Paving Sayings And Quotes

I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her –after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred–I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever–for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)–and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again–and 'oh, no,' Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure–all would be shattered.

Hell, they says, is paved with good intentions.

This barricade is made neither of paving stones, nor of timbers, nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a mound of sorrows. Here misery encounters the ideal. Here the day embraces the night, and says: I will die with you and you will be born again with me.

I am a free man―and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God alone―if He existed!

I'm supposed to be guilty of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, but when you get right down to it, I'm really only guilty of one: wondering. The road to Hell, you say, is paved with good intentions. Charming. But actually it's paved with intriguing questions. You want to know. Man do you want to know.

Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up. We keep living. You would not be here if you weren't brave. Now you need to be braver still.

Well, you know what they say, Jamie: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Sometimes a woman is just worn out and needs a break, you know?” The lines on her forehead deepen. “That doesn’t prove that you’re weak or neglectful, it proves to all the women standing by and watching you pave the road to success that it’s okay to say no. It’s okay to shut your door every now and then and put up a sign that says Busy taking care of me today. Piss off.

While evidence says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all on first steps.

Follow your heart and take a chance that you'll be wrong. Take a chance that maybe you'll fuck it all up and everyone will say you're crazy. What's the worst that can happen? Face that fear and accept it. Because to silence your heart and forget your dreams is to die while living. LIVE. Don't let the world scare you into being something you're not. Get out there and risk the unusual or you'll have to settle for the ordinary. So, no-one else has done it before? There is no road map for you to follow? Then, you be the first! Pave the way for someone else. Find your courage and follow your heart. Be brave, wild one, be brave.

You know how they say the path to hell is paved with good intentions? Well, maybe the path to heaven is paved with bad ones.

The road to success is paved with doubters and haters.

Romanians have a saying, 'Not every dog has a bagel on its tail.' It means that not all streets are paved with gold. When I began my career, I just wanted to do cartwheels.

I am a free man—and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God alone—if He existed!

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. In the case of William Jessup Brady, it’s been hand carved with a lever-action Henry rifle over his shoulder and a Smith & Wesson six-gun strapped to his hip.’ – Solace Walters

[Dad] So your intentions were good. That's what matters. [Anthony] But isn't, like, the road to hell paved with good intentions? Yeah, well, so's the road to heaven. And if you spend too much time thinking about where those good intentions are taking you, you know where you end up? Jersey? I was thinking 'nowhere,' but you get the point.

The road to Hell, you say, is paved with good intentions. Charming. But actually it's paved with intriguing questions.

The missionaries find it opportune to remind the masses that long before the advent of European colonialism the great African empires were disrupted by the Arab invasion. There is no hesitation in saying that it was the Arab occupation which paved the way for European colonialism; Arab imperialism commonly spoken of, and the cultural imperialism of Islam is condemned.

If the road to Hell is paved in good intentions, a friend of mine used to say, the road to Heaven is paved with bullshit and busy work.

Grandfather looked away from me and out to sea, and when he spoke, it was as though he spoke to himself. “The obligations of normal human kindness – chesed, as the Hebrew has it – that we all owe. But there’s a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There’s a kind of vanity in goodness.” I could hardly believe my ears. “But aren’t we supposed to be good?” “I’m not sure.” Grandfather’s voice was heavy. “I do know that we’re not good, and there’s a lot of truth to the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

People say ‘third world’ and think it just means countries without internet or paved roads,” I say. “But ‘third world’ is Cold War terminology. NATO countries are the first world and the Communist bloc is the second world. The third world was where those two clashed. So the mess in Afghanistan is actually a first and second world problem.

...You say you don't mistrust me, yet you quote Chrysostom - Hell is paved with priests' skulls....

But there’s still more I can do, other ways for me to grow and — as I keep relearning — it’s okay to own a desire for more. In fact, it’s how we honor those who have paved the way for our place at the table. “You don’t want modesty,” Maya Angelou once said, “you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I’m here because I’ve been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I’m paying for someone else who has yet to come.” When we dim our light we don’t do anyone a favor. It’s a disservice because when you’re in the presence of someone who knows his or her worth, like the extraordinary Maya did, you want to shine brighter. Self-honoring energy is contagious.

No, of course she didn't say it. But there is no other reason she should have called, except to pave the way for her brother. she had nothing whatsoever to talk about. Just sat there like a stick, sipping tea." "I didn't know sticks could sip tea.

That doesn’t prove that you’re weak or neglectful, it proves to all the women standing by and watching you pave the road to success that it’s okay to say no. It’s okay to shut your door every now and then and put up a sign that says Busy taking care of me today. Piss off.

You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you’ll get no argument from me  . . . . but what about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn’t firmly an extra word? Isn’t it redundant? Someone out there is now accusing me of being tiresome and anal-retentive. I deny it. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step. Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak butter tea that would give it any meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all on first steps.

Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting face to face, like two bucks in the dark, on the bridge of the infinite; we shall no longer have to fear famine, farming out, prostitution arising from distress, misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword, and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of events. One might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light. Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh! the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barrier. Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the point of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer; this barricade is not made of paving-stones, nor of joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: 'I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.' From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.

How often, in everyday conversation, had I said things I didn’t mean or feel, just to be polite, to make things easier? How often had I said to Brandon what I thought I should say in order to maintain order, to repair a rift? We had never been good at disagreement. One of us always gave in when it got too uncomfortable. One of us would recognize that we were at a dead end, would begin to back out. We rarely paved a road through to the other side. We rarely stuck with it long enough to forge any kind of new, if painful, understanding.

In Mass I wanted to talk to God, but I didn’t know if He’d recognize me. I couldn’t think of nothing to say. So instead I pictured my life as a shattered plate, a fine piece of crockery broke and splintered into a thousand tiny pieces. And then I spent the hour collecting up all them bits of colored wreckage, and one by one, I placed them shards into the invisible hands of God. I hoped He would maybe glue them back together for me. He could stitch them up the way Pavees did, until the cracks was so well healed that nobody could see them at all. After Mass, Dad took me fishing, which made everything worse, because he’d never took me fishing on my own before, and the gravity of that was like a sad confession.

You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last. The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs. Respecting that speed limit was a lot easier before the birth of cushioned shoes and paved roads; diet, and those tumors may never appear in the first place. Eat like a poor person, as Coach Joe Vigil likes to say, and you'll only see your doctor on the golf course.

Pull it together, Four-Five-One,” he says firmly. But you can see him suppressing a smile as he’s double-checking the next pod. Positioning the Holo to find the best light in the smoky air. Still facing us as his left foot steps back onto the orange paving stone. Triggering the bomb that blows off his legs.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The way back will be paved with blood.

The things my brother and I don't say could pave over the Atlantic Ocean.

SHE SAYS IT’S AN HOMAGE TO FAMILY HISTORY. NEVER FORGET THOSE WHO PAVED THE WAY BEFORE YOU. NEVER STOP TRYING TO BETTER THE WORLD FOR THOSE WHO WILL INHABIT IT AFTER YOU.

You guys are brothers? I don’t really see the family resemblance.” “Brothers by choice,” Lev says. Emily takes another bite and then asks, “So it’s just you five? No other siblings or anything?

Self-rejection paves the landing strip for the rejection of others to arrive and pull on up to the gates of our hearts. Think about why it hurts so much when other people say or do things that make you feel rejected. Isn’t it in part due to the fact they just voiced some vulnerability you’ve already berated yourself for? It hurts exponentially more when you’re kicked in an already bruised shin.

After bracken is picked nine times, it will sprout again. The saying Fall down eight times, stand up nine reminds us of this and symbolizes the wish for the dead to pave the way for future generations

Before the Holocaust,” Paul was explaining to Daryl now, “when someone tripped on a paving stone in the road, the folk saying went, A Jew must be buried there. So the stumble stones take the old folk saying

In 1970, when Dr. Edgar Berman said women’s hormones during menstruation and menopause could have a detrimental influence on women’s decision making, feminists were outraged. He was soon served up as the quintessential example of medical male chauvinism.12 But by the 1980s, some feminists were saying that PMS was the reason a woman who deliberately killed a man should go free. In England, the PMS defense freed Christine English after she confessed to killing her boyfriend by deliberately ramming him into a utility pole with her car; and, after killing a coworker, Sandie Smith was put on probation—with one condition: she must report monthly for injections of progesterone to control symptoms of PMS.13 By the 1990s, the PMS defense paved the way for other hormonal defenses. Sheryl Lynn Massip could place her 6-month-old son under a car, run over him repeatedly, and then, uncertain he was dead, do it again, then claim postpartum depression and be given outpatient medical help.14 No feminist protested. In the 1970s, then, feminists

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible. It instead reveals deep Christian insight.

They're kicking us out saying it's time to close We're leaning on each other try'na beat the cold Carry your shoes and I give you my coat Walking these streets like they're paved gold Anymore excuses is not to go Neither one of us want to take that taxi home Singing our hearts, standing on chairs Spending the time like we were millionaires Laughing our heads off, the two of us stared Spending the time like we were millionaires Lost my heart and I hope to die Seeing that sunlight hit your eyes Been up all night but you still look amazing to me Half the time of the night you only dream About if God came down he could take me now Cause in my mind, yeah we will always be

Some books about the Holocaust are more difficult to read than others. Some books about the Holocaust are nearly impossible to read. Not because one does not understand the language and concepts in the books, not because they are gory or graphic, but because such books are confrontational. They compel us to “think again,” or to think for the first time, about issues and questions we might rather avoid. Gabriel Wilensky’s book, Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Antisemitism Paved the Road to the Holocaust is one book I found difficult, almost impossible to read. Why? Because I had to confront the terrible underside of Christian theology, an underside that contributed in no small part to the beliefs and attitudes too many Christians – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox – had imbibed throughout centuries of anti-Jewish preaching and teaching that “paved the road to the Holocaust.” I cannot say that I “liked” Gabriel Wilensky’s book, Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Antisemitism Paved the Road to the Holocaust. I didn’t, but I can say it was instructive and forced me to think again about that Jew from Nazareth, Jesus, and about his message of universal love and service – “What you do for the least of my brothers [and sisters], you do for me” (Matthew 25: 40). As Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, the Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz. The Holocaust began with words. And too many of those hate-filled words had their origin in the Christian Scriptures and were uttered by Christian preachers and teachers, by Christians generally, for nearly two millennia. Is it any wonder so many Christians stood by, even participated in, the destruction of the European Jews during the Nazi era and World War II? I recommend Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Antisemitism Paved the Road to the Holocaust because all of us Christians – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox – must think again, or think for the first time, about how to teach and preach the Christian Scriptures – the “New Testament” writings – in such a way that the words we utter, the attitudes we encourage, do not demean, disrespect, or disregard our Jewish brothers and sisters, that our words do not demean, disrespect, or disregard Judaism. I hope the challenge is not an impossible one.

Where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the junction between those who think and those who suffer; this barricade is made neither of paving stones, nor of timbers, nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a mound of sorrows. Here misery encounters the ideal. Here day embraces night, and says: I will die with you and you will be born again with me. From the heavy embrace of all desolations springs faith. Sufferings bring their agony here, and ideas their immortality. This agony and immortality will mingle and make up our death. Brothers, whoever dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a grave illuminated by the dawn.

If tolerance poses as a middle road between rejection on the one side and assimilation on the other, this road, as already suggested, is paved by necessity rather than virtue; tolerance, as Nietzsche would say, becomes a virtue only retroactively and retrospectively.

People from every political perspective agree that race relations are a horrible wound crying out for healing. But there can be no cure without correct diagnosis. Correct diagnosis is impossible without honest, even fearless investigation. At the very least, Americans must be able to talk about race without fear of retribution. If the notion of free speech has any meaning at all, it must apply to the oldest, greatest, most dangerous problem our nation faces. We must say in public what we think in private; we must throw off the shackles of orthodoxy.

Leadership expert Peter Drucker says, “The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try. I would never promote to a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes . . . otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.” Mistakes really do pave the road to achievement.

I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round!

I thought to do something good by giving an interview to People, which was exceedingly foolish of me. I asked Aaron [Asher] to tell you that the Good Intentions Paving Company had fucked up again. The young interviewer turned my opinions inside out, cut out the praises and made it all sound like disavowal, denunciation and excommunication. Well, we're both used to this kind of thing, and beyond shock. In agreeing to take the call, and make a statement I was simply muddle-headed. But if I had been interviewed by an angel for the Seraphim and Cherubim Weekly I'd have said, as I actually did say to the crooked little slut, that you were one of our very best and most interesting writers. I would have added that I was greatly stimulated and entertained by your last novel, and that of course after three decades I understood perfectly well what you were saying about the writer's trade - how could I not understand, or miss suffering the same pains. Still our diagrams are different, and the briefest description of the differences would be that you seem to have accepted the Freudian explanation: A writer is motivated by his desire for fame, money and sexual opportunities. Whereas I have never taken this trinity of motives seriously. But this is an explanatory note and I don't intend to make a rabbinic occasion of it. Please accept my regrets and apologies, also my best wishes. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.

The last use of the F-word is my favorite because it’s positive and constructive. It sets the stage for honest and empathetic negotiation. Here’s how I use it: Early on in a negotiation, I say, “I want you to feel like you are being treated fairly at all times. So please stop me at any time if you feel I’m being unfair, and we’ll address it.” It’s simple and clear and sets me up as an honest dealer. With that statement, I let people know it is okay to use that word with me if they use it honestly. As a negotiator, you should strive for a reputation of being fair. Your reputation precedes you. Let it precede you in a way that paves success.

Under the guise of helping the sick, oppressed and hopeless, psychiatry is paving the way for authoritarian governments to suppress a whole society furthermore, with drugs and obscene practices that promote, not only hypnotic suggestions, but also highly suggestible individuals which, otherwise, would oppose a whole repressive system that threatens both their existence and the existence of future generations on Earth. And so, one can very well say that, psychiatry, aided by pharmaceutical corporations and power-driven governments, or merely governments fearful of their own people and the extinction of immoral politics, will contribute vastly to the extermination and full extinction of the human race.

Here we go then," Dad says. "Motoring towards our dreams, Bridge." "You shouldn't follow dreams," Grandma announces. "Why?" I ask her. "Because it's a road paved with disappointments, that's why. People should get on with what they've blinking well got at home." "You can't tell people what their dreams are meant to be." "I can. But they never listen, do they?

Comedy, much of the time, is built on disorder. Comedy is intoxicating to a young mind in distress. You see these famous people pointing out the ridiculousness of a world that you’ve never been able to make sense of. Comedians offer the hope, the chance, however slim, that it’s not you that’s broken but the world. And they dress up in cool clothes! And hang out with various late-night hosts named Jimmy! And they make people laugh, and those people then love them. I can’t say for certain that depression leads people to a career in comedy, but it seems like the path is smoothly paved and well lit. Comedian Solomon Georgio came to the United States as a refugee from Ethiopia when he was three years old, and his family relied on comedy early on for entertainment and education. “We all loved comedy because that’s one of the few things that we comprehended when we didn’t speak the language,” he says. “Surprisingly, standup comedy, too, which, even though we didn’t know what was going on, you kind of see a rhythm and you know people are being entertained and laughing along. So we watched a lot of old television. Three Stooges, I Love Lucy, and, like, slapstick. We just immediately started watching and enjoying. So you can only imagine how disappointed I was when I met my first white person in real life and I was like, ‘Oh, you’re not like the Three Stooges. I can’t slap you and poke you in the eye. You guys aren’t doing any of that stuff out here. Okay.

But Kashmir was watching, his arms folded, standing against the door to the Captain's Cabin. As we approached, he smiled thinly. "Don't they say the road to hell is paved with honorable intentions?" "That's good intentions." I said, making a face. "Ah, yes. Of course." He turned the knob and opened the door with a flourish. "But perhaps Mr. Hart can go to hell anyway.

The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider Inyaction and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their languageY One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge ofthe heart that gives deeper insight.54 The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth ofany teacher, but grows out ofyou like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not. But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live or to think.55 You will say: "But I cannot live or think everything that others live or thinlc" But you should say: "The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still thinl(, I should thinl(.

A small container of Rocky Road lands on the counter next to me. “I figured Rocky Road was appropriate to pave the way to brown town,” she says with a laugh. The man in front of me takes his receipt, and the cashier, a younger woman, reaches for our purchases as soon as Banner starts laughing at her own joke. The cashier’s eyes go wide when she comprehends. “Brown Town? Is that up in the foothills, Logan? I’m not sure I’ve heard of it,” a familiar voice says from behind me. Oh, for Christ’s sake. I turn around to face Mrs. Harris, her hands full with a box of tea and a bottle of melatonin, but when I open my mouth to respond, nothing comes out. Banner smiles sweetly and says, “It’s just south of Pussy Ridge. At least, I’m pretty sure it is.” I choke, and the cashier’s face turns red. “Pussy Ridge. I haven’t heard of that either. I’ll have to ask Mr. Harris to get out the Rand McNally so we can take a drive there this weekend. I do love my weekend drives.” I have no idea how Banner is keeping a straight face, but she replies, “I love a good long ride too. Especially when it gets a little rough.” The older woman smiles. “Me too. Emmy has never been a fan, though. She’s always gotten carsick at the littlest bump.” Banner finally grins. “That explains so much about her.” The cashier’s eyes are tearing up as I shove money at her before I bag the ice cream, Doritos, and lube myself. “See you later, Mrs. Harris. You’ll have to let us know how that drive goes.

As actor and comedian Lily Tomlin once said, “The road to success is always under construction.” So don’t allow yourself to be detoured from getting to your ONE Thing. Pave your way with the right people and place. BIG IDEAS Start saying “no.” Always remember that when you say yes to something, you’re saying no to everything else. It’s the essence of keeping a commitment. Start turning down other requests outright or saying, “No, for now” to distractions so that nothing detracts you from getting to your top priority. Learning to say no can and will liberate you. It’s how you’ll find the time for your ONE Thing. Accept chaos. Recognize that pursuing your ONE Thing moves other things to the back burner. Loose ends can feel like snares, creating tangles in your path. This kind of chaos is unavoidable. Make peace with it. Learn to deal with it. The success you have accomplishing your ONE Thing will continually prove you made the right decision. Manage your energy. Don’t sacrifice your health by trying to take on too much. Your body is an amazing machine, but it doesn’t come with a warranty, you can’t trade it in, and repairs can be costly. It’s important to manage your energy so you can do what you must do, achieve what you want to achieve, and live the life you want to live. Take ownership of your environment. Make sure that the people around you and your physical surroundings support your goals. The right people in your life and the right physical environment on your daily path will support your efforts to get to your ONE Thing. When both are in alignment with your ONE Thing, they will supply the optimism and physical lift you need to make your ONE Thing happen. Screenwriter Leo Rosten pulled everything together for us when he said, “I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” Live with Purpose, Live by Priority, and Live for Productivity. Follow these three for the same reason you make the three commitments and avoid the four thieves—because you want to leave your mark. You want your life to matter. 18

In the 1930s, before the rise of the communist regime, there were already strong forces in the culture that paved the way for it,” says Patrik Benda, a Prague political consultant, of his native Czechoslovakia. “All the artists and intellectuals advocated communist ideas, and if you didn’t agree, you were marked for exclusion. This was almost two decades before actual communism took power.

This definition was not just limited to establishing a method for exploring the specificity of one human group in relation to another. It also desired, from the outset, to renounce the prejudiced and racist ethnography about which the West has never tired of berating itself. The intention could not have been loftier, but the well-known saying tells us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because

People shouldn't say one thing if they really mean the other. That's my problem with people, they say something without thinking about it. Without having experienced the opposites. I've been there, I've been everywhere. I tread the path of adventure, and the path was paved with gold, and every little detour was filled with joyous surprises. But then you get to the end, and the fates reveal your truth. One truth. The one truth.

In any sizable park or green space, you’ll likely find two kinds of paths: the formal kind, paved with brick or concrete, and the informal kind, the paths made by people walking over and over a stretch of grass, wearing away the green and carving a scruffy emergent line in its place. These are paths made by sheer repetitive use; they’re not anyone’s executive decision but arise one choice at a time, collected in aggregate. Most of us know them as friendly disobedience: they’re shortcuts, maybe, or just the most commonsense pathway from one frequented site to another. Urban planners call these paths “desire lines,” or sometimes “cow paths,” “pirate paths,” or the slightly stuffier “counter-grid trajectories.” They indicate yearning, some planners say—either to have formal paved lines where there are none or to actively carve out a different path where one had been prescribed.

It was like walking into another world. While the mansion was bright, warm, comfy and filled with sound and color, the outside was dark, cold, colorless and devoid of people. I found myself standing beside Thomas in the street. The paved road felt so cold it was hurting my feet. I kept moving them up and down, afraid my skin would freeze to the pavement. My heart was racing already and I felt a bit out of breath. If we stood there much longer i was going to hyperventilate.

The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step. Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they’re probably all on first steps.

...writers gave up the essential idea of the Enlightenment: freedom of thought, speech, and communication. Not all of them were so outspoken as Comte and Lenin; but they all, in declaring that freedom means only the right to say the correct things, not also the right to say the wrong things, virtually converted the ideas of freedom of thought and conscience into their opposite. It was not the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX that paved the way for the return of intolerance and the persecution of dissenters. It was the writings of the socialists.

Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they’re winning when they say “Get over it.” This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered. If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

Will you dare to say so?–Have you never erred?–Have you never felt one impure sensation?–Have you never indulged a transient feeling of hatred, or malice, or revenge?–Have you never forgot to do the good you ought to do,–or remembered to do the evil you ought not to have done?–Have you never in trade overreached a dealer, or banquetted on the spoils of your starving debtor?–Have you never, as you went to your daily devotions, cursed from your heart the wanderings of your heretical brethren,–and while you dipped your fingers in the holy water, hoped that every drop that touched your pores, would be visited on them in drops of brimstone and sulphur?–Have you never, as you beheld the famished, illiterate, degraded populace of your country, exulted in the wretched and temporary superiority your wealth has given you,–and felt that the wheels of your carriage would not roll less smoothly if the way was paved with the heads of your countrymen? Orthodox Catholic–old Christian–as you boast yourself to be,–is not this true?–and dare you say you have not been an agent of Satan? I tell you, whenever you indulge one brutal passion, one sordid desire, one impure imagination–whenever you uttered one word that wrung the heart, or embittered the spirit of your fellow-creature–whenever you made that hour pass in pain to whose flight you might have lent wings of down–whenever you have seen the tear, which your hand might have wiped away, fall uncaught, or forced it from an eye which would have smiled on you in light had you permitted it–whenever you have done this, you have been ten times more an agent of the enemy of man than all the wretches whom terror, enfeebled nerves, or visionary credulity, has forced into the confession of an incredible compact with the author of evil, and whose confession has consigned them to flames much more substantial than those the imagination of their persecutors pictured them doomed to for an eternity of suffering! Enemy of mankind!' the speaker continued,–'Alas! how absurdly is that title bestowed on the great angelic chief,–the morning star fallen from its sphere! What enemy has man so deadly as himself? If he would ask on whom he should bestow that title aright, let him smite his bosom, and his heart will answer,–Bestow it here!

The question we must all ask ourselves is how Mr. Benn was able to come within striking distance of the very heart of our economic life in the first place...an important part of the answer must be that our industry, economic life and society have been so debilitated by 30 years of Socialistic fashions that their very weakness tempts further inroads. The path to Benn is paved with 30 years of interventions: 30 years of good intentions: 30 years of disappointments. These have led the collectivists to say that we are failing only because we are taking half measures. The reality is that for 30 years the private sector of our economy has been forced to work with one hand tied behind its back by government and unions. Socialist measures and Socialist legacies have weakened free enterprise.

The neon orange orb sat low in the sky, slowly breaking free of the horizon like the waking memory of a dream. The salty air smelled faintly of fish, and was thick with humidity and hung like a cloak over my body. The lavender sky at the horizon faded into cerulean above and behind me. The soft breeze whispered past my face, teasing my hair on its way to tickle the sawgrass that swayed in gratitude as if laughing like a child.
 I sat on the top plank of the boardwalk rail, the wood heavy with atmosphere and was damp and cool under my left palm. The surprising warmth of the winter air and the cool of the wood reminded me that yes, I am alive! Yes, I am grateful for this morning! And yes, I am glad to be here!
 The paper in my notebook as I wrote this began to feel sticky and moist within a few minutes. The ink from my pen seemed to grip the paper faster and firmer as if to say, I’m here, I’m happy, and I don’t want to lose this moment. Like my ink, I too wanted to cling to this morning.
 The sky started turning a peachy orange at the bottom and the ocean was sea foam green. The waves were breaking quietly, as if to give my thoughts amplitude so I could record and rejoice in the sea’s majesty. 
 The sand was gray and silky like a freshly pressed pair of slacks. The smooth beach seemed paved with sunlight. A jogger ran by, his knees probably grateful for the even stride the flat surface provided. 
 Chunks of sea foam lay strewn on the beach like remnants of Poseidon’s nightly bubble bath. A seagull circled low in the air, gliding in the sky with its streamlined body as the sun lit its white wings up like an angel’s halo.

and here instead’s another version of what was happening that morning, as if from a novel in which sophia is the kind of character she’d choose to be, prefer to be, a character in a much more classic sort of story, perfectly honed and comforting, about how sombre yet bright the major-symphony of winter is and how beautiful everything looks under a high frost, how every grassblade is enhanced and silvered into individual beauty by it, how even the dull tarmac of the roads, the paving under our feet, shines when the weather’s been cold enough and how something at the heart of us, at the heart of all our cold and frozen states, melts when we encounter a time of peace on earth, goodwill to all men; a story in which there’s no room for severed heads; a work in which sophia’s perfectly honed minor-symphony modesty and narrative decorum complement the story she’s in with the right kind of quiet wisdom-from-experience ageing-female status, making it a story that’s thoughtful, dignified, conventional in structure thank god, the kind of quality literary fiction where the slow drift of snow across the landscape is merciful, has a perfect muffling decorum of its own, snow falling to whiten, soften, blur and prettify even further a landscape where there are no heads divided from bodies hanging around in the air or anywhere, either new ones, from new atrocities or murders or terrorisms, or old ones, left over from old historic atrocities and murders and terrorisms and bequeathed to the future as if in old french revolution baskets, their wickerwork brown with the old dried blood, placed on the doorsteps of the neat and central-heating-interactive houses of now with notes tied to the handles saying please look after this head thank you, well, no, thank you, thank you very much:

Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds. More than $4 million of government largesse flows each year into the Colorado City public school district—which, according to the Phoenix New Times, “is operated primarily for the financial benefit of the FLDS Church and for the personal enrichment of FLDS school district leaders.” Reporter John Dougherty determined that school administrators have “plundered the district’s treasury by running up thousands of dollars in personal expenses on district credit cards, purchasing expensive vehicles for their personal use and engaging in extensive travel. The spending spree culminated in December [2000], when the district purchased a $220,000 Cessna 210 airplane to facilitate trips by district personnel to cities across Arizona.” Colorado City has received $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave its streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. Immediately south of the city limits, the federal government built a $2.8 million airport that serves almost no one beyond the fundamentalist community. Thirty-three percent of the town’s residents receive food stamps—compared to the state average of 4.7 percent. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid. “Uncle Rulon justifies all that assistance from the wicked government by explaining that really the money is coming from the Lord,” says DeLoy Bateman. “We’re taught that it’s the Lord’s way of manipulating the system to take care of his chosen people.” Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act.

In fact, every American that Dickens shows in the book is a homicidal idiot, except one--and he wanted to live abroad! Well! You can't tell me that a degenerate bunch like that could have taken the very river- bottom swamps that Dickens describes, and in three generations have turned 'em into the prosperous cement-paved powerful country that they are today! Yet Europe goes on reading hack authors who still steal their ideas from 'Martin Chuzzlewit' and saying, 'There, I told you so!' Say, do you realize that at the time Dickens described the Middlewest--my own part of the country--as entirely composed of human wet rags, a fellow named Abe Lincoln and another named Grant were living there; and not more than maybe ten years later, a boy called William Dean Howells (I heard him lecture once at Yale, and I notice that they still read his book about Venice IN Venice) had been born? Dickens couldn't find or see people like that. Perhaps some European observers today are missing a few Lincolns and Howellses!

I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her—after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred—I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever—for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)—and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again—and “oh, no” Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure—all would be shattered

I have to get out of here. Now. Where I go and what time I get there are largely irrelevant. I am never in the right place. The present, here, is just an anxious pit stop I make between memory (which is to say regret) and the dreadful anticipation of hoping there will be better but knowing it won’t. Many people—usually the happier ones, apparently—spend the bulk of their lives living in the here and now rather than continuously running the stoplight at its intersection. And judging by the number of self-help and talk-show gurus around, many more are looking to buy in the neighborhood. I, on the other hand, speed through, running lights and stop signs, causing one accident after another. I know this is not the way happy people live. I’ve tried to make here matter. But for whatever reason, I can’t make it count, much less make it last. Unhappy people think like this. Like me. But I try not to dwell on it. It’s a buzzkill. And inevitably leads me down a road paved with nooses and guns and toxic combinations of sedatives, vodka, and oven cleaner. It’s better just to move on.

Sharon participates in these searches himself. He orders the soldiers to perform a full body search on all males and sometimes imposes curfews on refugee camps in order to conduct a search. The clear goal of the mission is finding terrorists and killing them. The soldiers have orders not to try and capture the terrorists alive. Sharon instructs them to be rough with the local population, to perform searches in the streets and even to strip suspects naked if necessary; to shoot to kill any Arab who holds a gun; to shoot to kill any Arab who does not obey a Stop! call; and to diminish the risk to their lives by employing a big volume of fire, by uprooting trees from orchards which makes it difficult to capture terrorists, by demolishing houses and driving out their owners to other houses in order to pave secure roads. Haider Abd al-Shafi, Senior Palestinian leader, says: ‘Sharon took a decision to open roads in Al Shateya camp and in Rafah for security. That led to removing houses, the houses of refugees, which is an action not to be taken lightly, but there was no objection neither from Dayan nor from the Israeli government. They let Sharon realize his aim and he really destroyed a lot of refugees’ houses.

If the State says to him, “I take your money to pay the gendarme, who saves you the trouble of providing for your own personal safety; for paving the street that you are passing through every day; for paying the magistrate who causes your property and your liberty to be respected; to maintain the soldier who maintains our frontiers,” John Q. Citizen, unless I am much mistaken, will pay for all this without hesitation. But if the State were to say to him, “I take this money that I may give you a little prize in case you cultivate your field well; or that I may teach your son something that you have no wish that he should learn; or that the Minister may add another to his score of dishes at dinner; I take it to build a cottage in Algeria, in which case I must take more money every year to keep an emigrant in it, and another to maintain a soldier to guard this emigrant, and yet more to maintain a general to guard this soldier,” etc., etc., I think I hear poor James exclaim, “This system of law is very much like a system of cheat!” The State foresees the objection, and what does it do? It jumbles all things together, and brings forward just that provoking reason which ought to have nothing whatever to do with the question. It talks of the effect of this money upon labor; it points to the cook and purveyor of the Minister; it shows an emigrant, a soldier, and a general, living upon the money; it shows, in fact, what is seen, and if John Q. Citizen has not learned to take into the account what is not seen, John Q. Citizen will be duped.

They found a wide gateway open and passed through it into a paved courtyard. And it was here that they had their first indication that there was something odd about this island. In the middle of the courtyard stood a pump, and beneath the pump a bucket. There was nothing odd about that. But the pump handle was moving up and down, though there seemed to be no one moving it. “There’s some magic at work here,” said Caspian. “Machinery!” said Eustace. “I do believe we’ve come to a civilized country at last.” At that moment Lucy, hot and breathless, rushed into the courtyard behind them. In a low voice she tried to make them understand what she had overheard. And when they had partly understood it even the bravest of them did not look very happy. “Invisible enemies,” muttered Caspian. “And cutting us off from the boat. This is an ugly furrow to plow.” “You’ve no idea what sort of creatures they are, Lu?” asked Edmund. “How can I, Ed, when I couldn’t see them?” “Did they sound like humans from their footsteps?” “I didn’t hear any noise of feet--only voices and this frightful thudding and thumping--like a mallet.” “I wonder,” said Reepicheep, “do they become visible when you drive a sword into them?” “It looks as if we shall find out,” said Caspian. “But let’s get out of this gateway. There’s one of these gentry at that pump listening to all we say.” They came out and went back on to the path where the trees might possibly make them less conspicuous. “Not that it’s any good really,” said Eustace, “trying to hide from people you can’t see. They may be all round us.

GET MOVING People are often scared of the word exercise. We associate the word with pain, and we think of it as a chore. (And it can be--who likes going to the gym at 6 A.M.?) If that’s how you’re thinking, then you need to change your psychology. I don’t think of my body in terms of exercise; I think in terms of movement. Look at the actual word--I see it as “meant to move.” As human beings, going back to the beginning of civilization, we’ve had to move to survive. We had to throw spears to hunt, we had to prepare land to plant seeds, we had to gather firewood. Our bodies are hardwired to move. Not even TiVo can rewire those thousands of years of DNA. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s easy to forget: your body is connected to your mind and spirit. People say, “I’m miserable because I’m overweight” or “I’m overweight because I’m miserable,” but these two go hand in hand. I know when I drink to excess or put poisons in my body, the next day I’m not going to feel happy or inspired. The body is the vehicle that can help you reach your dreams. Keeping it moving, strong, and healthy paves the way to overall well-being. You can’t say you love yourself when you abuse yourself physically, and by not using your body, you’re abusing it. But here’s the first piece of good news: you don’t have to be in the gym to exercise. You just need to move--and keep moving. It can be anywhere, at any time. Sometimes I’ll do push-ups during a commercial break while watching TV. Sometimes I take a short walk, even around the block with my dog, just to break up my day. Your body wants to move; your body was created to move. You have to feed that. When you’re feeling miserable, your body is telling you to get on your feet. Moving makes you feel good. It helps you slay the demon of procrastination that lurks in the shadow of every human being. Most of us sleepwalk through life because we’re waiting for the perfect time, the perfect place, and the perfect opportunity to improve ourselves. Stop waiting. Start moving and keep moving.

If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered. If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

It was clear to me that, if nothing could be achieved by means of voluntary discussion and negotiation in Geneva, we had to leave Geneva. Never in my life have I imposed on anyone. Whoever does not want to speak to me does not have to. I don’t care! We are eighty-five million Germans, and these Germans do not need that; they have a mighty historic past. They already had an empire when England was only a small island. And that for more than three hundred years. For England these colonies are useless. It has forty million square kilometers [this forty-million figure consists mostly of the colonies]. What is it doing with them? Nothing at all. It is the avarice of old usurers, who do not want to give away what they possess. They are sick creatures. If they see that their neighbor has nothing to eat, they would still rather throw what they possess into the sea than give it away, even if they cannot use it themselves. They get ill at the thought that they could lose something. And I did not even ask for anything that belonged to the English. I asked only for what they robbed us of and stole from us in the years 1918 and 1919! Robbery and theft contrary to the solemn assurances of the American president Wilson! We did not ask anything of them, we did not make any demands. Again and again, I stretched my hand out to them, and, still, everything was in vain. The reasons are clear to us: for one, it is German unification as such. They hate this, our state, irrespective of what it looks like, whether it is imperial or National Socialist, democratic or authoritarian. That makes no difference to them. And second: above all, they hate the rise of this Reich. And here lust for power abroad and base egoism at home join forces. When they say, “We can never come to an understanding with this world,” then this world is the world of the awakening social conscience, with which they cannot come to an understanding. I can make only one response to these gentlemen on both sides of the ocean: the socialist world will be the victorious one in the end! The social conscience of all people will be roused. They can wage wars for their capitalist interests, but these wars themselves will ultimately pave the way for social upheaval among their people. It is not possible in the long run to gear hundreds of millions of people to the interests of a few individuals. The common interest of mankind will gain the victory over the interests of these small, plutocratic profiteers! Just a short while ago, they conclusively proved to us that our officers and generals are worthless because they are young and infected with National Socialist thinking, that is, they have some contact with the broad masses. Now events have shown where the better generals are, over there or here! If this war lasts any longer, then this will be a great misfortune for England. They will get to see real action. And, one day, perhaps the English will send a commission over here in order to adopt our platform! National Socialism will determine the coming millennia in German history, which would be unthinkable without it. It will fade away only when its political planks have become self-evident. Speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, January 30, 1941

My life has been a road paved with spikes and nails. I’ve plugged, patched, and replaced the tire, but the car has never ridden the same. The loss of a child isn’t a patch job. Zach’s

Sacrifices must be made,” my father kept saying, and he never got tired of showing us how it was done. This also proved to be a valuable lesson. I learned perseverance from him. I learned that the road to success is paved with failures. Most of all, as I’ve said, I learned that one should never, ever give up. Tough as things were, my father had pulled himself together. And he never got tired of reassuring us that we were going to be all right. A

The curtain billows gently in the breeze behind him as he steps out to meet me, his hair jet-black by contrast with the translucent white fabric. I jump, gasp, and nearly swallow the grip that I’m still holding between my lips; quickly, I pull it out before it goes down my throat and chokes me. It’s wet with drool. Lovely, Violet. Really attractive. I shove it into my hair, anywhere, praying it will stay and not fall on the floor, still dripping with spit. Luca’s smiling down at me. His face is half in light, half in shade, from the spots playing across the dance floor, his blue eyes gleaming. “You like to dance,” he observes conversationally. “Yes…” Safe question, safe answer. Well, at least I didn’t babble. But he doesn’t say anything else; he’s just looking me up and down, and I feel incredibly awkward under his scrutiny. I’m sweaty, catching my breath; my eyeliner’s probably running. I desperately need to escape into the dark night beyond the dance floor, where the breeze will cool me down and the shadows will hide my shiny face. “I want to get some fresh air,” I say, and move around him, stepping off onto the stone slabs and promptly sinking with one heel into the narrow space between them. “Oops!” I say idiotically, ignoring the hand that Luca is stretching out to help me. The last thing I need right now is to touch him, for all sorts of reasons. I keep walking, pulling my heel out from between the paving stones; mercifully, it comes out without catching or ripping off. I honestly think that even if it did, I would keep going; I’d walk on a sandal without a heel all night, balance on my toes, pretend nothing had happened, and think it a fair price to pay for my flight into the comparative darkness of the chill-out area, where Luca can’t see the sweat on my face.

I want to get some fresh air,” I say, and move around him, stepping off onto the stone slabs and promptly sinking with one heel into the narrow space between them. “Oops!” I say idiotically, ignoring the hand that Luca is stretching out to help me. The last thing I need right now is to touch him, for all sorts of reasons. I keep walking, pulling my heel out from between the paving stones; mercifully, it comes out without catching or ripping off. I honestly think that even if it did, I would keep going; I’d walk on a sandal without a heel all night, balance on my toes, pretend nothing had happened, and think it a fair price to pay for my flight into the comparative darkness of the chill-out area, where Luca can’t see the sweat on my face. He’s following me. I can hear his leather-soled shoes on the stone. And I have no idea where I’m going. I feel ridiculous. Luckily, ahead of me I see a terrace with tables, and I walk toward it as if I’d planned to head there all along. “You want a drink?” he asks. He gestures over to the right, and I see the white gleam of the long bar, the translucent milky-white pillars shining as if we’re underwater. I don’t need to drink any more alcohol tonight. Especially in the company of Luca. “Maybe some water. I’m really thirsty.” He nods, turns, and walks toward the bar. I watch him go. Tall, lean, with a nice firm bum in his black jeans. Exactly what I like in a boy. And then I feel my face flaming, because this isn’t just some boy at an airport, or viewed from a car. This is real. He’s real. He’ll be back in just a few minutes, and I won’t have the faintest idea what to say to him…

It's a funny thing about roads, though. You can hardly ever make them pay off. Say you've got ten roads that need paving, and you can only pave nine. The folks on that nine that you pave aren't grateful because they figure they've got it coming. But those on that one you don't will never forgive you.

Write, say or think a note of thanks to someone who paved the way for you. Even if only a few words, even if only in your mind, your gratitude will bless the sender and the receiver.

Recently a wife whose husband struggled with masturbation and had an emotional affair said, “I want to move past this stuff, but it seems like everywhere I turn, I’m reminded of infidelity and how rampant it is!” This observation is so common. We can’t live in a cave to avoid life. And moving to a faraway country is not an option for most people. Further, we really don’t want to live in a faraway country or a cave. We want to be in our life but without these reminders, without all this pain. We don’t want to have to escape and get away; we want it to go away! I want to reframe your view of time as it pertains to this journey. Instead of looking at time as healing in itself, look at time as the context in which you find new opportunities to build trust. Lamentations 3:22–23 says that the Lord’s mercies are “new every morning.” If you are trying to rebuild trust, I encourage you to look at every morning as a new beginning, a new day to seize every opportunity to build trust. Time alone will not heal your wounds. But time filled with sincere attempts to build trust—paving the way toward the future while amending the past (which we’ll discuss later)—will heal your wounds. We must be active participants in the time we have, not just observers watching time go by.

2. Corah, a Hebrew of principal account, both by his family and by his wealth, one that was also able to speak well, and one that could easily persuade the people by his speeches, saw that Moses was in an exceeding great dignity, and was at it, and envied him on that account, (he of the same tribe with Moses, and of kin to him,) was particularly grieved, because he thought he better deserved that honorable post on account of great riches, and not inferior to him in his birth. So he raised a clamor against him among the Levites, who were of the same tribe, and among his kindred, saying, "That it was a very sad thing that they should overlook Moses, while he hunted after and paved the way to glory for himself, and by ill arts should obtain it, under the pretense of God's command, while, contrary to laws, he had given the priesthood to Aaron, the common suffrage of the multitude, but by his own vote, as bestowing dignities in a way on whom he pleased.

Look here, he says, what's the matter with you fellows? let's get cracking with this dump. Your road is bad; pave it. Better yet, build a paved road to every corner of the park; better yet, pave the whole damned place so any damn fool can drive anything anywhere is this a democracy or ain't it? Next, charge a good stiff admission fee; you can't let people in free; that leads socialism and regimentation. Next, get rid of all these homely rangers in their Smokey the Bear suits. Hire a crew of pretty girls, call them rangerettes, let them sell the tickets and give the campfire talks. And advertise, for godsake, advertise! How do you expect to get people in here if you don't advertise? Next, these here Arches light them up. Floodlight them, turn on colored, revolving lights -jazz it up, man, it's dead. Light up the whole place, all night long, get on a 24-hour shift, keep them coming, keep them moving, you got two hundred million people out there waiting to see your product-is this a free country or what the hell is it? Next your campgrounds, you gotta do something about your camp grounds, they're a mess. People can't tell where to park their cars or which spot is whose-you gotta paint lines, numbers, mark out the campsites nice and neat. And they're still building fires on the ground, with wood! Very messy, filthy, wasteful. Set up little grills on stilts, sell charcoal briquettes, better yet hook up with the gas line, install jets and burners. Better yet do away with the camp. grounds altogether, they only cause delay and congestion and administrative problems-these people want to see America, they're not going to see it sitting around a goddamned campfire; take their money, give them the show, send them on their way-that's the way to run a business....

One of the keys to Tobi’s success: He turned Shopify into a platform that not only allowed merchants to easily set up online stores but also enabled app developers to build specialty stores for merchants. By opening up Shopify in this way, Tobi made a conscious decision to let developers make money off his platform, rather than trying to keep it closed so he could capture all of that app revenue himself. “What we did to get the platform off the ground is to basically leave all the economics for Shopify on the table and give it to the third-party app developers,” Tobi says. This helped him to rapidly attract more and more users to Shopify. And in retrospect, these decisions paved the way for their widespread success. But they were tough calls at the time. “It’s hard to do, because you are leaving a lot of economics that you could easily take for yourself on the table—or actually, you are investing it into your own future by giving it to other people,” Tobi explains. “And that’s very hard to do for most businesses.” The combination of a strong platform, a well-populated app store, and a community of developers helped protect Shopify against competition and built a positive feedback loop that ratcheted up innovation, attracting more users and more developers.

The life at the Semmon Dōjō, which, by way of abbreviation, will be later spoken of as the Zendo life, is something altogether out of keeping with modern life. We can almost say that anything modern and many things ordinarily regarded as symbolic of a pious life are absent here. Instead of labour-saving machinery, what may appear as labour-wasting is encouraged. Commercialism and self-advertisement are banned. Scientific, intellectual education is interdicted. Comfort, luxury, and womanly kindness are conspicuous for their absence. There is, however, a spirit of grim earnestness, with which higher truths are sought; there is determined devotion to the attainment of superior wisdom, which will help to put an end to all the woes and ailments of human life, and also to the acquirement of the fundamental social virtues, which quietly pave the way to world-peace and the promotion of the general welfare of all humankind. The Zen life thus aims, besides maturing the monk's spiritual development, at turning out good citizens as social members as well as individuals.

Father, we ask for clarity, but we understand that’s not your highest priority. Draw us close in our confusion, our doubt, and our questions. May we not work so hard to get rid of those things. Rather, may we let the questions and uncertainties pave the way to you. Help us to know when to say yes and when to say no. Give us the courage to quit when it’s time. We declare you are always enough. We believe it. Help us in our unbelief.

I need you to know that I’m not going to hurt you.” “You’re not the first man to say that and have it turn out to be a lie,” I say before I can think better of it. “I’m not lying, and when I give my word, I mean it, Katya.

I want you to understand something very important, wife. Your brothers don’t have a say in what happens between us, and they sure as fuck don’t get a say in what happens in our bedroom. This is between us and no one else, and what happens in here, or what doesn’t happen in here, is no one’s business but ours.

You’re very close to your brothers.” “I am,” he says, choosing to not elaborate. “That’s really nice.

One day you’re going to learn to keep your big mouth shut.” He’s already raising his hand, so I might as well go all in. I give him the smirk he despises and say, “Maybe one day, Bastian, but not today, you stupid fuck.” He backhands me, and the pain is quick and sharp, radiating through my head and down my neck. Fucking jackass.

Eyes the same hazel as mine glare at me with hatred. “You’re a monster,” he growls. “You killed our mom, and I wish you’d never been born.” “I hate you,” I whisper, but even as I say it, my heart aches from what he’s just said. He’s right. I did kill our mom, and if I’d never been born, then she’d still be here. “Not as much as I hate you,” Sebastian spits out,

I head straight for the protein bars, wondering how in the hell my life has come to this. It’s not like it’s a big shocker that I’m stuck living at home with my absent father and ass of an older brother. When I graduated high school, no one was pointing at me and thinking, now there’s a girl that’s going places. Nope. If they were pointing at me, it was to say things like, Isn’t that the Rousseau girl? Didn’t her brother get arrested last week for beating the hell out of some guy? They weren’t wrong. The Rousseau name is synonymous with fighting, poverty, and a healthy dose of low-class.

Grief is a strange thing, and people process it in different ways. I think the only way I can process mine is with blood on my hands. I’m going to kill the man who murdered my sister, but I’d also like to kill the others that are involved.” He gives Matvey a soft smile. “I think it’ll be very healing for me.” “The best kind of therapy is the kind that leaves your hands bloody,” I say with a smile.

Hey, Alina,” Matvey says, taking one of the plates she offers. Her whole face heats up at his attention. It’s no secret that my eight-year-old sister has a huge crush on Matvey. It’s something he pretends he doesn’t see, but he always makes a point of saying hi to her. He has a younger sister, so he knows how it is.

Richard Feynman had to say this about energy in his 1961 lecture: “There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law – it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.” All significant philosophers and scientists throughout history were in their own right, right if we consider the context, time, and place, the point from which they observed the world by the means available to them. If we understand this context, we know how much harder it was for them to decipher the world previously unknown, except as an experience without fundamental and deeper understanding. In this sense, all these philosophers and scientists were, in a way, “right,” even when they were “not” right. Correctness or wrongness of their ideas and opinions shall be measured more by how they helped our understanding and ideas developed directly from their thoughts. Even if they were in some way wrong, great ideas helped our ideas develop and allowed the formation and formulations of great ideas that will follow. Quality and potential of insights and ideas are more important than strict correctness without any potential. Progress in human history would not be possible without following the traces of long-bygone giants (as Newton understood them). We can hardly produce any new important question that ancient Greek philosophers did not pose. The whole idea of Western philosophy, as it is, would not be possible without the ancient Greeks. This statement holds even when we talk about the modern era’s greatest philosophers, starting with Descartes and culminating in the works of the great German philosophers Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, the Dutch Spinoza, and others. Almost all central questions or problems treated by these philosophers were already postulated, discussed, or touched, directly or indirectly, by the great ancient philosophers who paved the way for the others.