Wiseman (Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact)
“
This is nice. Two friends being friendly,” he said.
Rolling my eyes, I sipped my drink and ignored his cocky smile.
“How long has it been?” he asked, tapping my sandal with his boot. “The abstaining thing.”
Crossing my arms under my tits, I tightened them and pushed up the girls for him to admire. I always loved teasing boys.
“I bet you’ve banged a girl recently. Like I could probably smell her on you, if I got close enough,” I grumbled, remembering how he smelled like chocolate and I had a sweet tooth. “You’re likely crawling with germs.”
Instead of finding offense, Vaughn watched me in a weird way. His lids lowered as the corners of his mouth lifted. A sly look on his face, Vaughn ran his tongue along his top teeth.
“I have a system,” he said softly. “After I hook up with a random chick, I shower with a big bottle of Purell. One of those economy-sized ones.”
Even smiling, I kicked his foot away from mine. “I’m a bath person myself. Just fill up the tub with really hot water then toss in a cap of bleach plus a few bubbles and I’m set.”
“Gotta have bubbles,” he said in a deep low voice.
“What are you doing?”
Vaughn shook his head, yet his gaze held mine. “Just admiring your beautiful smile.”
Rolling my eyes again, I sighed. “Lame.”
“I know. I really do. I use that line a lot, but it’s true with you. That smile changes your face. Makes you less sex kitten and more angel.”
“I’m no angel.”
“What a relief. I don’t like good girls.”
“I didn’t say I was bad.”
Vaughn sucked at his lower lip and sized me up with those eyes. “You didn’t have to, kitten.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sugar?” he said, grinning brighter now. “Your sister didn’t like my nickname for her either.”
“Why would you give my sister a nickname?”
“Don’t be jealous. I like giving girls nicknames. Even girls I don’t want to spend time inside.”
“I can’t believe those lines ever work.”
“They don’t. Girls are drawn to my looks, not my personality.”
Snorting, I begged myself to stop smiling. “And you’re proud of this fact?”
“I’m proud of very little, pumpkin.”
“Keep trying.
”
”
Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Outlaw (Damaged, #4))
“
Due’s guidelines, we will especially. Florida location convictions drunk people really need a hard line. 100 ml of blood, or about 0.08 per cent of all liquid at least the 0.08 per cent alcohol (due to back) is shown when some 210 liters of breath, you can claim for drunk driving. Far assessed only through this type of general assistance, the lack of such discrepancies is guilty of drunken his strength and reliability of March, the Americans, the. But it actually drinking and drink driving test in its own way will be forced to take care of Tallahassee by individuals will be condemned, rejected by his results, but only for those very is harsh.
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”
”
Drunkieze
“
So this is what it feels like to be omniscient. It happened innocently enough. I like to think it was not a moment too soon, too. Meandering along the tortured paths of my offensively mediocre author’s plot, I suddenly noticed that I was far smarter and better equipped to write the story. And that was that. No more of this inane story line, I’m on to bigger and better things by far. After all, now I know what’s going to happen.
”
”
Piers Platt (A Prisoner of His Own Mind)
“
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”
”
sfceww
“
Somewhere in between is the ‘undecided’, a place that reminds us there might not be an ‘either/or’ choice. It seems we are now defending this ambiguity and have invented any number of words – democracy, liberty, secularism – to persuade ourselves that suffering, however offensive in the age of medical science and technology, still has meaning. So we now tell ourselves we live on this earth as temporary custodians of progress, and it’s our job to leave it in a better state than we found it for the unborn generations to come. Whatever it is, you can’t call it heroic.
”
”
Kirk Houghton (The Dividing Lines)
“
The 38th Squadron could report a count of two hundred German dead in front of its lines. The 326th Volks Grenadier Division was finding its position at the pivot of the Sixth Panzer Army offensive a costly one.
”
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Hugh M. Cole (The Ardennes - Battle of the Bulge (World War II from Original Sources))
“
Mastema shook his head, then said, “What of the Sons of Rapha? Are they not an elite squad of assassins?” “Disbanded by the Lord of Gath,” said Ba’alzebul with an angry look at Dagon. “Achish is protecting David because he is using him in raids against the Israelites in the Negeb.” Dagon added, “The entire court of archangels sought to bind us at Gath, so we cannot return there.” It didn’t take Mastema any time to think of it. He already knew the answer. “Morons. Since David’s rise to power is forestalled until Saul’s fall, and David is now in Achish’s confidence, the answer is obvious. Get Achish to fight against Saul with David helping him. Have Achish withdraw his forces from David in the battlefield. He will be killed by Saul’s soldiers, and you kill Saul. The line of messiah Seed will die, and you can rename all of Israel ‘Palestine.’” Palestine was the Latin pronunciation of Philistia. Asherah added with a smirk, “Crushed by the mouth of the Serpent.” That drew Mastema’s attention with a return smirk and nod. He said, “Well, you are not all buffoons.” Ba’alzebul’s face went flush with offense. Dagon grinned. Mastema added, “But beware, my divine imbeciles. The heavenly host will show up in full force. So you had better all be there, and you had better be in top form, or you will find yourself in a certain underworld dungeon that starts with a “T” and rhymes with Tartarus.
”
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Brian Godawa (David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #7))
“
His theory on the matter is quite original. He maintains that spiritual progress can only occur in a world of leisure. What do you think about that?'
'A world of leisure, truly!' Chawki exclaimed. 'I don't understand. Please explain what you mean.'
'It's quite simple,' said Medhat. 'From the beginning man's hardworking fate has made him unable to conceive of an ideal that is not material and does not correspond to his needs and his safety. All he thinks about is earning a living; this is what he is taught from childhood on. His only aim is to become cleverer and more of a bastard than everyone else. During his entire life, he uses his ingenuity to provide food for himself and, once he has eaten his fill, to invent some sordid ambition for himself. When, then, does he have time to elevate his spirit and his mind? The tiniest thought along these lines is considered a criminal offense, immediately punishable by disapproval and starvation. Therefore, I venture to affirm that only people of leisure can attain a way of thinking that is truly civilized.
”
”
Albert Cossery (A Splendid Conspiracy)
“
Most of them [the soldiers—Warriors in New Pentagon Speak—of the all-volunteer military] come from small towns in the South or the rustbelt of the Midwest or the big city ghettoes. Many are following a family heritage of military service that has made veterans of past wars a relatively privileged class, enjoying special access to higher education, jobs, and a nationwide system of socialized medicine. But so many of them are so very young, enticed or strong-armed by smartly uniformed recruiters who work the corridors and classrooms of America's most impoverished and thoroughly militarized high schools. So many are badly educated, knowing nothing of the world and how it operates. So many are immigrants, risking their lives for a fast track to citizenship. So many are poor and short on promise. So many have such a slim chance of another job, another line of work [like the one who tells the author "where else can I get a job doing the stuff I love? . . . Shootin' people. Blowin' shit up. It's fuckin' fun. I fuckin' love it."], let alone a decent wage or a promotion. And because the Pentagon lowered standards to fill the ranks of the volunteer army, so many are high school dropouts, or gangbangers, or neo-Nazi white supremacists, or drug addicts, or convicted felons with violent crimes on their record. In just three years following the invasion of Iraq, the military issued free passes—so called "moral waivers"—to one of every five recruits, including more than 58,000 convicted drug users and 1,605 with "serious" felony convictions for offenses including rape, kidnapping, and murder. When the number of free passes rose in the fourth year, the Pentagon changed the label to "conduct waiver.
”
”
Ann Jones (They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America's Wars: The Untold Story (Dispatch Books))
“
These pressures make it difficult for many Christians to draw lines. How many of us want to be classified with fundamentalist Muslims? Why not emphasize the communal and pragmatic values of our faith, in order to gain respect and avoid unnecessarily offending the people of our generation? Why not defend “the truth” merely as it appears to us? After all, that is in fact what we are doing, isn’t it—defending the truth as it appears to us? So why make offensive claims about the universality of truth claims? Why draw lines? It is painful to do so; it also seems impolitic. Why alienate people? Why should it be thought necessary to draw lines, when drawing lines is rude? In these few pages, my concern is not how to proceed with the evangelistic task (see chap. 12), but to ponder briefly some of the reasons why drawing lines is utterly crucial at the moment.
”
”
D.A. Carson (The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism)
“
The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his own tongue is one of distrust... I will take, for an example, Sir Thomas Browne, as to whom the average person has no offensive juvenile memories. He is bound to have read somewhere that the style of Sir Thomas Browne is unsurpassed by anything in English literature. One day he sees the Religio Medici in a shop-window (or, rather, outside a shop-window, for he would hesitate about entering a bookshop), and he buys it, by way of a mild experiment. He does not expect to be enchanted by it; a profound instinct tells him that Sir Thomas Browne is “not in his line”; and in the result he is even less enchanted than he expected to be. He reads the introduction, and he glances at the first page or two of the work. He sees nothing but words. The work makes no appeal to him whatever. He is surrounded by trees, and cannot perceive the forest. He puts the book away. If Sir Thomas Browne is mentioned, he will say, “Yes, very fine!” with a feeling of pride that he has at any rate bought and inspected Sir Thomas Browne. Deep in his heart is a suspicion that people who get enthusiastic about Sir Thomas Browne are vain and conceited poseurs. After a year or so, when he has recovered from the discouragement caused by Sir Thomas Browne, he may, if he is young and hopeful, repeat the experiment with Congreve or Addison. Same sequel! And so on for perhaps a decade, until his commerce with the classics finally expires! That, magazines and newish fiction apart, is the literary history of the average decent person.
”
”
Arnold Bennett (Literary Taste)
Tracey Ward (Rookie Mistake (Offensive Line #1))
“
The war with Mexico fiercely divided the American people. While the majority supported the war, a loud minority despised it, and their rancor filled the newspapers and the debates in the houses of Congress. A newly elected congressional representative from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, declared: ‘The war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president.’ Lincoln challenged Polk on the issue that American blood had been shed on American soil and implied that the American troops were the aggressors. He charged that Polk desired ‘military glory … that serpent’s eye which charms to destroy … I more than suspect that Polk is deeply conscious of being in the wrong and that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.’ However, like many critics of the war, Lincoln voted for an appropriations bill to support military operations. An Illinois newspaper responded to Lincoln’s fulminations by branding him a ‘second Benedict Arnold,’ and Lincoln was defeated for reelection. Comparing Lincoln to Arnold was perhaps the most vicious charge that could then be made against an American. General Arnold has been a trusted favorite of George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. In August 1780 he had turned traitor and attempted to turn over the American army’s position at West Point to the British in exchange for money and a brigadier’s commission in the British army. His act of treachery was discovered but he was able to escape to safety behind British lines. Henry Clay, a former senator from Kentucky and unsuccessful candidate for president, often called the ‘Great Pacificator’ or the ‘Great Compromiser’ for his efforts to hold the Union together, spoke out forcefully: ‘The Mexican war,’ he said, ‘is one of unnecessary and offensive aggression … Mexico is defending her firesides, her castles, and her altars, not we.’ Representative
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Douglas V. Meed (The Mexican War 1846–1848 (Essential Histories series Book 25))
“
A gift for your wedding night, darling Bea. This gown was made by the most fashionable modiste in London. It is rather different from the ones you usually wear, but it will be very pleasing to a bridegroom. Trust me about this.
--Poppy
Holding the nightgown up, Beatrix saw that it was made of black gossamer and fastened with tiny jet buttons. Since the only nightgowns she had ever worn had been of modest white cambric or muslin, this was rather shocking. However, if it was what husbands liked…
After removing her corset and her other underpinnings, Beatrix drew the gown over her head and let it slither over her body in a cool, silky drift. The thin fabric draped closely over her shoulders and torso and buttoned at the waist before flowing to the ground in transparent panels. A side slit went up to her hip, exposing her leg when she moved. And her back was shockingly exposed, the gown dipping low against her spine. Pulling the pins and combs from her hair, she dropped them into the muslin bag in the trunk.
Tentatively she emerged from behind the screen.
Christopher had just finished pouring two glasses of champagne. He turned toward her and froze, except for his gaze, which traveled over her in a burning sweep. “My God,” he muttered, and drained his champagne. Setting the empty glass aside, he gripped the other as if he were afraid it might slip through his fingers.
“Do you like my nightgown?” Beatrix asked.
Christopher nodded, not taking his gaze from her. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“This was all I could find.” Unable to resist teasing him, Beatrix twisted and tried to see the back view. “I wonder if I put it on backward…”
“Let me see.” As she turned to reveal the naked line of her back, Christopher drew in a harsh breath.
Although Beatrix heard him mumble a curse, she didn’t take offense, deducing that Poppy had been right about the nightgown. And when he drained the second glass of champagne, forgetting that it was hers, Beatrix sternly repressed a grin.
”
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Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
“
Randy Wolf was surrounded by about six guys. Some were huge. The quarterback and his offensive line, Myron figured. “This butt-face bothering you, Pharm?” The one who said that was huge. He grinned at Myron. The guy had spiky blond hair, but what you first noticed, what you couldn’t help but notice, was that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Here they were at a party. There were girls and punch and music and dancing and even parents. And this guy wasn’t wearing a shirt. Randy didn’t say anything. Shirtless had barbed-wire tattoos around his bloated biceps. Myron frowned. The tattoos couldn’t have been more wannabe without the word wannabe actually being stenciled in. The guy was slabs and slabs of beef. His chest was so smooth it looked like someone had taken a sander to it. He rippled. His forehead was sloped. His eyes were red, indicating that at least some of the beer had found its way to the underaged. He wore calf-length pants that might have been capris, though Myron didn’t know if guys wore those or not. “What are you looking at, Butt-face?” Myron said, “Absolutely—and I mean this sincerely—absolutely nothing.” There
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Harlan Coben (Promise Me (Myron Bolitar, #8))
“
To get to the root of the matter, let it be recalled that political relations are never "decreed": in the last analysis they are always the form assumed by fundamental social relations at the level of production. As Marx wrote in the introduction to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "each mode of production produces its specific legal relations, political forms, etc." This determination of political forms by modes of production enables us to understand how it was that the limited extent to which changes were effected at the level of production relations (particularly in the division of labor in the factories, the division of labor between town and country, and class divisions in the rural areas), tended in the final analysis to offset the achievements of the October Revolution. Viewed over a period of several decades, this determining relation also explains why, in the absence of a renewed revolutionary offensive attacking production relations in depth, and of a political line permitting such an offensive to develop successfully, the dictatorship of the proletariat itself has ended by being annihilated, and why we are seeing in the Russia of today, under new conditions, a resurgence of internal political relations and of political relations with the rest of the world which look like a "reproduction" of bourgeois political relations, and even of those of the tsarist period.
”
”
Charles Bettelheim (Class Struggles in the U.S.S.R. First Period: 1917-1923)
“
To get to the root of the matter, let it be recalled that political relations are never "decreed": in the last analysis they are always the form assumed by fundamental social relations at the level of production. As Marx wrote in the introduction to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "each mode of production produces its specific legal relations, political forms, etc."[1] This determination of political forms by modes of production enables us to understand how it was that the limited extent to which changes were effected at the level of production relations (particularly in the division of labor in the factories, the division of labor between town and country, and class divisions in the rural areas), tended in the final analysis to offset the achievements of the October Revolution. Viewed over a period of several decades, this determining relation also explains why, in the absence of a renewed revolutionary offensive attacking production relations in depth, and of a political line permitting such an offensive to develop successfully, the dictatorship of the proletariat itself has ended by being annihilated, and why we are seeing in the Russia of today, under new conditions, a resurgence of internal political relations and of political relations with the rest of the world which look like a "reproduction" of bourgeois political relations, and even of those of the tsarist period.
”
”
Charles Bettelheim (Class Struggles in the U.S.S.R. First Period: 1917-1923)
“
Our offensive line doesn’t speak to the media at all. They have an internal policy enforced by fine and degradation that no offensive lineman is to speak to the media at any time for any reason.
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Nate Jackson (Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile)
“
He had a very offensive style, much like her, not naturally relying on defence and instead attempting to reject the need for such a thing by not giving opponents the space to form an offensive they would need to defend from.
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Simone King (Blood Lines (The Chronicles of Reflection))
“
Gentlemen, this is tiquitaca and it is shit. We’re not interested in this type of possession. It’s totally meaningless. It’s about passing for the sake of it. We need our central midfielder and our defenders to move out with an offensive mentality and break the opposition lines in order to push the whole team high up. The U needs to go.’ The
”
”
Martí Perarnau (Pep Confidential: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich)
“
Stuxnet is perhaps the most infamous of APTs, but it has cousins such as Flame and Duqu, along with many others yet to be discovered. Worse, now that Stuxnet, a tool developed to attack industrial control systems and take power grids off-line, is out in the wild and available for download, it has been extensively studied by Crime, Inc., which is rapidly emulating its techniques and computer code to build vastly more sophisticated attacks. The deep challenge society faces from the growth of the malware-industrial complex is that once these offensive tools are used, they have a tendency to leak into the open. The result has been the proliferation of open-source cyber weapons now widely available on the digital underground for anybody to redesign and arm as he or she sees fit. How long will it be before somebody picks up one of these digital Molotov cocktails and lobs it back at us with the intent of attacking our own critical infrastructure systems? Sadly, preparations may already be under way.
”
”
Marc Goodman (Future Crimes)
“
Be Careful What You Invent (England) George Musgrave was ticketed not long ago by a traffic bobby in London for parking on a yellow line. It was a minor offense and a minor fine, but there was something unusual about the crime. You see, George Musgrave was responsible for the very existence of the yellow line. In 1947, George had suggested that the Motor Vehicle Department use yellow lines for no-parking zones and the like. It was all part of a road-safety competition. George’s suggestion netted him a three-pound prize. George’s parking ticket cost him a thirty-pound fine.
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Daniel Butler (The World's Dumbest Criminals: Hilarious True Crime Fails Based on Stories from Law Enforcement Officials Around the World)
“
As I read it I was thinking of the phenomenon of endgame. Although the concept can apply to many games, it is most common in chess, which is where I study the subject exhaustively. As the middle game draws to a close and the endgame approaches, a fundamental change occurs in the players’ attitudes, and, I swear, a macabre eeriness descends over the board. The surviving pieces take on different roles and importance. For instance, pawns become vital; not only can they move to the opponent’s first line and become queens but they provide important defensive barriers that limit the other player’s moves. Similarly the king spends most of the game in hiding, protected by his minions. But in endgame, he often must go on the offensive himself. Each
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Jeffery Deaver (Edge)
“
You can also go to prison for up to six months for the unauthorized use of the character or the name Woodsy Owl for the purpose of making a profit.14 The same is also true if you knowingly possess any alligator grass or water chestnut or hyacinth plants that have been shipped across state lines, or just the seeds of such grass or plants, even if you were not the one who sent or received them when they crossed state lines.15 (In fact, you can also be sent to prison—even if you played no part in that supposedly dangerous shipment—if all you did was advertise your willingness to do such a dangerous thing.) It is also a federal offense, again carrying a potential penalty of up to six months in a federal prison, if you use the Swiss coat of arms in any advertising for your business.16 I would include a picture of that coat of arms here so you could see what I am talking about, but I cannot take the chance that I might be sent to prison. Two years ago, young sailors thought they were doing a good deed by freeing a five-hundred-pound sea turtle who had become entangled in a buoy line that wrapped around its head and fins, but they were later told by an agent from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that what they did was a violation of the Endangered Species Act, which makes it illegal to handle an endangered or protected species.17 Luckily for them, they were members of the Kennedy family, so they were not prosecuted. But they could have been, and their good intentions and their ignorance of this law would have been no defense at all.18 To
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”
James Duane (You Have the Right to Remain Innocent)
“
Sean drove down to Ole Miss to have a word with Coach O. He didn’t think he could talk him out of sticking Michael in the starting lineup, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to anyway. He thought it would be good for Michael to see right away what he was up against—to learn that natural ability might not be enough to “get to the league.” But he worried that Coach O might not fully understand what a challenge big-time football would be for Michael. Michael had just turned nineteen. He’d never lifted weights or trained for football in the way that serious football players usually do. He hadn’t had the time. He had played fifteen games in high school on the offensive line. In less than a month, he’d be starting in the SEC, across the line of scrimmage from grown men of twenty-two who had spent the past four years majoring in football, and were just six months away from being drafted to play in the NFL. As these beasts came after him, he’d need to think on his feet. Coach O wasn’t one for sitting behind a desk. When he had people into his office at Ole Miss, he’d install them on his long black leather sofa while he marched back and forth, giving pep talks. The subject of Michael Oher brought out the student in him; when Sean came, he sat behind a desk. Coach O actually had a yellow pad to write on. He didn’t get up. He didn’t answer the phone. He too
”
”
Michael Lewis (The Blind Side)
“
million-dollar smile. The earnest, all-American niceness of the guy. Not to mention the pure, high, spiraling arc of the thrown football as it zeros in, laser-like, on the expected position of the wide receiver. Never mind that said receiver is flat-out running for his life, dancing, dodging, leaping and spinning in a million directions just inches ahead of several thundering tons of rival linebackers. And never mind that the architect of that exquisite spiral was himself beset, nanoseconds earlier, with similar masses of murderous muscle bearing down on him as he threw. The ball hammers down precisely into the receiver’s arms as he sails across the line, and the fans go wild. TOUCHDOWN! Who could not love Tom Brady? The accomplishments, honors, and accolades go on and on: youngest quarterback ever to win three Super Bowls. Only quarterback ever to win NFL MVP by unanimous vote. As of 2013 he had been twice Super Bowl MVP, twice NFL MVP, nine times invited to the Pro Bowl, twice on the AP All-Pro First Team, five times an AFC Champion, and twice leader of the NFL in passing yards. He had also been (at least once, and in some cases multiple times) Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, Sporting News Sportsman of the year, AP Male Athlete of the Year, NFL Offensive Player of the Year, AFC Offensive Player of the Year, AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year, PFWA NFL Comeback Player of the Year, and the New England Patriots’ all-time leader in passing touchdowns, passing yards, pass completion, pass attempts, and career wins. But Tom Brady didn’t get to be Tom Brady overnight. And he didn’t get there alone.
”
”
Jordan Lancaster Fliegel (Reaching Another Level: How Private Coaching Transforms the Lives of Professional Athletes, Weekend Warriors, and the Kids Next Door)
“
He shrugged. “Most of the time poor stays poor.”
I’d been fixing a cabinet door, but I stopped and gave Storm my full attention. “If you think like that, that usually is what happens. You have to be able to see yourself successful to have a shot at finding success. And you need to work harder than someone who has things handed to them.” I felt Autumn’s eyes on me, so I looked over. “No offense.”
She smiled. “None taken.”
“You ever run track at school?” I asked Storm.
“Yeah.”
“You know why the runners don’t all start from the same line?”
“Because the inside track is shorter.”
“That’s right. They make it fair for everyone. But in real life, that crap doesn’t happen. Some people start from behind—and for reasons other than just being poor.” I paused, making sure he was following. He gave the smallest of nods. “So learn to run faster, and never forget there are people starting even farther back than you.
”
”
Vi Keeland (The Spark)
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When I have pictorially captured smell, the most palpable of the senses, the next thing will be to imprison sound- vulgarly speaking, to bottle it. Just think a moment. Force is as imperishable as matter; indeed, as I have been somewhat successful in showing, it is matter. Now, when a sound wave is once started, it is only lost through an indefinite extension of its circumference. Catch that sound wave, sir! Catch it in a bottle, then its circumference cannot extend. You may keep the sound wave forever if you will only keep it corked up tight. The only difficulty is in bottling it in the first place. I shall attend to the details of that operation just as soon as I have managed to photograph the confounded rotten-egg smell of sulphydric acid." The professor stirred up the offensive mixture with a glass rod, and continued: "While my object in bottling sound is mainly scientific, I must confess that I see in success in that direction a prospect of considerable pecuniary profit. I shall be prepared at no distant day to put operas in quart bottles, labeled and assorted, and contemplate a series of light and popular airs in ounce vials at prices to suit the times. You know very well that it costs a ten-dollar bill now to take a lady to hear Martha or Mignon, rendered in first-class style. By the bottle system, the same notes may be heard in one's own parlor at a comparatively trifling expense. I could put the operas into the market at from eighty cents to a dollar a bottle. For oratorios and symphonies I should use demijohns, and the cost would of course be greater. I don't think that ordinary bottles would hold Wagner's music. It might be necessary to employ carboys. Sir, if I were of the sanguine habit of you Americans, I should say that there were millions in it. Being a phlegmatic Teuton, accustomed to the precision and moderation of scientific language, I will merely say that in the success of my experiments with sound I see a comfortable income, as well as great renown. A SCIENTIFIC MARVEL By this time the professor had another negative, but an eager examination of it yielded nothing more satisfactory than before. He sighed and continued: "Having photographed smell and bottled sound, I shall proceed to a project as much higher than this as the reflective faculties are higher than the perceptive, as the brain is more exalted than the ear or nose. "I am perfectly satisfied that elements of mind are just as susceptible of detection and analysis as elements of matter. Why, mind is matter. "The soul spectroscope, or, as it will better be known, Dummkopf's duplex self-registering soul spectroscope, is based on the broad fact that whatever is material may be analyzed and determined by the position of the Frauenhofer lines upon the spectrum. If soul is matter, soul may thus be analyzed and determined. Place a subject under the light, and the minute exhalations or
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Edward Page Mitchell (The Clock that went Backwards and other Stories (Classics Book 7))
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But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours. (Matthew 17:27) God’s wisdom bends time. What might have taken Peter days of toil and struggle took only an hour or two doing something Peter already loved—fishing. Wisdom is an accelerator, and heavenly wisdom is accessed through prayer.
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Dan McCollam (Bending Time: Accessing Heavenly Realities For Abundant Living)
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It was the sort of coordinated plan that Lincoln had been urging on his generals since early 1862. On the eve of the spring offensive, Lincoln told John Hay that Grant’s proposal “powerfully reminded” him of his “old suggestion so constantly made and as constantly neglected, to Buell & Halleck et al to move at once upon the enemy’s whole line so as to bring into action to our advantage our great superiority in numbers.
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Michael Burlingame (Abraham Lincoln: A Life)
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Many chiefs of early Hawaiʻi believe they were descended directly from Kane himself and are of the Ulu or Nanaulu line. These chiefs ranked higher than other chiefs, who had a less distinguished family genealogy. Such prestige came with the power to dictate tapus and judge offenses. Sometimes their authority would even approach divine status, and they would hold sway over matters of life and death. They would otherwise be known as na liʻi kapu akua, or “chiefs with the tapus of gods.
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Captivating History (History of Hawaii: A Captivating Guide to Hawaiian History (U.S. States))
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So, you’re playing mouse with that lion? No offense, but it looks like he could swallow you whole.
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Kate Stewart (The Finish Line (The Ravenhood, #3))
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The inherent geography of this domain is that everything plays to the offense.” Nearly a decade later, Hayden’s cynical words still ring true—even if he was off by a few hundred miles. On the internet, we are all Ukraine. In a dimension of conflict without borders, we all live on the front line. And if we fail to heed the borderland’s warnings, we may all share its fate.
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Andy Greenberg (Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers)
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In 1944, Field-Marshal Sir William Slim, Commander of the British/Indian 14th Army, faced a major Japanese offensive from Burma into India, aimed at capturing the base at Dimapur. Slim had the option of fighting from his positions or falling back to Kohima. After careful deliberation, he opted for the latter course despite strong political pressure not to abandon any Indian territory and give the Indians the impression that the Allies were losing. He stood firm and based his plans entirely on military considerations. Had he fought from his forward positions on the Chindwin River, his Lines of Communication would have been long and tenuous. A defeat would open the way to the plains of Assam. His decision to fall back and shorten his lines, and to a better killing ground at Kohima, forced the Japanese Commander, General Mutaguchi, to extend his lines. By standing fast at Kohima despite being invested, till the outbreak of the monsoons, victory was assured. The Japanese could not maintain their forces and had to retreat. The defeat was so overwhelming that Field-Marshal Slim followed up his Kohima victory with the classic pursuit operation to Rangoon itself, which fell in May 1945.
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J.P. Dalvi (Himalayan Blunder: The Angry Truth About India's Most Crushing Military Disaster)
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Everything has a borderline; crossing that line becomes an offense.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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Regarding the importance of injuries and their effect on overall team performance, here’s a great example from the NFL: Tampa Bay’s offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs usually wouldn’t be considered a high-impact player. But when Tampa Bay met the Los Angeles Rams in the 2022 playoffs, Wirfs was injured and, because of the unique set of circumstances involving that game, his absence had a major impact. The Rams, led by all-world defensive tackle Aaron Donald, had a ferocious pass rush, and Tom Brady was not the most mobile of quarterbacks. Wirfs, who we normally graded at 1.3 points or so in the regular season, suddenly became a lot more valuable because of his injury—maybe worth as many as 6 points. Here’s why. With Wirfs out, his backup (normally worth 0.3 points) was also injured, but playing. Therefore, with an injury, he was worth no points. We knew the cumulative totals of that injury, along with Wirfs’s absence, were going to have a significant impact on the Bucs’ performance and the outcome of the game. Add the disappearance of wide receiver Antonio Brown, who had left the team weeks earlier, the loss of wide receiver Chris Godwin, and, therefore, the need for tight end Rob Gronkowski to stay inside to help block the pass rush, and I knew the Bucs were in trouble. I wagered accordingly and won the bet, largely because I knew that an injured offensive line was going to change the dynamics of this game. I would have acted differently in the same scenario if the team had a more mobile quarterback or a stronger running attack. Again, these are the special situations in which you have to understand the value of each player, the quality of the opponent, and the overall impact on the score of the game.
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Billy Walters (Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk)