Orient Express Book Quotes

I had always wanted to go on the Orient Express, but that I’d sort of consider it a wasted opportunity if a murder didn’t happen. It’s not that I’m particularly bloodthirsty, it’s just that I have standards

The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail. They remain the test, whether or not to read something. The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold. In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil. The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or casual. They can be tall or short or fat or thin. They can obey the rules or break them. But they need to contain a charge. A live current, which shocks and illuminates.

And most conveniently she leaves her handkerchief behind!” said Poirot. “Exactly as it happens in the books and on the films—and to make things even easier for us it is marked with an initial.

I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew when the thirtieth anniversary reissue of his Orientalism was published, but his long-precarious condition would hardly argue for giving him a lenient review, let alone denying him one altogether, which would have been the only alternatives. In the introduction he wrote for the new edition, he generally declined the opportunity to answer his scholarly critics, and instead gave the recent American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of 'Orientalism' in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of United States vandalism, perpetrated in order to shear the Iraqi people of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. So when the Atlantic invited me to review Edward's revised edition, I decided I'd suspect myself more if I declined than if I agreed, and I wrote what I felt I had to. Not long afterward, an Iraqi comrade sent me without comment an article Edward had contributed to a magazine in London that was published by a princeling of the Saudi royal family. In it, Edward quoted some sentences about the Iraq war that he off-handedly described as 'racist.' The sentences in question had been written by me. I felt myself assailed by a reaction that was at once hot-eyed and frigidly cold. He had cited the words without naming their author, and this I briefly thought could be construed as a friendly hesitance. Or as cowardice... I can never quite act the stern role of Mr. Darcy with any conviction, but privately I sometimes resolve that that's 'it' as it were. I didn't say anything to Edward but then, I never said anything to him again, either. I believe that one or two charges simply must retain their face value and not become debauched or devalued. 'Racist' is one such. It is an accusation that must either be made good upon, or fully retracted. I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice, and I decided to presume that Edward was honest and serious enough to feel the same way. I feel misery stealing over me again as I set this down: I wrote the best tribute I could manage when he died not long afterward (and there was no strain in that, as I was relieved to find), but I didn't go to, and wasn't invited to, his funeral.

Through these seventeen years of your life I have had this hour of your marriage in mind. In everything I have taught you I have considered two persons, the mother of your husband and your husband. For her sake I have taught you how to prepare and to present tea to an elder; how to stand in an elder’s presence; how to listen in silence while an elder speaks whether in praise or blame; in all things I have taught you to submit yourself as a flower submits to sun and rain alike. “For your husband I have taught you how to decorate your person, how to speak to him with eyes and expression but without words, how to—but these things you will understand when the hour comes and you are alone with him.

I read a lot of Agatha Christie's that fall of 1938 - maybe all of them. The Hercule Poirots, the Miss Marples. Death on the Nile, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Murders .. on the links, .. at the vicarage, and.. on the Orient Express. I real them on the subway, at the deli, and in my bed alone. You can make what claims you will about the psychological nuance of Proust or the narrative scope of Tolstoy, but you can't argue that Mrs Christie fails to please. Her books are tremendously satisfying.

We will commit them to memory. We will become them. We become authors. We become their books. I am sorry. I lost something there. Like a path I was walking that dead-ended, and now I am alone and lost in the forest, and I am here and I do not know where here is anymore. You must learn a Shakespeare play: I will think of you as Titus Andronicus. Or you, whoever you are, you could learn an Agatha Christie novel: you will be Murder on the Orient Express.

THE TEN MOST COMMON PROBLEMS Here are the ten most common problems in communications. Read the list. If any of them apply to you, the principles in this book will help you solve them. 1. Lack of initial rapport with listeners 2. Stiffness or woodenness in use of body 3. Presentation of material is intellectually oriented; speaker forgets to involve the audience emotionally 4. Speaker seems uncomfortable because of fear of failure 5. Poor use of eye contact and facial expression 6. Lack of humor 7. Speech direction and intent unclear due to improper  preparation 8. Inability to use silence for impact 9. Lack of energy, causing inappropriate pitch pattern, speech  rate, and volume 10. Use of boring language and lack of interesting material Various polls show that the ability to communicate well is ranked the number-one key to success by leaders in business, politics, and the professions. If you don’t communicate effectively, you may not die, like some POWs or neglected babies we mentioned earlier, but you also won’t live as fully as you should, nor will you achieve personal goals. This was a lesson drummed into me at a very early age.

Actually, some asexual people celebrate sex—up to and including engaging in it themselves despite lack of sexual attraction. Some asexual people write stories or produce art depicting sexual situations and/or nudity. Some asexual people have no problem with consuming media that contains sexual content. They do not have to be attracted to other people to appreciate or create positive portrayals of these relationships. This can be especially difficult to explain if an asexual artist does create sexually explicit material, because people want to know whether they’re creating this because they secretly desire it. Or they might reverse the issue and suggest asexual people have no business creating this media—or that they can’t be good at it—if they don’t have personal experience. What artists choose to make art about has absolutely no bearing on what they’re attracted to or what they might want to experience themselves. Art can be used to express personal desires, but no one should assume someone must be doing so if that person depicts experiences or images contrary to personally expressed desires, and no one should use a person’s artwork or subject matter to invalidate claims. Asexual artists cannot be restricted to creating media that is devoid of sex. Asexual artists know and accept that most people are attracted sexually to others, so if they want to write realistic books or movies, they generally have to create at least some of their subjects with that dimension attached to them.

My studio team and I approached the creation of this series with enthusiasm, wit, sincerity and sometimes more than a dash of humour. Is the result just another foray into the clichés of Orientalism? I think not. For the most part the people photographed became co-conspirators in our elaborate game of recreating reality. They enjoyed chai with us and a morning samosa (we most always shoot in the early morning since it is the best time to utilize available light). Our models were indeed “posed and paid”, but they cooperated by suggesting so many things themselves… eagerly grasping the process we were undertaking and joining in the creation of what generally became more than just a photo shoot. Each session in the studio became an “event”…an episode of manufactured expression in which all participated and all remembered.

... we find a complete contradiction in our wishing to live without suffering, a contradiction that is therefore implied by the frequently used phrase “blessed life.” This will certainly be clear to the person who has fully grasped my discussion that follows. This contradiction is revealed in this ethic of pure reason itself by the fact that the Stoic is compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide in his guide to the blissful life (for this is what his ethics always remains). This is like the costly phial of poison to be found among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of oriental despots, and is for the case where the sufferings of the body, incapable of being philosophized away by any principles and syllogisms, are paramount and incurable. Thus its sole purpose, namely blessedness, is frustrated, and nothing remains as a means of escape from pain except death. But then death must be taken with unconcern, just as is any other medicine. Here a marked contrast is evident between the Stoic ethics and all those other ethical systems mentioned above. These ethical systems make virtue directly and in itself the aim and object, even with the most grievous sufferings, and will not allow a man to end his life in order to escape from suffering. But not one of them knew how to express the true reason for rejecting suicide, but they laboriously collected fictitious arguments of every kind. This true reason will appear in the fourth book in connexion with our discussion. But the above-mentioned contrast reveals and confirms just that essential difference to be found in the fundamental principle between the Stoa, really only a special form of eudaemonism, and the doctrines just mentioned, although both often agree in their results, and are apparently related. But the above-mentioned inner contradiction, with which the Stoic ethics is affected even in its fundamental idea, further shows itself in the fact that its ideal, the Stoic sage as represented by this ethical system, could never obtain life or inner poetical truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure with whom one can do nothing. He himself does not know where to go with his wisdom, and his perfect peace, contentment, and blessedness directly contradict the nature of mankind, and do not enable us to arrive at any perceptive representation thereof. Compared with him, how entirely different appear the overcomers of the world and voluntary penitents, who are revealed to us, and are actually produced, by the wisdom of India; how different even the Saviour of Christianity, that excellent form full of the depth of life, of the greatest poetical truth and highest significance, who stands before us with perfect virtue, holiness, and sublimity, yet in a state of supreme suffering.

Although small groups have been utilized as a church renewal scheme, they have rarely been legitimized as a full expression of the church. They have been conceived as an adjunct for the personal growth of the participants. They have been considered an “extra” in church programming, and they have served this role well. Meanwhile the “real” church gathers in the sanctuary at eleven each Sunday. It’s there, with “everybody” (except the sick, etc.) present, that the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are celebrated. We have been so oriented toward the gathered congregation that the small group is relegated to serving as a means to a larger end—that is, to stimulate active participation in the corporate congregation.[3] When we look at small groups as secondary helper units for bolstering our larger gatherings we have gone off the rails. The better view is to see our corporate gatherings—church services—as a celebratory exclamation point of lives lived as salt and light the previous week.

Age: 11 Height: 5’5 Favourite animal: Wolf   Chris loves to learn. When he’s not reading books explaining how planes work or discovering what lives at the bottom of the ocean, he’s watching the Discovery Channel on TV to learn about all the world’s animal and plant life. How things work is one of Chris’ main interests, and for this reason he has a special appreciation for electrical and mechanical things, everything from computers to trains. He considers himself a train expert and one day dreams of riding on famous trains, such as the Orient Express and the Trans-Siberian Railway.   Chris dreams of one day being a great engineer, like Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He knows this will involve going to university, so he studies hard at school. Beatrix is his study partner, and when they aren’t solving mysteries in the Cluefinders Club they can be found in the garden poring over text books. Like Ben, he loves to read comic books, and his favourite super-hero is Iron Man, who is a genius engineer and businessman. Chris says, “One day I’ll invent a new form of transport that will revolutionise world travel!”    

1974 Bangkok   On my way from London to Kuala Lumpur that summer, I stopped in Bangkok for a few days, since I had never been to Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok in Thai). I thought it an excellent idea to visit this vibrant city, known to some as the ‘Sin City of the East’ due to its liberal stance in sexual issues.               As soon as I’d stepped out of the airport to flag a taxi to the legendary Oriental Bangkok Hotel, I was confronted by hordes of haggling Thai men jostling for my business, bargaining with me in broken English to deliver me to my luxury lodging for the best price. But just then, a suave-looking foreigner in his thirties stepped in to dissipate their heated transactions. He wasted no time to disperse all the drivers except one. The gentleman had bargained in Thai for the best price on my behalf. He spoke in German-accented English, “I’m Max. The cab driver will take us to our hotel?”               “Oh, you are also staying at the Oriental?” I chirped.               “Hop into the cab so we can get out of this madding crowd,” he expressed vehemently, opening the car door to let me in.               As soon as we were comfortably situated at the back seat, he asked, “What brings you to Thonburi, Mr.…?” He trailed off.               “I’m Young. Thank you for your assistance! It’s my first time to Bangkok. I wasn’t expecting such a rowdy welcome. If it weren’t for you, I may have landed in a Thai hospital,” I joked. “Where’s Thonburi?”               He sniggered mischievously. “Thonburi, the city of treasures gracing the ocean, is Bangkok’s official name, although some refer to it more appropriately as Meụ̄xng k̄hxng khwām s̄uk̄h kām, the city of erotic pleasures,” he quipped.               Overhearing the words Meụ̄xng k̄hxng khwām s̄uk̄h kām, the cab driver commented, “You want boy, girl or boy-girl or girl-boy? I take you to happy place!”               Max burst out in laughter. He proceeded to have a conversation in Thai with the driver. I sat, silent, since I had no idea what was being said, until my acquaintance asked, “What brings you to Bangkok?”               “I’m on vacation. What brings you to Thonburi?” I queried.               “I’m here on business, and usually stay a while for leisure,” was his response. “Since we are staying in the same hotel, we’ll see more of each other. I’m happy to show you the city,” he added.               “That’ll be wonderful. I’ll take up your offer,” I said appreciatively, glad I’d met someone to show me around.               By the time our cab pulled up at the Oriental’s entrance, we had agreed to meet for dinner the following evening.

Those concessions might also explain why Keynes responded to the book as he did, a response that might surprise later generations. Keynes read it on the boat on the way to Bretton Woods, and on arriving in Atlantic City sent a letter saying that it was a “grand book” and that “morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in a deeply moved agreement” (Keynes to Hayek, June 28, 1944, quoted in Keynes 1980b, 385). Keynes went on to say that they would probably disagree on the question of where to draw the line regarding more or less intervention. Keynes thought that almost certainly more planning was necessary, which could be carried out safely if the lead- ers were “rightly orientated in their own minds and hearts to the moral is- sue” (Keynes 1980b, 387). So there were obvious differences between them. But the general sentiment expressed underlines once again the fact that in the context of their times and especially with respect to central planning and the men of science who advocated such a path for Britain, Keynes and Hayek were on the same side.

American Express employees were told in mandatory trainings to create an “identity map” by writing their “race, sexual orientation, body type, religion, disability status, age, gender identity, citizenship” in circles surrounding the words “Who am I?” 71 Verizon employees were taught about intersectionality, microaggressions, and institutional racism, and asked to write a reflection on questions like “What is my cultural identity?” with “race/ ethnicity, gender/ gender identity, religion, education, profession, sexual orientation” beneath. 72 CVS Health hourly employees were sent to a mandatory training where keynote speaker Ibram X. Kendi explained that “to be born in [The United States] is to literally have racist ideas rain on our head consistently and constantly … We're just walking through society completely soaked in racist ideas believing we're dry.” 73 Employees were asked to fill out a “Reflect on Privilege” checklist and told they should “commit to holding yourself and colleagues accountable to consistently celebrate diversity and take swift action against non-inclusive behaviors.” 74

Why share LGBTQAI+ literature with all children? Because, we argue, it's an issue of basic human rights - rights that all of us deserve. We no longer hesitate to share books about other forms of diversity: race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, language, women's issues, and more. Why are we still hesitant to share books about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and nontraditional family structures with all children?

This book is a compilation of interesting ideas that have strongly influenced my thoughts and I want to share them in a compressed form. That ideas can change your worldview and bring inspiration and the excitement of discovering something new. The emphasis is not on the technology because it is constantly changing. It is much more difficult to change the accompanying circumstances that affect the way technological solutions are realized. The chef did not invent salt, pepper and other spices. He just chooses good ingredients and uses them skilfully, so others can enjoy his art. If I’ve been successful, the book creates a new perspective for which the selection of ingredients is important, as well as the way they are smoothly and efficiently arranged together. In the first part of the book, we follow the natural flow needed to create the stimulating environment necessary for the survival of a modern company. It begins with challenges that corporations are facing, changes they are, more or less successfully, trying to make, and the culture they are trying to establish. After that, we discuss how to be creative, as well as what to look for in the innovation process. The book continues with a chapter that talks about importance of inclusion and purpose. This idea of inclusion – across ages, genders, geographies, cultures, sexual orientation, and all the other areas in which new ways of thinking can manifest – is essential for solving new problems as well as integral in finding new solutions to old problems. Purpose motivates people for reaching their full potential. This is The second and third parts of the book describes the areas that are important to support what is expressed in the first part. A flexible organization is based on IT alignment with business strategy. As a result of acceleration in the rate of innovation and technological changes, markets evolve rapidly, products’ life cycles get shorter and innovation becomes the main source of competitive advantage. Business Process Management (BPM) goes from task-based automation, to process-based automation, so automating a number of tasks in a process, and then to functional automation across multiple processes andeven moves towards automation at the business ecosystem level. Analytics brought us information and insight; AI turns that insight into superhuman knowledge and real-time action, unleashing new business models, new ways to build, dream, and experience the world, and new geniuses to advance humanity faster than ever before. Companies and industries are transforming our everyday experiences and the services we depend upon, from self-driving cars, to healthcare, to personal assistants. It is a central tenet for the disruptive changes of the 4th Industrial Revolution; a revolution that will likely challenge our ideas about what it means to be a human and just might be more transformative than any other industrial revolution we have seen yet. Another important disruptor is the blockchain - a distributed decentralized digital ledger of transactions with the promise of liberating information and making the economy more democratic. You no longer need to trust anyone but an algorithm. It brings reliability, transparency, and security to all manner of data exchanges: financial transactions, contractual and legal agreements, changes of ownership, and certifications. A quantum computer can simulate efficiently any physical process that occurs in Nature. Potential (long-term) applications include pharmaceuticals, solar power collection, efficient power transmission, catalysts for nitrogen fixation, carbon capture, etc. Perhaps we can build quantum algorithms for improving computational tasks within artificial intelligence, including sub-fields like machine learning. Perhaps a quantum deep learning network can be trained more efficiently, e.g. using a smaller training set. This is still in conceptual research domain.

Yeah,” I agreed, “the author just immediately tries to write down as many emotions as possible. Initially, I thought that the method of writing was ineffective, but eventually, I realized how the structure potently manifested her passion for her own thoughts about mental illness and the restrictions of herself and the woman in the yellow wallpaper. First off, the experience-oriented writing was relevant to the conveyance of the author’s ideas, because since the writing was, well, about experiences, the issues the author was addressing appeared to be more based on the reality of society, not a hypothetical model of it, and the issues really were based on the reality of society, since some of the events in the book were actually based on events in the author’s life. Also, the spontaneity and honesty of the writing was an effective choice of the author. I observed that the narrator’s silence in the presence of her husband and her spontaneous and expressive writing were juxtaposed, which emphasized the restrictions the narrator was put in and also her progressive views on mental health and her ability to stay true to herself. Also, this way of writing exemplifies that the narrator had to hold in so much thought because of her restrictions. She wrote without hesitation! In other words, her spontaneous writing and the lack of thematic structure in her writing showed her ability to stay true to her own beliefs.

The obvious alternative to blaming the parent is to conclude that there is something amiss or lacking in the child. If we are not given to doubt our parenting, we assume the source of our trouble must be the child. We take refuge in the child-blaming thought that we have not failed, but our children have failed to live up to the expected standards. Our attitude is expressed in questions or demands such as Why don't you pay attention? Stop being so difficult! Or, Why can't you do as you're told? Difficulty in parenting often leads to a hunt to find out what is wrong with the child. We may witness today a frantic search for labels to explain our children's problems. Parents seek the formal diagnoses of a professional or grasp at informal labels — there are, for examples, books on raising the “difficult” or the “spirited” child. The more frustrating parenting becomes, the more likely children will be perceived as difficult and the more labels will be sought for verification. It is no coincidence that the preoccupation with diagnoses has paralleled the rise in peer orientation in our society. Increasingly, children's behavioral problems are ascribed to various medical syndromes such as oppositional defiant disorder or attention deficit disorder. These diagnoses at least have the benefit of absolving the child and of removing the onus of blame from the parents, but they camouflage the reversible dynamics that cause children to misbehave in the first place. Medical explanations help by removing guilt but they hinder by reducing the issues to oversimplified concepts. They assume that the complex behavior problems of many children can be explained by genetics or by miswired brain circuits. They ignore scientific evidence that the human brain is shaped by the environment from birth throughout the lifetime and that attachment relationships are the most important aspect of the child's environment. They also dictate narrow solutions, such as medications, without regard to the child's relationships with peers and with the adult world. In practice, they serve to further disempower parents.

The refusal to examine Islamic culture and traditions, the sordid dehumanization of Muslims, and the utter disregard for the intellectual traditions and culture of one of the world’s great civilizations are characteristic of those who disdain self-reflection and intellectual inquiry. Confronting this complexity requires work and study rather than a retreat into slogans and cliches. And enlightened, tolerant civilizations have flourished outside the orbit of the United Sates and Europe. The ruins of the ancient Mughal capital, Fatehpur Sikri, lie about 100 miles south of Delhi. The capital was constructed by the emperor Akbar the Great at the end of the sixteenth century. The emperor’s court was filled with philosophers, mystics and religious scholars, including Sunni, Sufi, and Shiite Muslims, Hindu followers of Shiva and Vishnu, as well as atheists, Christians, Jains, Jews , Buddhists and Zoroastrians. They debated ethics and beliefs. He forbade any person to be discriminated against on the basis of belief and declared that everyone was free to follow any religion. This took place as the Inquisition was at its height in Spain and Portugal, and as Giordano Bruno was being burnt at the stake in Rome’s Campo de Fiori. Tolerance, as well as religious and political plurality, is not exclusive to Western culture. The Judeo-Christian tradition was born and came to life in the Middle East. Its intellectual and religious beliefs were cultivated and formed in cities such as Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople. Many of the greatest tenets of Western civilization, as is true with Islam and Buddhism, are Eastern in origin. Our respect for the rule of law and freedom of expression, as well as printing, paper, the book, the translation and dissemination of the classical Greek philosophers, algebra, geometry and universities were given to us by the Islamic world. One of the first law codes was invented by the ancient Babylonian ruler Hammurabi, in what is now Iraq. One of the first known legal protections of basic freedoms and equality was promulgated in the third century B.C. by the Buddhist Indian emperor Ashoka. And, unlike, Aristotle, he insisted on equal rights for women and slaves. The division set up by the new atheists between superior Western, rational values and the irrational beliefs of those outside our tradition is not only unhistorical but untrue. The East and the West do not have separate, competing value systems. We do not treat life with greater sanctity than those we belittle and dismiss. Eastern and Western traditions have within them varied ethical systems, some of which are repugnant and some of which are worth emulating. To hold up the highest ideals of our own culture and to deny that these great ideals exist in other cultures, especially Eastern cultures, is made possible only by a staggering historical and cultural illiteracy. The civilization we champion and promote as superior is, in fact, a product of the fusion of traditions and beliefs of the Orient and the Occident. We advance morally and intellectually only when we cross these cultural lines, when we use the lens of other cultures to examine our own. It is then that we see our limitations, that we uncover the folly of or own assumptions and our prejudices. It is then that we achieve empathy, we learn and make wisdom possible.

In the second instance God is the subject and Eve is the indirect object. This time Eve acknowledges that God appointed another offspring. She names this son Seth, meaning “substitute,” which is also an apparent wordplay on the Hebrew verb shith for “placing” or “appointing.” The contrast in the type of birth is expressed in the names of Eve’s sons. Cain is the result of Eve’s own act of getting a man, whereas Seth is God’s provision of an appointed offspring. In her effort, Eve bears sinful progeny of violence and ultimate death. But God provides through her another offspring that ultimately brings life and hope. The theme of offspring as a special provision of God is a recurring one throughout the book of Genesis. It is a theme that reinforces a fundamental difference between the God of the Old Testament and fertility deities popular among Israel’s ancient Near Eastern neighbors.10 Unlike the gods of other Semitic traditions, the God of Israel has no female consort and is not worshiped by means of cultic prostitution. Most importantly, the God of Israel is not manipulated by human beings as in the case of other fertility-oriented religions, where, through the worship and sacrifices of human beings, the gods were stimulated to replenish the earth. But from the first generation of humankind, Genesis emphasizes by contrast that it is God alone who provides the appointed offspring.

The following journal articles and books helped me to understand different aspects of traditional Chinese medicine, with an emphasis on women: “Dispersing the Foetal Toxin of the Body: Conceptions of Smallpox Aetiology in Pre-modern China” and “Variolation” by Chia-feng Chang; A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665 by Charlotte Furth; Thinking with Cases edited by Charlotte Furth, Judith T. Zeitlin, and Ping-chen Hsiung; The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted J. Kaptchuk; The Expressiveness of Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine by Shigehisa Kuriyama; “Women Practicing Medicine in Premodern China” by Angela Ki Che Leung, who also served as editor of Medicine for Women in Imperial China; Oriental Materia Medica by Hong-yen Hsu et al.; “Between Passion and Repression: Medical Views of Demon Dreams, Demonic Fetuses, and Female Sexual Madness in Late Imperial China” by Hsiu-fen Chen; “The Leisure Life of Women in the Ming Dynasty” by Zhao Cuili; and “Female Medical Workers in Ancient China” by Jin-sheng Zheng.

In a society that gives much value to development, progress and achievement, the spiritual life becomes quite easily subject to concerns expressed in questions such as, “How far advanced am I?”—“Have I matured since I started on the spiritual path?”—“On what level am I and how do I move to the next one?”—“When will I reach the moment of union with God and the experience of illumination or enlightenment?” Although none of these questions as such is meaningless, they can become dangerous against the background of a success-oriented society. Many great saints have described their religious experiences, and many lesser saints have systematized them into different phases, levels or stages. These distinctions can be helpful for those who write books and for those who use them to instruct, but it is of great importance that we leave the world of measurements behind when we speak about the life of the Spirit.