“
Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's books, one's own books - it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here, reading a page from one over there, enjoying them all as objects to be touched, looked at, even smelt, is a deep satisfaction. And often, very often, while browsing haphazardly, looking for nothing in particular, you pick up a volume that suddenly excites you, and you know that this one of all the others you must read. Those are great moments - and the books we come across like that are often the most memorable.
”
”
Aidan Chambers
“
His lyrical whistle beckoned me to adventure and forgetting. But I didn't want to forget. Hugging my grudge, ugly and prickly, a sad sea urchin, I trudged off on my own, in the opposite direction toward the forbidding prison. As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin; I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over.
The Tide ebbed, sucked back into itself. There I was, a reject, with the dried black seaweed whose hard beads I liked to pop, hollowed orange and grapefruit halves and a garbage of shells. All at once, old and lonely, I eyed these-- razor clams, fairy boats, weedy mussels, the oyster's pocked gray lace (there was never a pearl) and tiny white "ice cream cones." You could always tell where the best shells were-- at the rim of the last wave, marked by a mascara of tar. I picked up, frigidly, a stiff pink starfish. It lay at the heart of my palm, a joke dummy of my own hand. Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts)
“
She and Roman would survive this war. They would have the chance to grow old together, year by year. They would be friends until they both finally acknowledged the truth. And they would have everything that other couples had—the arguments and the hand-holding in the market and the gradual exploration of their bodies and the birthday celebrations and the journeys to new cities and the living as one and sharing a bed and the gradual sense of melting into each other. Their names would be entwined—Roman and Iris or Winnow and Kitt because could you truly have one without the other?—and they would write on their typewriters and ruthlessly edit each other’s pieces and read books by candlelight at night.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
“
We must distinguish between ‘sentimental’ and ‘sensitive’. A sentimentalist may be a perfect brute in his free time. A sensitive person is never a cruel person. Sentimental Rousseau, who could weep over a progressive idea, distributed his many natural children through various poorhouses and workhouses and never gave a hoot for them. A sentimental old maid may pamper her parrot and poison her niece. The sentimental politician may remember Mother’s Day and ruthlessly destroy a rival. Stalin loved babies. Lenin sobbed at the opera, especially at the Traviata.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Russian Literature)
“
How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue...
And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that look like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish; but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Khalifa Brothers, #1))
“
As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left
here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue
where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive
the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)
and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining
oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
”
”
Frank O'Hara
“
suppose the god who confronts you when you die turns out to be Baal, and suppose Baal is just as jealous as his old rival Yahweh was said to be. Mightn’t Pascal have been better off wagering on no god at all rather than on the wrong god?
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
“
There is not one single invention of (Nature's), however subtle or impressive it may be thought to be, that the human spirit cannot create; no forest of Fontainebleu or moonlit scene that cannot be produced with a floodlit stage set; no waterfall that hydraulics cannot imitate so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from the original; no rock that papier-mâché cannot copy; no flower that specious taffetas and delicately painted papers cannot rival! There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artiface.
”
”
Joris-Karl Huysmans (Against Nature)
“
A literary mystery, a damsel in distress, and his rival deposed. If that doesn't get him here then he's not much of a knight in shining armor.
”
”
Charlie Lovett (First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen)
“
It is not until one visits old, oppressed, suffering Europe, that he can appreciate his own government, "he observed, "that he realizes the fearful responsibility of the American people to the nations of the whole earth, to carry successfully through the experiment... That men are capable of self-government.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
”
”
Frederick Douglass
“
Sometimes when it rained, flowers would bloom in the most unexpected places--teacups and vases and even old shoes.
”
”
Rebecca Ross
“
Your frequent claim that we must understand religious belief as a “social construct,” produced by “societal causes,” dependent upon “social and cultural institutions,” admitting of “sociological questions,” and the like, while it will warm the hearts of most anthropologists, is either trivially true or obscurantist. It is part and parcel of the double standard that so worries me—the demolition of which is the explicit aim of The Reason Project.
Epidemiology is also a “social construct” with “societal causes,” etc.—but this doesn’t mean that the germ theory of disease isn’t true or that any rival “construct”—like one suggesting that child rape will cure AIDS—isn’t a dangerous, deplorable, and unnecessary eruption of primeval stupidity. We either have good reasons or bad reasons for what we believe; we can be open to evidence and argument, or we can be closed; we can tolerate (and even seek) criticism of our most cherished views, or we can hide behind authority, sanctity, and dogma. The main reason why children are still raised to think that the universe is 6,000 years old is not because religion as a “social institution” hasn’t been appropriately coddled and cajoled, but because polite people (and scientists terrified of losing their funding) haven’t laughed this belief off the face of the earth.
We did not lose a decade of progress on stem-cell research in the United States because of religion as a “social construct”; we lost it because of the behavioural and emotional consequences of a specific belief. If there were a line in the book of Genesis that read – “The soul enters the womb on the hundredth day (you idiots)” – we wouldn’t have lost a step on stem-cell research, and there would not be a Christian or Jew anywhere who would worry about souls in Petri dishes suffering the torments of the damned. The beliefs currently rattling around in the heads of human beings are some of the most potent forces on earth; some of the craziest and most divisive of these are “religious,” and so-dubbed they are treated with absurd deference, even in the halls of science; this is a very bad combination—that is my point.
”
”
Sam Harris
“
What must it be like for a woman to live with power over men rivaled only by God for the first third of her life, build her identity over her looks, only to feel it slip away as time tumbles by? Feel the shift in how people treat her, as though getting old is a contagious affliction?
”
”
Tyler Knight (Burn My Shadow: A Selective Memory of an X-Rated Life)
“
Open the old cigar-box .....let me consider anew..... Old friends,
and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
A million surplus Maggies are willing 'o bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.
Light me another Cuba..... I hold to my first-sworn vows,
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse!
”
”
Rudyard Kipling
“
What? You don't think I'm perfect?" I can't resist, because he gets so riled whenever I bring it up. "I can run up to thirty miles without stopping. I can jump six feet in the air. There is not a material in this world sharp enough to pierce my skin. I cannot drown or suffocate. I am immune to every illness known to man. I have perfect memory. My senses are more acute that anyone else's. My reflexes rival those of a cat. I will never grow old" - my voice falls, all smugness gone -"and I will never die.
”
”
Jessica Khoury (Origin (Corpus, #1))
“
Admiral Dahlgren’s twenty-one-year-old son, Ulric, had lost a leg at Gettysburg. When he appeared at a Washington party, he was surrounded by pretty girls. They stayed by his side all night, refusing to dance, in tribute to the handsome colonel who had been known as an expert waltzer.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood. The loser falls over with a scream, followed with a foolish expression, mouth agape, eyes akimbo. Those old biblical kings, setting their feet on conquered necks, stringing up rival kings on trees, rejoicing in piles of heads – there was an element of childish glee in all of that. Maybe it’s what drove Crake on, thinks Toby. Maybe he wanted to end it. Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (MaddAddam (MaddAddam, #3))
“
It was very cold and next day snow began to fall, turning pinnacles into wedding-cake decorations. The examination was held in the Hall of Oriel, and we all wrote in greatcoats and mufflers and wearing at least our left-hand gloves. The Provost, old Phelps, gave out the papers. I remember very little about them, but I suppose I was outshone in pure classics by many of my rivals and succeeded on my general knowledge and dialectics. I had the impression that I was doing badly.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy: The shape of my early life)
“
Every time we cheer the downfall of a powerful woman, we're giving ourselves the message that power is bad and we shouldn't desire it. Every time we revel in a beautiful woman's aging or weight gain, we reinforce the idea that we, too, are less valuable if we are old or overweight. Every time we gloat over a woman's loss of a husband to a younger, prettier rival, we are reminding ourselves that our own relationship is unstable, that someday our man, too, will move on to greener pastures.
”
”
Susan Shapiro Barash (Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry)
“
For a fifty-year-old man, the boredom of lying convalescent in bed is rivaled only by sitting in church
”
”
Andrew Sean Greer (Less (Arthur Less, #1))
“
Polly Hall was thirteen but wore enough makeup to rival a 40-year-old whore.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Thorn Queen (Dark Swan, #2))
“
Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's books, one's own books - it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here, reading a page from one over there, enjoying them all as objects to be touched, looked at, even smelt, is a deep satisfaction.
”
”
Aidan Chambers
“
There reigned a king of name revered, To country and to town endeared, Great Daśaratha, good and sage, Well read in Scripture's holy page: [pg 013] Upon his kingdom's weal intent, Mighty and brave and provident; The pride of old Ikshváku's seed For lofty thought and righteous deed. Peer of the saints, for virtues famed, For foes subdued and passions tamed: A rival in his wealth untold
”
”
Vālmīki (The Rámáyan of Válmíki)
“
Sister Hoe—who had charge of the wine-making—had told Nona that a heavy dose of fertilizer would coax most plants to open their leaves whatever the weather. “They can’t abide to lose the chance,” the old woman had said. “Worried some other plant will thieve it first. They’re not so different from people really. There’s not much most wouldn’t risk to stop a rival having the benefit of something they want.
”
”
Mark Lawrence (Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor, #2))
“
It was at this moment, chided by his old and present rival, that Shade decided it was time to revert to the shitkicker verities. Brazen dash, rough talk, and an ounce or two of mean were clearly required.
”
”
Daniel Woodrell (The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do)
“
But there was an old saying about the four people you always tell the truth: your wife, your priest, your doctor, and your lawyer.
But that was the sober man's creed. The rest of us had five: your sponsor.
”
”
Vi Keeland (The Rivals)
“
Of the rival league of Clan Quhele we have a still less distinct account, for reasons which will appear in the sequel. Some authors have identified them with the numerous and powerful sept of MacKay. If this is done on good authority, which is to be doubted, the MacKays must have shifted their settlements greatly since the reign of Robert III, since they are now to be found (as a clan) in the extreme northern parts of Scotland, in the counties of Ross and Sutherland. We
”
”
Walter Scott (The Complete Novels of Sir Walter Scott: Waverly, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, The Pirate, Old Mortality, The Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, The Heart of Midlothian and many more (Illustrated))
“
We don’t have a single big advantage,” he once told an old adversary, publisher Tim O’Reilly, back when they were arguing over Amazon protecting its patented 1-Click ordering method from rivals like Barnes & Noble. “So we have to weave a rope of many small advantages.
”
”
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
“
the city of Rome, the best indication of the changed world is the arch erected in 315 CE in honour of the emperor Constantine’s victory over one of his internal rivals. It still stands, preserved because it was once built into a Renaissance fortress, between the old Roman
”
”
Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
“
Poppy Litchfield was just a seventeen-year-old girl from a small town in Georgia. Yet, from the day I had met her, she tipped my world on its head. And even now, after her death, she was still changing my world. Enriching and filling it with a selfless beauty that would never be rivaled.
”
”
Tillie Cole (A Thousand Boy Kisses (A Thousand Boy Kisses, #1))
“
Life is dangerous,Gary," Gregori said softly. "You are Rambo, remember?"
Savannah's laughter rang out, rivaling the jazz quartet playing on the corner. Heads turned to listen to he, then to watch her, stealing away the attention of the audience gathered in a loose semi-circle around the quartet. She moved in the human world, completely comfortable in it,a part of it. Gregori had walked unseen, and that was how he preferred it.She was dragging him into her world. He could hardly believe he was walking down a crowded street with a mortal wwith half the block staring openly at them.
"I didn't know you knew who Rambo was," Savannah said, trying not to giggle. She couldn't imagine Gregori in a theater watching a Rambo movie.
"You saw a Rambo flick?" Gary was incredulous.
Gregori made a sound somewhere between contempt and derision. "I read Gary's memories on the subject. Interesting. Silly,but interesting." He glanced at Gary. "This is your hero?"
Gary's grin was as michievous as Savannah's. "Until I met you, Gregori."
Gregori growled, a low rumble of menace. His two companions just laughed disrespectfully, not in the least intimidated.
"I'll bet he's a secret Rambo fan," Savannah whispered confidentially.
Gary nodded. "He probably sneaks into movie theaters for every old showing.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
“
After a lull in white arrests, some towns increased the rewards for turning in collaborators. Folks informed on business rivals, ancient nemeses, and neighbors, recounting old conversations where the traitors had uttered forbidden sympathies. Children tattled on their parents, taught by schoolmistresses the hallmarks of sedition.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
“
By all means, don’t stop on account of me or my floor. I claimed who I wasn’t, and you then—quite naturally—asked who I am, but I think it’s better this way. That we keep our identities secret and just rest in the fact that some old magic is at play here, connecting our doorways. But just in case you were wondering … I’ll gladly read whatever you write.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
“
So time drew on to the War of the Ring, and the sons of Denethor grew to manhood. Boromir, five years the elder, beloved by his father, was like him in face and pride, but in little else. Rather he was a man after the sort of King Eärnur of old, taking no wife and delighting chiefly in arms; fearless and strong, but caring little for lore, save the tales of old battles. Faramir the younger was like him in looks but otherwise in mind. He read the hearts of men as shrewdly as his father, but what he read moved him sooner to pity than to scorn. He was gentle in bearing, and a lover of lore and of music, and therefore by many in those days his courage was judged less than his brother’s. But it was not so, except that he did not seek glory in danger without a purpose. He welcomed Gandalf at such times as he came to the City, and he learned what he could from his wisdom; and in this as in many other matters he displeased his father. ‘Yet between the brothers there was great love, and had been since childhood, when Boromir was the helper and protector of Faramir. No jealousy or rivalry had arisen between them since, for their father’s favour or for the praise of men. It did not seem possible to Faramir that anyone in Gondor could rival Boromir, heir of Denethor, Captain of the White Tower; and of like mind was Boromir. Yet it proved otherwise at the test. But of all that befell these three in the War of the Ring much is said elsewhere.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
“
Our rival interrogation team is the Pubyok, named after the "floating wall" defenders that saved Pyongyang from invaders in 1136. There are only a dozen or so left, old men with silver crewcuts who walk in a row like a wall and truly believe they can float, stealthy as ghosts, from one citizen to the next, interrogating them as the wind interrogates the leaves.
”
”
Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son)
“
I know we are no longer rivals, but if we are keeping tally like the old days, you have far outshined* me with your wit and your courage. Which reminds me of one simple thing: how I love to lose to you. How I love to read your words and hear the thoughts that sharpen your mind. And how I would love to be on my knees before you now, surrendering to you and you alone.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2))
“
The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English methods for American purification. Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals of Puritanism as the “Bloody Town.” It rivaled Salem, even, in her cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions. On the now famous Common a half-naked woman, with a baby in her arms, was publicly whipped for the crime of free speech; and on the same spot Mary Dyer, another Quaker woman, was hanged in 1659. In fact, Boston has been the scene of more than one wanton crime committed by Puritanism. Salem, in the summer of 1692, killed eighteen people for witchcraft. Nor was Massachusetts alone in driving out the devil by fire and brimstone. As Canning justly said: “The Pilgrim fathers infested the New World to redress the balance of the Old.” The horrors of that period have found their most supreme expression in the American classic, THE SCARLET LETTER.
”
”
Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)
“
Once, aeons ago, the Appalachians were of a scale and majesty to rival the Himalayas—piercing, snow-peaked, pushing breathtakingly through the clouds to heights of four miles or more. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington is still an imposing presence, but the stony mass that rises from the New England woods today represents, at most, the stubby bottom one-third of what was ten million years ago. That the Appalachian Mountains present so much more modest an aspect today is because they have had so much time in which to wear away. The Appalachians are immensely old—older than the oceans and continents (at least in their present configurations), far, far older than most other mountain chains, older indeed than almost all other landscape features on earth. When simple plants colonized the land and the first creatures crawled gasping from the sea, the Appalachians were there to greet them.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
“
Genesis, in fact, is in various ways almost nearer the New Testament than the Old, and some of its topics are barely heard again till their implications can fully emerge in the gospel. The institution of marriage, the fall of man, the jealousy of Cain, the judgment of the flood, the imputed righteousness of the believer, the rival sons of promise and of the flesh, the profanity of Esau, the pilgrim status of God’s people, are all predominantly New Testament themes.
”
”
Derek Kidner (Genesis (Kidner Classic Commentaries))
“
It was a country for young men. “We find ourselves,” the twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln told the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, “in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.” The founding fathers had crafted a government more favorable to liberty “than any of which the history of former times tells us.” Now it was up to their children to preserve and expand the great experiment.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
A four-hundred-year-old enchantress who’d been born a witch and defected, Jesiba had joined the House of Flame and Shadow and now answered only to the Under-King himself. Flame and Shadow suited her well—she possessed an arsenal of spells to rival any sorcerer or necromancer in the darkest of the Houses. She’d been known to change people into animals when irritated enough. Bryce had never dared ask if the small animals in the dozen tanks and terrariums had always been animals.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1))
“
Roosevelt was running for a third term; the Republicans were nominating Wendell Willkie for the futile job of running against him. What about a Gracie-for-President stunt? She would run as a candidate from the Surprise Party. Again she turned up unannounced on rival programs, appearing for a moment with a lamebrained pitch for votes and a bit of screwball political philosophy. Her lines were funny and widely quoted. “The president of today is merely the postage stamp of tomorrow,” she would declare.
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
The Hohenstaufen army besieged the Bavarian rebels in the town and fortress of Weinsberg; there, says an old tradition, the rival cries “Hi Welf!” and “Hi Weibling!” established the names of the warring groups; and there (says a pretty legend), when the victorious Swabians accepted the surrender of the town on the understanding that the women alone were to be spared, and were to be allowed to depart with whatever they could carry, the sturdy housewives marched forth with their husbands on their backs.
”
”
Will Durant (The Age of Faith)
“
Unlike his sometime rival Tariq Ramadan, who’d been tainted by his old Trotskyite connections, Ben Abbes had kept his distance from the anticapitalist left. He understood that the pro-growth right had won the “war of ideas,” that young people today had become entrepreneurs, and that no one saw any alternative to the free market. But his real stroke of genius was to grasp that elections would no longer be about the economy but about values, and that here, too, the right was about to win the “war of ideas” without a fight.
”
”
Michel Houellebecq (Submission)
“
And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that looked like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by the name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, short and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish; but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah. To his wife, Soraya, Rashid was for many years as loving a husband as anyone could wish for, and during these years Haroun grew up in a home in which, instead of misery and frowns, he had his father’s ready laughter and his mother’s sweet voice raised in song. Then something went wrong. (Maybe the sadness of the city finally crept in through their windows.) The day Soraya stopped singing, in the middle of a line, as if someone had thrown a switch, Haroun guessed there was trouble brewing. But he never suspected how much.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Penguin Drop Caps))
“
FILL THE GOBLET AGAIN A Song Fill the goblet again! for I never before Felt the glow which now gladdens my heart to its core; Let us drink! — who would not? — since, through life’s varied round, In the goblet alone no deception is found. I have tried in its turn all that life can supply; I have bask’d in the beam of a dark rolling eye; I have loved! — who has not? — but what heart can declare That pleasure existed while passion was there? In the days of my youth, when the heart’s in its spring, And dreams that affection can never take wing, I had friends! — who has not? — but what tongue will avow, That friends, rosy wine! are so faithful as thou? The heart of a mistress some boy may estrange, Friendship shifts with the sunbeam — thou never canst change; Thou grow’st old — who does not? — but on earth what appears, Whose virtues, like thine, still increase with its years? Yet if blest to the utmost that love can bestow, Should a rival bow down to our idol below, We aree jealous! — who is not? — thou hast no such alloy; For the more that enjoy thee, the more we enjoy. Then the season of youth and its vanities past, For refuge we fly to the goblet at last; There we find — do we not? — in the flow of the soul, That truth, as of yore, is confined to the bowl. When the box of Pandora was opened on earth, And Misery’s triumph commenced over Mirth, Hope was left, — was she not? — but the goblet we kiss, And care not for Hope, who are certain of bliss. Long life to the grape! for when summer is flown, The age of our nectar shall gladden our own: We must die — who shall not? — May our sins be forgiven, And Hebe shall never be idle in heaven.
”
”
Lord Byron (Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron)
“
Because it was sexism, wasn’t it? Beatrice’s detractors never said it aloud, never authored op-eds that stated Beatrice shouldn’t rule because she’s a woman. They just criticized everything she did. If she wore a new dress, she was extravagant; if she recycled an old one, she had no style. If she was photographed holding a glass of wine, she was a lush; if she didn’t drink at an event, she was pregnant, or boring, or rude to her hosts. If she was caught in a photo unsmiling, then she wasn’t likable; if she smiled too broadly, she was trying too hard.
”
”
Katharine McGee (Rivals (American Royals #3))
“
Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood. The loser falls over with a scream, followed with a foolish expression, mouth agape, eyes akimbo. Those old biblical kings, setting their feet on conquered necks, stringing up rival kings on trees, rejoicing in piles of heads, there was an element of childish glee in all of that.
Maybe it’s what drove Crake on, thinks Toby. Maybe he wanted to end it. Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (MaddAddam (MaddAddam, #3))
“
My cold-weather gear left a lot to be desired: black maternity leggings under boot-cut maternity jeans, and a couple of Marlboro Man’s white T-shirts under an extra-large ASU sweatshirt. I was so happy to have something warm to wear that I didn’t even care that I was wearing the letters of my Pac-10 rival. Add Marlboro Man’s old lumberjack cap and mud boots that were four sizes too big and I was on my way to being a complete beauty queen. I seriously didn’t know how Marlboro Man would be able to keep his hands off of me. If I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the feed truck, I’d shiver violently.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
The Chemical Society of London was not founded until 1841 and didn’t begin to produce a regular journal until 1848, by which time most learned societies in Britain—Geological, Geographical, Zoological, Horticultural, and Linnaean (for naturalists and botanists)—were at least twenty years old and often much more. The rival Institute of Chemistry didn’t come into being until 1877, a year after the founding of the American Chemical Society. Because chemistry was so slow to get organized, news of Avogadro’s important breakthrough of 1811 didn’t begin to become general until the first international chemistry congress, in Karlsruhe, in 1860.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
It was a fine gun, but an unlucky one. Steyr-Daimler-Puch built it with the prospect of big orders from the Austrian Army dancing in its eyes, but a rival outfit named Glock came along and stole the prize. Which left the GB an unhappy orphan, like Cinderella. And like Cinderella it had many excellent qualities. It packed eighteen rounds, which was a lot, but it weighed less than two and a half pounds unloaded, which wasn’t. You could take it apart and put it back together in twelve seconds, which was fast. Best of all, it had a very smart gas management system. All automatic weapons work by using the explosion of gas in the chamber to cycle the action, to get the spent case out and the next cartridge in. But in the real world some cartridges are old or weak or badly assembled. They don’t all explode with the same force. Put an out-of-spec weak load in some guns, and the action just wheezes and won’t cycle at all. Put a too-heavy load in, and the gun can blow up in your hand. But the Steyr was designed to deal with anything that came its way. If I were a Special Forces soldier taking dubious-quality ammunition from whatever ragtag bunch of partisans I was hanging with, I’d use a Steyr. I would want to be sure that whatever I was depending on would fire, ten times out of ten. Through
”
”
Lee Child (The Enemy (Jack Reacher, #8))
“
Consider for a few moments the enormous aesthetic claim of its chief contemporary rival—what we may loosely call the Scientific Outlook, 1 the picture of Mr. [H. G.] Wells and the rest. Supposing this to be a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imagination has yet produced? The play is preceded by the most austere of all preludes: the infinite void, and matter restlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then, by the millionth millionth chance—what tragic irony—the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which is the beginning of life. Everything seems to be against the infant hero of our drama—just as everything seems against the youngest son or ill-used stepdaughter at the opening of a fairy tale. But life somehow wins through. With infinite suffering, against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself, from the amoeba up to the plant, up to the reptile, up to the mammal. We glance briefly at the age of monsters. Dragons prowl the earth, devour one another, and die. Then comes the theme of the younger son and the ugly duckling once more. As the weak, tiny spark of life began amidst the huge hostilities of the inanimate, so now again, amidst the beasts that are far larger and stronger than he, there comes forth a little naked, shivering, cowering creature, shuffling, not yet erect, promising nothing, the product of another millionth millionth chance. Yet somehow he thrives. He becomes the Cave Man with his club and his flints, muttering and growling over his enemies’ bones, dragging his screaming mate by her hair (I never could quite make out why), tearing his children to pieces in fierce jealousy till one of them is old enough to tear him, cowering before the horrible gods whom he created in his own image. But these are only growing pains. Wait till the next act. There he is becoming true Man. He learns to master Nature. Science comes and dissipates the superstitions of his infancy. More and more he becomes the controller of his own fate. Passing hastily over the present (for it is a mere nothing by the time scale we are using), you follow him on into the future. See him in the last act, though not the last scene, of this great mystery. A race of demigods now rules the planet—and perhaps more than the planet—for eugenics have made certain that only demigods will be born, and psychoanalysis that none of them shall lose or smirch his divinity, and communism that all which divinity requires shall be ready to their hands. Man has ascended his throne. Henceforward he has nothing to do but to practise virtue, to grow in wisdom, to be happy. And now, mark the final stroke of genius. If the myth stopped at that point, it might be a little bathetic.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)
“
More politically, Medusa has become shorthand for a particular brand of strong female agency perceived as aggressive or ‘unladylike’. Marie Antoinette was depicted with snake-like hair in French seventeenth-century cartoons, while in the early twentieth century, anti-suffragette postcards likened the protesters to the monster. During the 2016 American election campaign, the image of Hillary Clinton’s snake-bedecked, raging head being cut off by her Republican rival Donald Trump – compared to Perseus – appeared on unofficial merchandise. Similarly, another strong female leader, German chancellor Angela Merkel, has found herself depicted as a Gorgon. These portrayals reinforce a millennia-old message from men to women: keep your mouth shut or we’ll shut it for you.
”
”
Kate Hodges (Warriors, Witches, Women: Mythology's Fiercest Females)
“
In a world where the great questions have been solved and geopolitics has been subordinated to economics, humanity will look a lot like the nihilistic “last man” described by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: a narcissistic consumer with no greater aspirations beyond the next trip to the mall. In other words, these people would closely resemble today’s European bureaucrats and Washington lobbyists. They are competent enough at managing their affairs among post-historical people, but understanding the motives and countering the strategies of old-fashioned power politicians is hard for them. Unlike their less productive and less stable rivals, post-historical people are unwilling to make sacrifices, focused on the short term, easily distracted, and lacking in courage.
”
”
Anonymous
“
She and Roman would survive this war. They would have the chance to grow old together, year by year. They would be friends until they both finally acknowledged the truth. And they would have everything that other couples had—the arguments and the hand-holding in the market and the gradual exploration of their bodies and the birthday celebrations and the journeys to new cities and the living as one and sharing a bed and the gradual sense of melting into each other. Their names would be entwined—Roman and Iris or Winnow and Kitt because could you truly have one without the other?—and they would write on their typewriters and ruthlessly edit each other’s pieces and read books by candlelight at night. She wanted him. Leaving him behind in the trenches wasn’t even a possibility.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
“
The old God, wholly “spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.[21] What does he do? He creates man—man is entertaining.... But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining—he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “animal” himself.—So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end—and also many other things! Woman was the second mistake of God.—“Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”— every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science.... It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.—What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike—it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the forbidden per se; it alone is forbidden. Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the original sin. This is all there is of morality.—“Thou shall not know”:—the rest follows from that.—God’s mortal terror, however, did not hinder him from being shrewd. How is one to protect one’s self against science? For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts!—Man must not think.—And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, sickness—nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of man don’t allow him to think.... Nevertheless—how terrible!—, the edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading heaven, shadowing the gods—what is to be done?—The old God invents war; he separates the peoples; he makes men destroy one another (—the priests have always had need of war....). War—among other things, a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, deliverance from the priests, prospers in spite of war.—So the old God comes to his final resolution: “Man has become scientific—there is no help for it: he must be drowned!”...
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
We must distinguish between "sentimental" and "sensitive." A sentimentalist may be a perfect brute in his free time. A sensitive person is never a cruel person. Sentimental Rousseau, who could weep over a progressive idea, distributed his many natural children through various poorhouses and workhouses and never gave a hoot for them. A sentimental old maid may pamper her parrot and poison her niece. The sentimental politician may remember Mother's Day and ruthlessly destroy a rival. Stalin loved babies. Lenin sobbed at the opera, especially at the Traviata. A whole century of authors praised the simple life of the poor, and so on. Remember that when we speak of sentimentalists, among them Richardson, Rousseau, Dostoevski, we mean the non-artistic exaggeration of familiar emotions meant to provoke automatically traditional compassion in the reader.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Russian Literature)
“
In terms of the Trinity, I believe in the Father and the Holy Ghost but not really Jesus that much. Yes, Jesus was pretty badass because he stood up for what he believed in and was definitely an alpha and a man of his convictions, and all that respectable shit, and he took a hell of a beating in the end, but his message was wrong. All that turn the other cheek and love thy neighbor nonsense; be a lamb and so on. It’s silly and doesn’t work. The God of the Old Testament, the Father, that guy makes a lot more sense to me. He had it in him to be mean and spiteful. I get that I was made in the image of a guy who’d fuck over a nobody like Job basically for fun and to prove a point to a rival. I get that I was made in the image of a guy who’d kick two shitheads out of the Garden of Eden for disobeying Him. I get the idea of Him laying waste to entire cities with fireballs or whatever because He didn’t very much like the type of people that lived there (though Sodom and Gomorrah seem like just the sort of places I’d like to hang out). If God is love, it ain’t Jesus’. The Father’s love, tough love, is what works. Sometimes there’s difficulty distinguishing it from hate, and that’s why it applies to the way I live my life. Jesus’ message just makes people nice, makes them pussies, and while I’m thankful for it because it’s given me the upper hand throughout my life in very Christian America, believing in it, really, would be idiotic for anyone like me, a winner. And I believe in the Holy Ghost too mostly because I’ve felt Him working through me while doing really cool shit, like playing football and writing good songs or whatever. He’s what people mean when they say God-given talent, which I have a lot of.
”
”
A.D. Aliwat (Alpha)
“
When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla.
They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement.
Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.
”
”
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
“
Whereas Lincoln’s loyal young secretary was disturbed by “Chase’s mad hunt after the Presidency,” Lincoln was amused. Chase’s incessant presidential ambitions reminded him of the time when he was “plowing corn on a Kentucky farm” with a lazy horse that suddenly sped forward energetically to “the end of the furrow.” Upon reaching the horse, he discovered “an enormous chin-fly fastened upon him, and knocked him off,” not wanting “the old horse bitten in that way.” His companion said that it was a mistake to knock it off, for “that’s all that made him go.” “Now,” Lincoln concluded, “if Mr. [Chase] has a presidential chin-fly biting him, I’m not going to knock him off, if it will only make his department go.” Lincoln agreed that his secretary’s tactics were in “very bad taste,” and “was sorry the thing had begun, for though the matter did not annoy him his friends insisted that it ought to.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
The crisis in the concept of community gives rise to unbridled individualism: people are no longer fellow citizens, but rivals to beware of. This “subjectivism” has threatened the foundations of modernity, has made it fragile, producing a situation with no points of reference, where everything dissolves into a sort of liquidity. The certainty of the law is lost, the judiciary is regarded as an enemy, and the only solutions for individuals who have no points of reference are to make themselves conspicuous at all costs, to treat conspicuousness as a value, and to follow consumerism. Yet this is not a consumerism aimed at the possession of desirable objects that produce satisfaction, but one that immediately makes such objects obsolete. People move from one act of consumption to another in a sort of purposeless bulimia: the new cell phone is no better than the old one, but the old one has to be discarded in order to indulge in this orgy of desire.
”
”
Umberto Eco (Chronicles of a Liquid Society)
“
Who in the Hell is Tom Jones?"
I was shacked with a
24 year old girl from
New York City for
two weeks- about
the time of the garbage
strike out there, and
one night my 34 year
old woman arrived and
she said, "I want to see
my rival." she did
and then she said, "o,
you're a cute little thing!"
next I knew there was a
screech of wildcats-
such screaming and scratch-
ing, wounded animal moans,
blood and piss. . .
I was drunk and in my
shorts. I tried to
seperate them and fell,
wrenched my knee. then
they were through the screen
door and down the walk
and out into the street.
squadcars full of cops
arrived. a police heli-
coptor circled overhead.
I stood in the bathroom
and grinned in the mirror.
it's not often at the age
of 55 that such splendid
things occur.
better than the Watts
riots.
the 34 year old
came back in. she had
pissed all over her-
self and her clothing
was torn and she was
followed by 2 cops who
wanted to know why.
pulling up my shorts
I tried to explain.
Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye: A Novel. (Ecco; Reprint edition July 29, 2014) Originally published 1982.
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Ham on Rye)
“
Come along, Doctor,” he said: “we shall go and look him up. I’ll tell you one thing which may help you in the case,” he continued, turning to the two detectives. “There has been murder done, and the murderer was a man. He was more than six feet high, was in the prime of life, had small feet for his height, wore coarse, square-toed boots and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar. He came here with his victim in a four-wheeled cab, which was drawn by a horse with three old shoes and one new one on his off fore-leg. In all probability the murderer had a florid face, and the finger-nails of his right hand were remarkably long. These are only a few indications, but they may assist you.” Lestrade and Gregson glanced at each other with an incredulous smile. “If this man was murdered, how was it done?” asked the former. “Poison,” said Sherlock Holmes curtly, and strode off. “One other thing, Lestrade,” he added, turning round at the door: “ ‘Rache,’ is the German for ‘revenge’; so don’t lose your time looking for Miss Rachel.” With which Parthian shot he walked away, leaving the two rivals open mouthed behind him.
”
”
Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection)
“
Eeh, but whah’s the use, the fuckin’ use?” Dixon resting his head briefly tho’ audibly upon the Table. “It’s over . . . ? Nought left to us but Paper-work . . . ?” Their task has shifted, from Direct Traverse upon the Line to Pen-and-Paper Representation of it, in the sober Day-Light of Philadelphia, strain’d thro’ twelve-by-twelve Sash-work, as in the spectreless Light of the Candles in their Rooms, suffering but the fretful Shadows of Dixon at the Drafting Table, and Mason, seconding now, reading from Entries in the Field-Book, as Dixon once minded the Clock for him. Finally, one day, Dixon announces, “Well,— won’t thee at least have a look . . . ?” Mason eagerly rushes to inspect the Map of the Boundaries, almost instantly boggling, for there bold as a Pirate’s Flag is an eight-pointed Star, surmounted by a Fleur-de-Lis. “What’s this thing here? pointing North? Wasn’t the l’Grand flying one of these? Doth it not signify, England’s most inveterately hated Rival? France?” “All respect, Mason,— among Brother and Sister Needle-folk in ev’ry Land, ’tis known universally, as the ‘Flower-de-Luce.’ A Magnetickal Term.” “ ‘Flower of Light’? Light, hey? Sounds Encyclopedistick to me, perhaps even Masonick,” says Mason. A Surveyor’s North-Point, Dixon explains, by long Tradition, is his own, which he may draw, and embellish, in any way he pleases, so it point where North be. It becomes his Hall-Mark, personal as a Silver-Smith’s, representative of his Honesty and Good Name. Further, as with many Glyphs, ’tis important ever to keep Faith with it,— for an often enormous Investment of Faith, and Will, lies condens’d within, giving it a Potency in the World that the Agents of Reason care little for. “ ’Tis an ancient Shape, said to go back to the earliest Italian Wind-Roses,” says Dixon, “— originally, at the North, they put the Letter T, for Tramontane, the Wind that blew down from the Alps . . . ? Over the years, as ever befalls such frail Bric-a-Brack as Letters of the Alphabet, it was beaten into a kind of Spear-head,— tho’ the kinder-hearted will aver it a Lily, and clash thy Face, do tha deny it.” “Yet some, finding it upon a new Map, might also take it as a reassertion of French claims to Ohio,” Mason pretends to remind him. “Aye, tha’ve found me out, I confess,— ’tis a secret Message to all who conspire in the Dark! Eeh! The old Jesuit Canard again!
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Mason & Dixon)
“
A Defence Against the Enemy of Excitement The first enemy [of the scholar in war-time] is excitement—the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defence is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can. —from “Learning in War-Time” (The Weight of Glory) 1939 Lewis preaches “Learning in War-Time” at Evensong in Oxford University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. 23 OCTOBER A Defence Against the Enemy of Frustration The second enemy [of the scholar in war-time] is frustration—the feeling that we shall not have time to finish.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works)
“
The old ingrained human passion for power matured and burst into prominence with the growth of the empire. With straiter resources equality was easily preserved. But when once we had brought the world to our feet and exterminated every rival state or king, we were left free to covet power without fear of interruption. It was then that strife first broke out between patricians and plebeians: at one time arose seditious tribunes,295 at another tyrannous consuls: 296 in the Forum at Rome were sown the first seeds of civil war. Before long, Marius, rising from the lowest ranks of the people, and Sulla, the most cruel of all the nobles, crushed our liberty by force of arms and substituted a despotism. Then came Pompey, whose aims, though less patent, were no better than theirs. From that time onwards the one end sought was supreme power in the state. Even at Pharsalia and Philippi the citizen armies did not lay down their arms. How then can we suppose that the troops of Otho and Vitellius would have willingly stopped the war? The same anger of heaven, the same human passions, the same criminal motives drove them into discord. True these wars were each settled by a single battle, but that was due to the generals' cowardice. However, my reflections on the ancient and the modern character have carried me too far: I must now resume the thread of our narrative.
”
”
Tacitus (Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II)
“
It is recorded that during the long winter after the Battle of Fredericksburg, when the two rival armies were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, with the boys on the opposing picket posts daily swapping coffee for tobacco and comparing notes on their generals, their rations, and other matters, and with each camp in full sight and hearing of the other, one evening massed Union bands came down to the river bank to play all of the old songs, plus the more rousing tunes like "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." Northerners and Southerners, the soldiers sang those songs or sat and listened to them, massed in their thousands on the hillsides, while the darkness came down to fill the river valley and the light of the campfires glinted off the black water. Finally the Southerners called across, "Now play some of ours," so without pause the Yankee bands swung into "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Maryland, My Maryland," and then at last the massed bands played "Home, Sweet Home," and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both armies went to bed. A few weeks later they were tearing each other apart in the lonely thickets around Chancellorsville.
”
”
Bruce Catton (Mr. Lincoln's Army)
“
Congress displayed contempt for the city's residents, yet it retained a fondness for buildings and parks. In 1900, the centennial of the federal government's move to Washington, many congressmen expressed frustration that the proud nation did not have a capital to rival London, Paris, and Berlin. The following year, Senator James McMillan of Michigan, chairman of the Senate District Committee, recruited architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to propose a park system. The team, thereafter known as the McMillan Commission, emerged with a bold proposal in the City Beautiful tradition, based on the White City of Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition. Their plan reaffirmed L'Enfant's avenues as the best guide for the city's growth and emphasized the majesty of government by calling for symmetrical compositions of horizontal, neoclassical buildings of marble and white granite sitting amid wide lawns and reflecting pools. Eventually, the plan resulted in the remaking of the Mall as an open lawn, the construction of the Lincoln Memorial and Memorial Bridge across the Potomac, and the building of Burnham's Union Station. Commissioned in 1903, when the state of the art in automobiles and airplanes was represented by the curved-dash Olds and the Wright Flyer, the station served as a vast and gorgeous granite monument to rail transportation.
”
”
Zachary M. Schrag (The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (Creating the North American Landscape))
“
The Second Noble Truth is more hopeful: suffering has an origin. Everything in this world is interdependent, linked in a great chain of cause and effect, so suffering must come from somewhere. Buddhists identify twelve links in this chain of “dependent origination” (pratitya-samutpada) but the key links are ignorance, thirst, and grasping. We suffer because we close our eyes to the way the world really is. We pretend we are independent when we are really interdependent. We pretend that changing things are unchanging. And we desperately desire the world and the people who populate it to be as we imagine it (and them) to be. And so we suffer when our spouses take up new interests, or when our favorite (and perfect just as it was) old-fashioned ice cream store puts up a ridiculous Web site with a stupid new logo, or when the brand new T-bird we are proudly driving home from the Ford dealership is hit by a rock thrown by a six-year-old kid who would go on to write this book (true story). We suffer because we desperately grasp after people, places, and things, as if they can redeem us from our suffering. We suffer because we cling to beliefs and judgments, not least beliefs in gods, and judgments that this friend or that enemy is morally bankrupt. Today “you have changed” is an explanation one lover gives to another as she is walking out the door. In Buddhism, “you have changed” is a description of what is happening every moment of every day. The
”
”
Stephen Prothero (God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter)
“
1. Linus Malthus
"Winning is just the snow that came down yesterday"
Founder of total football. Tactical revolutionary who created the foundation of modern football
저희는 7가지 철칙을 바탕으로 거래를 합니다.
고객들과 지키지못할약속은 하지않습니다
1.정품보장
2.총알배송
3.투명한 가격
4.편한 상담
5.끝내주는 서비스
6.고객님 정보 보호
7.깔끔한 거래
[경영항목]
엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,떨,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜등많은제품판매하고있습니다
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
제품효과 못보실 그럴일은 없지만 만의하나 효과못보시면 저희가 1차재발송과 2차 환불까지 약속합니다
텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】
The only winner in the international major tournament, Holland, the best soccer line of football
2. Sir Alex Ferguson
Mr.Man Utd
The Red Boss
The best director in soccer history (most of the past soccer coach rankings are the top picks)
It is the most obvious that shows how important the director is in football.
Manchester United's 27-year-old championship, the spiritual stake of all United players and fans, Manchester United itself
3. Theme Mourinho
"I do not pretend to be arrogant, because I'm all true, I am a European champion, I am not one of the cunning bosses around, I think I am Special One."
The Special One
The cost of counterattack after a player
Charming world with charisma and poetry
The director who has the most violent career of soccer directors
4. Pep Guardiola
A man who achieved the world's first and only six treasures beyond treble.
Make a team with a page of football history
5. Ottmar Hitzfeld
Borussia Dortmund and Bayern are the best directors in Munich history.
Legendary former football manager of Germany
Sir Alex Ferguson's rival
”
”
World football soccer players can not be denied
“
Dubrovnik, Croatia Dubrovnik’s old architecture, all wrapped within its ancient stone walls, have made this city a World Heritage Site. It’s an old sea port that sits above the Adriatic Sea. Its background, from medieval times was trade between the east and Europe and the city rivalled Venice for its reach and connections. Today, however, the principle economy is based on tourism. The old town is a warren of narrow, cobbled streets, sometimes steep, but pedestrianised which makes it easy to walk. However, be careful – signs do not always point to where they say they are going – many of them are old and the hotels, restaurants, bus stations have moved. The City Walls might look familiar to fans of Game of Thrones – many scenes were filmed here and there are Game of Thrones tours to visit the film’s settings. The area suffered a devastating earthquake in the 17th century, therefore much of the original architecture did not survive. The Sponza Palace, near the Bell Tower, is one of the few Gothic buildings left in the city. The Stradun is the main street in the Old Town – restaurants, shops and bars all pour out onto here. It’s lively, especially towards the end of the day. Don’t forget that the city’s location on the coast means that it also has beautiful beaches. Lapad Beach is two miles outside of town, and has a chilled atmosphere. Banje Beach is closer to the old town. It has an entrance fee and is livelier. One of the reasons Dubrovnok appeals to solo travellers is because it has a low crime rate. In addition, its cobbled streets and artistic shops all make browsing easy.
”
”
Dee Maldon (The Solo Travel Guide: Just Do It)
“
Meanwhile, he continued to speak out on behalf of black citizens. In March 1846, a terrifying massacre took place in Seward’s hometown. A twenty-three-year-old black man named William Freeman, recently released from prison after serving five years for a crime it was later determined he did not commit, entered the home of John Van Nest, a wealthy farmer and friend of Seward’s. Armed with two knives, he killed Van Nest, his pregnant wife, their small child, and Mrs. Van Nest’s mother. When he was caught within hours, Freeman immediately confessed. He exhibited no remorse and laughed uncontrollably as he spoke. The sheriff hauled him away, barely reaching the jail ahead of an enraged mob intent upon lynching him. “I trust in the mercy of God that I shall never again be a witness to such an outburst of the spirit of vengeance as I saw while they were carrying the murderer past our door,” Frances Seward told her husband, who was in Albany at the time. “Fortunately, the law triumphed.” Frances recognized at once an “incomprehensible” aspect to the entire affair, and she was correct. Investigation revealed a history of insanity in Freeman’s family. Moreover, Freeman had suffered a series of floggings in jail that had left him deaf and deranged. When the trial opened, no lawyer was willing to take Freeman’s case. The citizens of Auburn had threatened violence against any member of the bar who dared to defend the cold-blooded murderer. When the court asked, “Will anyone defend this man?” a “death-like stillness pervaded the crowded room,” until Seward rose, his voice strong with emotion, and said, “May it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner until his death!
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
Most of the mortgaged farmers.
Most of the white-collar workers who had been unemployed these three years and four and five.
Most of the people on relief rolls who wanted more relief.
Most of the suburbanites who could not meet the installment payments on the electric washing machine.
Such large sections of the American Legion as believed that only Senator Windrip would secure for them, and perhaps increase, the bonus.
Such popular Myrtle Boulevard or Elm Avenue preachers as, spurred by the examples of Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin, believed they could get useful publicity out of supporting a slightly queer program that promised prosperity without anyone's having to work for it.
The remnants of the Kuklux Klan, and such leaders of the American Federation of Labor as felt they had been inadequately courted and bepromised by the old-line politicians, and the non-unionized common laborers who felt they had been inadequately courted by the same A.F. of L.
Back-street and over-the-garage lawyers who had never yet wangled governmental jobs.
The Lost Legion of the Anti-Saloon League—since it was known that, though he drank a lot, Senator Windrip also praised teetotalism a lot, while his rival, Walt Trowbridge, though he drank but little, said nothing at all in support of the Messiahs of Prohibition. These messiahs had not found professional morality profitable of late, with the Rockefellers and Wanamakers no longer praying with them nor paying.
Besides these necessitous petitioners, a goodish number of burghers who, while they were millionaires, yet maintained that their prosperity had been sorely checked by the fiendishness of the bankers in limiting their credit.
These were the supporters who looked to Berzelius Windrip to play the divine raven and feed them handsomely when he should become President, and from such came most of the fervid elocutionists who campaigned for him through September and October.
”
”
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
“
It wasn't only my friends who suffered from female rivalry. I remember when I was just sixteen years old, during spring vacation, being whisked off to an early lunch by my best friend's brother, only to discover, to my astonishment and hurt, that she was expecting some college boys to drop by and didn't want me there to compete with her. When I started college at Sarah Lawrence, I soon noticed that while some of my classmates were indeed true friends, others seemed to resent that I had a boyfriend. It didn't help that Sarah Lawrence, a former girls' school, included very few straight men among its student body--an early lesson in how competing for items in short supply often brings out the worst in women.
In graduate school, the stakes got higher, and the competition got stiffer, a trend that continued when I went on to vie for a limited number of academic jobs. I always had friends and colleagues with whom I could have trusted my life--but I also found women who seemed to view not only me but all other female academics as their rivals.
This sense of rivalry became more painful when I divorced my first husband. Many of my friends I depended on for comfort and support suddenly began to view me as a threat. Some took me out to lunch to get the dirt, then dropped me soon after. I think they found it disturbing that I left my unhappy marriage while they were still committed to theirs. For other women, the threat seemed more immediate--twice I was told in no uncertain terms that I had better stay away from someone's husband, despite my protests that I would no more go after a friend's husband than I would stay friends with a woman who went after mine.
Thankfully, I also had some true friends who remained loyal and supportive during one of the most difficult times of my life. To this day I trust them implicitly, with the kind of faith you reserve for people who have proved themselves under fire. But I've also never forgotten the shock and disappointment of discovering how quickly those other friendships turned to rivalries.
”
”
Susan Shapiro Barash (Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry)
“
My cold-weather gear left a lot to be desired: black maternity leggings under boot-cut maternity jeans, and a couple of Marlboro Man’s white T-shirts under an extra-large ASU sweatshirt. I was so happy to have something warm to wear that I didn’t even care that I was wearing the letters of my Pac-10 rival. Add Marlboro Man’s old lumberjack cap and mud boots that were four sizes too big and I was on my way to being a complete beauty queen. I seriously didn’t know how Marlboro Man would be able to keep his hands off of me. If I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the feed truck, I’d shiver violently.
But really, when it came right down to it, I didn’t care. No matter what I looked like, it just didn’t feel right sending Marlboro Man into the cold, lonely world day after day. Even though I was new at marriage, I still sensed that somehow--whether because of biology or societal conditioning or religious mandate or the position of the moon--it was I who was to be the cushion between Marlboro Man and the cruel, hard world. That it was I who’d needed to dust off his shoulders every day. And though he didn’t say it, I could tell that he felt better when I was bouncing along, chubby and carrying his child, in his feed truck next to him.
Occasionally I’d hop out of the pickup and open gates. Other times he’d hop out and open them. Sometimes I’d drive while he threw hay off the back of the vehicles. Sometimes I’d get stuck and he’d say shit. Sometimes we’d just sit in silence, shivering as the vehicle doors opened and closed. Other times we’d engage in serious conversation or stop and make out in the snow.
All the while, our gestating baby rested in the warmth of my body, blissfully unaware of all the work that awaited him on this ranch where his dad had grown up. As I accompanied Marlboro Man on those long, frigid mornings of work, I wondered if our child would ever know the fun of sledding on a golf course hill…or any hill, for that matter. I’d lived on the ranch for five months and didn’t remember ever hearing about anyone sledding…or playing golf…or participating in any recreational activities at all. I was just beginning to wrap my mind around the way daily life unfolded here: wake up early, get your work done, eat, relax, and go to bed. Repeat daily. There wasn’t a calendar of events or dinner dates with friends in town or really much room for recreation--because that just meant double the work when you got back to work. It was hard for me not to wonder when any of these people ever went out and had a good time, or built a snowman.
Or slept past 5:00 A.M.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
Now, who and what is this minstrel in reality? Where does he come from? In what respects does he differ from his predecessors? He has been described as a cross between the early medieval court-singer and the ancient mime of classical times. The mime had never ceased to flourish since the days of classical antiquity; when even the last traces of classical culture disappeared, the descendants of the old mimes still continued to travel about the Empire, entertaining the masses with their unpretentious, unsophisticated and unliterary art. The Germanic countries were flooded out with mimes in the early Middle Ages; but until the ninth century the poets and singers at the courts kept themselves strictly apart from them. Not until they lost their cultured audience, as a result of the Carolingian Renaissance and the clericalism of the following generation, and came up against the competition of the mimes in the lower classes, did they have, to a certain extent, to become mimes themselves in order to be able to compete with their rivals. Thus both singers and comedians now move in the same circles, intermingle and influence each other so much that they soon become indistinguishable from one another. The mime and the scop both become the minstrel. The most striking characteristic of the minstrel is his versatility. The place of the cultured, highly specialized heroic ballad poet is now taken by the Jack of all trades, who is no longer merely a poet and singer, but also a musician and dancer, dramatist and actor, clown and acrobat, juggler and bear-leader, in a word, the universal jester and maître de plaisir of the age. Specialization, distinction and solemn dignity are now finished with; the court poet has become everybody’s fool and his social degradation has such a revolutionary and shattering effect on himself that he never entirely recovers from the shock. From now on he is one of the déclassés, in the same class as tramps and prostitutes, runaway clerics and sent-down students, charlatans and beggars. He has been called the ‘journalist of the age’, but he really goes in for entertainment of every kind: the dancing song as well as the satirical song, the fairy story as well as the mime, the legend of saints as well as the heroic epic. In this context, however, the epic takes on quite new features: it acquires in places a more pointed character with a new straining after effect, which was absolutely foreign to the spirit of the old heroic ballad. The minstrel no longer strikes the gloomy, solemn, tragi-heroic note of the ‘Hildebrandslied’, for he wants to make even the epic sound entertaining; he tries to provide sensations, effective climaxes and lively epigrams. Compared with the monuments of the older heroic poetry, the ‘Chanson de Roland’ never fails to reveal this popular minstrel taste for the piquant.
”
”
Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)
“
So are you planning on dressing me in addition to everything else?” she asked once they’d cleared a challenging rise.
“I planned to pack as much as I could this morning, so you could sleep later,” he lowered his voice, “or take care of what went unfinished last night.” He’d amazed himself by behaving so unselfishly as that. Her unfulfilled desire made it more likely that he’d get her into bed with him, and yet, he couldn’t stand to think of her suffering. “I was attempting to be considerate. Though I’ve little experience with it.”
“I’m not talking to you about this. I’m just not.”
“I can feel your need as strong as my own.”
“Maybe I do have these needs—doesn’t mean you’re the one I’ll choose to help me work them out.” Her gaze drifted to Cade, who was greedily chugging water.
His voice low and seething, Bowe said, “You regard him with an appraising eye one more time, Mariketa, and you’re going to get that demon killed. All he wants is to ‘attempt’ you. Do you ken what that means?”
“In fact, I do ken what it means. In the throes, you know. One of my boyfriends was a demon.”
“Boyfriends?” He frowned. “You mean lovers. How bloody many have you had?” He stopped. “Are you free with yourself, then? With other males? Because that’ll be ending—”
“What’d you think?” she asked over her shoulder. “That I was a virgin?”
“You’re only twenty-three,” he said, sounding very stodgy, even to himself. “And I try no’ to think of any male before me. But if you were no’ an innocent, then I’d hoped it would have been once, in the dark, with a ham-handed human who was so bad you had to stifle a yawn or fight against laughing.”
She shrugged. “I’m sure the number of notches in my bedpost can’t compare to yours.”
“Aye, but I’m twelve hundred years old! Even if I had one female a year, you’d understand how they could accumulate.”
“Well, I am young.” Just as he felt a flicker of ease, she murmured in a sexy voice, “But, baby, I’ve been busy.”
His fists clenched.
“Jealous?”
She probably wouldn’t think he’d admit to it, but in a low tone, he said, “Aye, I envy any man that’s had his hands on you.” She gave him an enigmatic, studying expression. “Now, if I guess the number you’ve taken into your bed, then you’ll tell me if I’m right.”
She hastily faced forward once more. “Not playing. Get bent.”
He narrowed his eyes. “One. You’ve had one.” Her shoulders stiffened barely perceptibly, and he wanted to sag with relief.
“Because any male worthy of you would kill a rival who tried to steal you from him. I’m guessing the demon was your first and last. And how did you get him to let you go, then?”
“What if I told you I was still seeing him?”
Bowen shook his head. “No’ considering the way you were with me that first night. Besides, if he allowed you to enter the Hie without being there to guard you, he does no’ deserve you. When we return, I’ll kill him on principle.
”
”
Kresley Cole (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night (Immortals After Dark, #3))
“
ONE of the evil results of the political subjection of one people by another is that it tends to make the subject nation unnecessarily and excessively conscious of its past. Its achievements in the old great days of freedom are remembered, counted over and exaggerated by a generation of slaves, anxious to convince the world and themselves that they are as good as their masters. Slaves cannot talk of their present greatness, because it does not exist; and prophetic visions of the future are necessarily vague and unsatisfying. There remains the past. Out of the scattered and isolated facts of history it is possible to build up Utopias and Cloud Cuckoo Lands as variously fantastic as the New Jerusalems of prophecy. It is to the past — the gorgeous imaginary past of those whose present is inglorious, sordid, and humiliating — it is to the delightful founded-on-fact romances of history that subject peoples invariably turn. Thus, the savage and hairy chieftains of Ireland became in due course “the Great Kings of Leinster,” “the mighty Emperors of Meath.” Through centuries of slavery the Serbs remembered and idealised the heroes of Kossovo. And for the oppressed Poles, the mediaeval Polish empire was much more powerful, splendid, and polite than the Roman. The English have never been an oppressed nationality; they are in consequence most healthily unaware of their history. They live wholly in the much more interesting worlds of the present — in the worlds of politics and science, of business and industry. So fully, indeed, do they live in the present, that they have compelled the Indians, like the Irish at the other end of the world, to turn to the past. In the course of the last thirty or forty years a huge pseudo-historical literature has sprung up in India, the melancholy product of a subject people’s inferiority complex. Industrious and intelligent men have wasted their time and their abilities in trying to prove that the ancient Hindus were superior to every other people in every activity of life. Thus, each time the West has announced a new scientific discovery, misguided scholars have ransacked Sanskrit literature to find a phrase that might be interpreted as a Hindu anticipation of it. A sentence of a dozen words, obscure even to the most accomplished Sanskrit scholars, is triumphantly quoted to prove that the ancient Hindus were familiar with the chemical constitution of water. Another, no less brief, is held up as the proof that they anticipated Pasteur in the discovery of the microbic origin of disease. A passage from the mythological poem of the Mahabharata proves that they had invented the Zeppelin. Remarkable people, these old Hindus. They knew everything that we know or, indeed, are likely to discover, at any rate until India is a free country; but they were unfortunately too modest to state the fact baldly and in so many words. A little more clarity on their part, a little less reticence, and India would now be centuries ahead of her Western rivals. But they preferred to be oracular and telegraphically brief. It is only after the upstart West has repeated their discoveries that the modern Indian commentator upon their works can interpret their dark sayings as anticipations. On contemporary Indian scholars the pastime of discovering and creating these anticipations never seems to pall. Such are the melancholy and futile occupations of intelligent men who have the misfortune to belong to a subject race. Free men would never dream of wasting their time and wit upon such vanities. From those who have not shall be taken away even that which they have.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Jesting Pilate)
“
The lust of property, and love: what different associations each of these ideas evoke! and yet it might be the same impulse twice named: on the one occasion disparaged from the standpoint of those already possessing (in whom the impulse has attained something of repose, who are now apprehensive for the safety of their "possession"); on the other occasion viewed from the standpoint of the unsatisfied and thirsty, and therefore glorified as "good." Our love of our neighbor, is it not a striving after new property? And similarly our love of knowledge, of truth; and in general all the striving after novelties? We gradually become satiated with the old and securely possessed, and again stretch out our hands; even the finest landscape in which we live for three months is no longer certain of our love, and any kind of more distant coast excites our covetousness: the possession for the most part becomes smaller through possessing. Our pleasure in ourselves seeks to maintain itself by always transforming something new into ourselves, that is just possessing. To become satiated with a possession, that is to become satiated with ourselves. (One can also suffer from excess, even the desire to cast away, to share out, may assume the honorable name of "love.") When we see any one suffering, we willingly utilize the opportunity then afforded to take possession of him; the beneficent and sympathetic man, for example, does this; he also calls the desire for new possession awakened in him, by the name of "love," and has enjoyment in it, as in a new acquisition suggesting itself to him. The love of the sexes, however, betrays itself most plainly as the striving after possession: the lover wants the unconditioned, sole possession of the person longed for by him; he wants just as absolute power over her soul as over the body; he wants to be loved solely, and to dwell and rule in the other soul as what is highest and most to be desired. When one considers that this means precisely to exclude all the world from a precious possession, a happiness, and an enjoyment; when one considers that the lover has in view the impoverishment and privation of all other rivals, and would like to become the dragon of his golden hoard, as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors "and exploiters; when one considers finally that to the lover himself, the whole world besides appears indifferent, colorless, and worthless, and that he is ready to make every sacrifice, disturb every arrangement, and put every other interest behind his own, one is verily surprised that this ferocious lust of property and injustice of sexual love should have been glorified and deified to such an extent at all times; yea, that out of this love the conception of love as the antithesis of egoism should have been derived, when it is perhaps precisely the most unqualified expression of egoism. Here, evidently, the non-possessors and desirers have determined the usage of language, there were, of course, always too many of them. Those who have been favored with much possession and satiety, have, to be sure, dropped a word now and then about the "raging demon," as, for instance, the most lovable and most beloved of all the Athenians Sophocles; but Eros always laughed at such revilers, they were always his greatest favorites. There is, of course, here and there on this terrestrial sphere a kind of sequel to love, in which that covetous longing of two persons for one another has yielded to a new desire and covetousness, to a common, higher thirst for a superior ideal standing above them: but who knows this love? Who has experienced it? Its right name — friendship.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
“
Was it possible that Octavia had misjudged her?
What was he thinking? Of course, it was possible. Octavia was a dear, but she was nineteen years old and thinking of Octavia. The last thing she wanted in her life was a staggeringly beautiful rival who was not conveniently evil.
”
”
Julia Quinn (The Lady Most Likely... (Lady Most..., #1))
“
You're Miss F's boyfriend?" Danny looked up in disbelief, his gaze following Jim around the room.
"You're real?" Tommy echoed the same surprise. "Dude, I thought she was some sad old lady like my mom, making up stories about her dead boyfriend."
"Shut up, Tommy."
Jim paused near her desk. "You talked about me? You said I'm your boyfriend?"
"Dead boyfriend," Danny corrected.
"Shut up." Natalie and Jim silenced the frightened vandals in unison.
"We were reading Romeo and Juliet," she explained, trying to diminish the importance of the boys' nervous rambling that had revealed far more than she cared to. "Talking about love and tragedy."
"They were like, from rival gangs," Tom informed Jim unnecessarily.
"Enough, Tommy." The seventeen year-old chose now to remember something she'd taught in class?
"These are the two boneheads who've been giving you grief?"
Natalie nodded."I thought I'd handled it."
Jim holstered his gun and pulled out his phone. "I don't know if I'm flattered to learn that you claimed to love me, or pissed off to hear that you think of us as a tragedy.
”
”
Julie Miller (The Bridesmaid's Bodyguard)
“
Near a stone house, bleached and weathered from salt and the sun, stood an old abandoned school. At its foot, before the house and the school, a rolling vineyard spread out. The boy walked through the vineyard every day on his way back from the school. That day, when Antonio ran to his father, not suspecting the upheaval in his young life, he’d learned from the village teacher about the crusades, religion, ethnicity, and some wicked people, as his classmate had called them. The little boy ran, full of questions, and shouted from a distance:
− Father, I’m happy that we live in Sicily!
− Why, my son?
− We have no wars, no fighting, and if someone attacks us, we have many dangerous people who will protect us from all evils!
Aldo took a long stick with a cloth on top, which he used to cool the fruits in the vineyard, turned it on end and drew two circles in the dry soil. He drew a flower in one circle and a sword in the other. Looking at the boy, he asked:
− These are the heads of two rivals. Which adversary is good and which is evil?
− I don’t know ‒ the little boy replied, knowing that his father was presenting him with a new riddle.
− Both opponents are good. One knows his power and the other doesn’t.
− But how can a good adversary wield a sword?
− One day you’ll understand.
”
”
Dushica Labovich (Secret of a Bridge)
“
It was music first of all that brought us together. Without being professionals or virtuosos, we were all passionate lovers of music; but
Serge dreamed of devoting himself entirely to the art. All the time he was studying law along with us, he took singing lessons with Cotogni,
the famous baritone of the Italian Opera; while for musical theory, which he wanted to master completely so as to rival Moussorgsky and
Tchaikovsky, he went to the very source and studied with Rimsky-Korsakov. However, our musical tastes were not always the same. The
quality our group valued most was what the Germans call Stimmung, and besides this, the power of suggestion and dramatic force. The
Bach of the Passions, Gluck, Schubert, Wagner and the Russian composers – Borodin in ‘Prince Igor’, Rimsky and, above all, Tchaikovsky,
were our gods. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Queen of Spades’ had just been performed for the first time at the Opera of St Petersburg, and we were
ecstatic about its Hoffmannesque element, notably the scene in the old Countess’s bedroom. We liked the composer’s famous Romances much less, finding them insipid and sometimes trivial. These Romances, however, were just what Diaghilev liked. What he valued
most was broad melody, and in particular whatever gave a singer the chance to display the sensuous qualities of his voice. During the years of his apprenticeship he bore our criticisms and jokes with resignation, but as he learned more about music – and about the history of art in general – he gained in self-confidence and found reasons to justify his predilections. There came a time when not only did he dare to withstand our attacks but went on to refute our arguments fiercely.
”
”
Richard Buckle (Nijinsky: A Life of Genius and Madness)
“
Leigh Freeman moved his printing press to Laramie and set about publishing the Frontier Index there. In its first issue, May 5 [1868], the paper predicted that Laramie would soon rival Chicago. When it was only two weeks old, the Index boasted, “Laramie already contains a population of two thousand inhabitants.
”
”
Stephen E. Ambrose (Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69)
“
Again starting with an unusual Y-chromosome, they noticed its occurrence in a related set of surnames that were linked to branches of the Ui Neill, the clan that had held the High Kingship at Tara, and had expelled the Dál Riata to Argyll. The Ui Neill equivalent of Somerled was Niall Noigiallach, better known as Niall of the Nine Hostages, who lived in the second half of the fourth century AD. This was a time when the Romans were beginning to withdraw from mainland Britain. According to legend, Niall raided and harassed western Britain and specialized in capturing and then ransoming high-ranking hostages, hence his soubriquet. His most famous captive was one Succat, who went on to become St Patrick. Niall’s military exploits carried him over the sea to Scotland, where he fought the Picts who were trying to retake the recent Irish colonies of Dalriada. It was during a raid even further afield, in France, that an arrow from the bow of an Irish rival killed Niall on the banks of the River Loire in AD 405. Niall was succeeded in the High Kingship by his nephew, Dathi, his father’s brother’s son. This was typical of the Gaelic tradition of derbhfine, the rules of inheritance that chose the new king from among the direct male relatives of the old. This served to ensure the patrilineal inheritance of the High Kingship itself
”
”
Bryan Sykes (Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland)
“
The collapse of the great supranational — or at least supraparochial — authorities and the dissolution of long-accepted Imperial bonds released upon Europe a fearsome flood of conflicting national ambitions, of inflamed minority particularisms, of historic (sometimes almost prehistoric) irredentisms, of irreconcilable social aspirations and of rival political fanaticisms.
”
”
Edmond Taylor (The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922)
“
A factory it was, rivaling such earlier operations as Beadle & Adams (creators of Victorianera novels by the dozens), the Stratemeyer syndicate (a powerhouse in juvenile thriller books, creators of Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, the Rover Boys, the Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, and others going strong today), and the system that enabled Alexandre Dumas to turn out more than 250 books in his lifetime.
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
Imagine a weary sailor coming home to port in the midst of a brutal storm. Along the horizon he sees the burning lights of dozens of lighthouses. And yet he knows from experience that some are so old they've receded miles inland as the shore has grown. Others are simply fakes, put out by sadists and rivals. To be a citizen in these strange times is to perpetually find oneself in that poor sailor's perilous state. We know that danger lurks in the darkness, but we don't know if we have the means to avoid it.
”
”
Christopher L. Hayes (Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy)
“
Sideline Story
By Barbara Dooley, Georgia Grits
When you have a lot of children, and we had four, you get worn slap out. By the time the last baby arrives, you just let them do just about whatever they want. We had a rule that our first son, Daniel, could not go to the sidelines with his father, who was the head coach at the University of Georgia at the time, until he was ten years old. Our youngest son, Derek, got this chance a lot sooner.
When Derek was five, Georgia played our biggest in-state rival, Georgia Tech, in Atlanta on Thanksgiving night. We spent Thanksgiving without the coach, then drove to Atlanta for the game. When we got to the hotel, Derek immediately asked his father if he could sit on the sidelines. Feeling guilty about Thanksgiving, Vince compromised and told him that if we were beating Tech by a large score at the end of the third quarter he could go down on the sidelines. There were two rules: he could not get near the team, and he could not get near Dad! At family prayers, Derek prayed, “…and Jesus please let us be beating Tech by a big enough score that I can get to the sidelines.”
At the end of the third quarter the score was 42--0, and I thought that was a reasonable lead to take him down to the sidelines. By the time we got to the fence, Tech had scored and it was 42--7. By the time I got him over the fence, it was 42--14. By the time I got back to my seat, it was 42--21 and Derek Dooley was pulling on his dad’s pants leg.
That night in the hotel, we put the children down in their room and turned out the lights. We went to our adjoining room and Vince turned out the light. I knew, womanly instinct, that something major was about to be said. I just lay there as still as I could, waiting. Finally he said, “Barbara, the strangest thing happened tonight on the sideline. Tech had the ball going down the field to score and Derek was pulling on my pants leg. I pushed him away, anything to get him to turn loose of my leg. Finally when Tech scored, I looked down and said, ‘Derek, what do you want?’ I was ready for anything except for what he said. He looked up at me with his big brown eyes and said, “Daddy, don’t worry about a thing. Jesus is just having a little fun.
”
”
Deborah Ford (Grits (Girls Raised in the South) Guide to Life)
“
This was the first example of another interesting pattern in Elizabeth’s life. Lacking parents, lacking close family, unmarried as she would remain, and childless too, Elizabeth when queen surrounded herself with brilliant men, loyal advisors and favourites whom she made as close as family to her. When they became too old, as did William Cecil, Lord Burghley, or died, like Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, she took on their sons.
”
”
Jane Dunn (Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens)
“
interchangeably. There are numerous biblical texts expressing Yahweh’s hatred and condemnation of all people who could be generically defined as witches: “diviners,” “pythons,” “conjurers,” “fortune-tellers.” We know that all Neolithic Goddess-worshiping peoples were identified by the Hebrew prophets and patriarchs as “evil,” “idolatrous,” and “unclean”—and Yahweh wanted them all dead. Christianity’s remarkably ugly record of religious intolerance begins in the Old Testament, where Yahweh’s people are directed, by him, to murder anyone practicing a rival religion. The five hundred years of European Inquisition and witch-burnings had their direct inspiration and sanctification from the Holy Bible, and there is no way to avoid this conclusion. The secular motives, and secular gains, of the witch-hunts, can be credited to the imperialism of the Roman Catholic church, to the equally power-hungry fanaticism of the Protestant Reformists—and to all the other European men who obtained advantage or sick thrills from the torture and destruction of the human body in general, and women’s bodies in particular. The Christian church used the Bible’s divine mandate for religious murder not only to survive the political turmoil of the Middle Ages, but to expand and secure one of the largest and most powerful secular institutions on earth: Western Christendom.
”
”
Monica Sjöö (The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth)
“
Whoever thinks that in high personages new benefits cause old offences to be forgotten, makes a great mistake.
”
”
Nancy Goldstone (The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom)
“
I was a nine-year-old baseball player for my hometown team, and I distinctly remember my coach telling me, “Walk it off … don’t sit down it will stiffen up … keep moving it.” I heard similar orders given to myself, teammates, and rivals more than one-hundred times during my childhood athletic career. Not once did I ever hear anyone suggest putting ice on damaged tissue. Indeed, even when I was the starting quarterback on my junior high-school’s football team, I never saw anyone iced or heard about anyone icing.
”
”
Gary Reinl (Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option)
“
She seemed to take herself less seriously than did Parsons, though she was considered more accurate and more willing to personally check out her tips. “On the radio, Miss Hopper cheerfully admits her errors by giving herself the bird with a gold-plated mechanical canary,” wrote Current Biography in 1942. Her feud with Parsons was real, and in most popularity contests she came out the winner, pronounced by Life “infinitely more liked by the movie colony than her ruthless rival.” Her personal demeanor was highlighted by a colorful vocabulary and outrageous hats. She died Feb. 1, 1966.
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
in European history from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, comes from an eighteen-minute YouTube video produced by the author and philosophy guru Alain de Botton’s School of Life. De Botton dedicates a few minutes of the video to educating viewers about the Renaissance leaders’ zeal for building beautiful cities. You can count on one hand the number of cities built since the 1600s that can rival the elegance of cities that sprung up on the Italian Peninsula during the three-hundred-odd years of the Renaissance, de Botton says in the video. Sure, he concedes, the old urban planners didn’t have to worry about cars or zoning laws, but they had a mission and were extremely direct and didactic in carrying it out. “City fathers across the Italian Peninsula had fallen in love with a remarkable new idea: that their cities should be the focus of an unparalleled attention to beauty,
”
”
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
“
On the sabbath rest that remains for the people of God (4:9), which is to say, on the Lord’s Day. God created the heavens and earth in six days, and he hallowed the seventh day as one of holy rest. No sufficient reason for changing the day can be found—short of a new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. We have a new sabbath because we have a new creation; the old has passed away.
”
”
Douglas Wilson (Hebrews Through New Eyes: Christ and His Rivals (Through New Eyes Bible Commentary))
“
The fault with the older covenant was with the people, not with the covenant, but the heavenly covenant is founded on better promises—promises which take our sinfulness into account, promises which conquer our sinfulness. In this New Covenant we find the internalization of the law. The Old Covenant is on its last legs, and is about ready to vanish away.
”
”
Douglas Wilson (Hebrews Through New Eyes: Christ and His Rivals (Through New Eyes Bible Commentary))