Prominent Great Quotes

My dearest Emma," said he, "for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved Emma -- tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said." She could really say nothing. "You are silent," he cried, with great animation; "absolutely silent! at present I ask no more." Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling. "I cannot make speeches, Emma," he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing. "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it. Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover. But you understand me. Yes, you see, you understand my feelings and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.

The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.

By the end of the four-year term, Americans hold a bifurcated view of Mrs. Trump. Many Republicans, especially women, revere her as elegant, graceful, beautiful and wronged by the press. A pastor in Missouri held up Melania as a wifely model to which other women should aspire — or risk losing their men. At the same time some southern preachers referred to then-Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris as Jezebel, the Bible’s most nefarious woman and archetype of female cunning. There could be no surer sign that the life stories of prominent women affect the lives of private women than when pastors hold them up as positive or negative role models.

The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow… it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are ‘invisible’.

For an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the "riddles of the universe," or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man. Few ideologies have won enough prominence to survive the hard competitive struggle of persuasion, and only two have come out on top and essentially defeated all others: the ideology which interprets history as an economic struggle of classes, and the other that interprets history as a natural fight of races. The appeal of both to large masses was so strong that they were able to enlist state support and establish themselves as official national doctrines. But far beyond the boundaries within which race-thinking and class-thinking have developed into obligatory patterns of thought, free public opinion has adopted them to such an extent that not only intellectuals but great masses of people will no longer accept a presentation of past or present facts that is not in agreement with either of these views.

The quintessential emblem of religion — and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core — is the sacrifice of a child by a parent. Almost all religious faiths incorporate the myth of such a sacrifice, and some have actually made it real. Lucretius had in mind the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father Agamemnon, but he may also have been aware of the Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac and other comparable Near Eastern stories for which the Romans of his times had a growing taste. Writing around 50 BCE he could not, of course, have anticipated the great sacrifice myth that would come to dominate the Western world, but he would not have been surprised by it or by the endlessly reiterated, prominently displayed images of the bloody, murdered son.

Economic inequality has long been a signature issue of the left, and it rose in prominence after the Great Recession began in 2007. It ignited the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 and the presidential candidacy of the self-described socialist Bernie Sanders in 2016, who proclaimed that “a nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much, while so many have so little.” 2 But in that year the revolution devoured its children and propelled the candidacy of Donald Trump, who claimed that the United States had become “a third-world country” and blamed the declining fortunes of the working class not on Wall Street and the one percent but on immigration and foreign trade. The left and right ends of the political spectrum, incensed by economic inequality for their different reasons, curled around to meet each other, and their shared cynicism about the modern economy helped elect the most radical American president in recent times.

When I was young, I wanted power. Now that I'm old, I want peace. When I was young, I wanted titles. Now that I'm old, I want contentment. When I was young, I wanted money. Now that I'm old, I want happiness. When I was young, I wanted excitement. Now that I'm old, I want calm. When I was young, I wanted praise. Now that I'm old, I want respect. When I was young, I wanted houses. Now that I'm old, I want fulfillment. When I was young, I wanted cars. Now that I'm old, I want satisfaction. When I was young, I wanted possessions. Now that I'm old, I want experiences. When I was young, I wanted medals. Now that I'm old, I want mastery. When I was young, I wanted lackeys. Now that I'm old, I want companions. When I was young, I wanted amusement. Now that I'm old, I want rest. When I was young, I wanted beauty. Now that I'm old, I want substance. When I was young, I wanted fame. Now that I'm old, I want legacy. When I was young, I wanted command. Now that I'm old, I want freedom. When I was young, I wanted authority. Now that I'm old, I want influence. When I was young, I wanted reputation. Now that I'm old, I want character. When I was young, I wanted treasure. Now that I'm old, I want truth. When I was young, I wanted confidence. Now that I'm old, I want conviction. When I was young, I wanted lovers. Now that I'm old, I want friends. When I was young, I wanted excess. Now that I'm old, I want joy. When I was young, I wanted degrees. Now that I'm old, I want wisdom. When I was young, I wanted university. Now that I'm old, I want nature. When I was young, I wanted prominence. Now that I'm old, I want humanity. When I was young, I wanted accomplishment. Now that I'm old, I want laughter. When I was young, I wanted greatness. Now that I'm old, I want health. When I was young, I wanted resources. Now that I'm old, I want strategies. When I was young, I wanted contacts. Now that I'm old, I want competence. When I was young, I wanted followers. Now that I'm old, I want students. When I was young, I wanted crowds. Now that I'm old, I want intimacy. When I was young, I wanted empires. Now that I'm old, I want dignity. When I was young, I wanted honor. Now that I'm old, I want integrity. When I was young, I wanted popularity. Now that I'm old, I want loyalty. When I was young, I wanted lovers. Now that I'm old, I want children. When I was young, I wanted strength. Now that I'm old, I want youth. When I was young, I wanted life. Now that I'm old, I want Heaven.

You speak as if you envied him." "And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy." Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence of Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally different—the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for breath to begin, when Mr. Knightley startled her, by saying, "You will not ask me what is the point of envy.—You are determined, I see, to have no curiosity.—You are wise—but I cannot be wise. Emma, I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment." "Oh! then, don't speak it, don't speak it," she eagerly cried. "Take a little time, consider, do not commit yourself." "Thank you," said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not another syllable followed. Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in her—perhaps to consult her;—cost her what it would, she would listen. She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give just praise to Harriet, or, by representing to him his own independence, relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.—They had reached the house. "You are going in, I suppose?" said he. "No,"—replied Emma—quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which he still spoke—"I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not gone." And, after proceeding a few steps, she added—"I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain.—But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation—as a friend, indeed, you may command me.—I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think." "As a friend!"—repeated Mr. Knightley.—"Emma, that I fear is a word—No, I have no wish—Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?—I have gone too far already for concealment.—Emma, I accept your offer—Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.—Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?" He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression of his eyes overpowered her. "My dearest Emma," said he, "for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved Emma—tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said."—She could really say nothing.—"You are silent," he cried, with great animation; "absolutely silent! at present I ask no more." Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling. "I cannot make speeches, Emma:" he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.—"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.—You hear nothing but truth from me.—I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.—Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover.—But you understand me.—Yes, you see, you understand my feelings—and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.

Despite the prominence that "magic bullets" and "wonder drugs" hold in the layman's mind, most of the really decisive battles in the war against infectious disease consisted of measures to eliminate disease organisms from the environment. An example from history concerns the great outbreak of cholera in London more than one hundred years ago. A London physician, John Snow, mapped occurrence of cases and found they originated in one area, all of whose inhabitants drew their water from one pump located on Broad Street. In a swift and decisive practice of preventative medicine, Dr. Snow removed the handle from the pump. The epidemic was thereby brought under control - not by a magic pill that killed the (then unknown) organism of cholera, but by eliminating the organism from the environment.

The current moral decay perceived in society has often been blamed on the lack of God in the public schools. During the Great Depression God was prominent in the schools, hence She must have caused the depression. Challenge my logic.

Another explanation for the failure of logic and observation alone to advance medicine is that unlike, say, physics, which uses a form of logic - mathematics - as its natural language, biology does not lend itself to logic. Leo Szilard, a prominent physicist, made this point when he complained that after switching from physics to biology he never had a peaceful bath again. As a physicist he would soak in the warmth of a bathtub and contemplate a problem, turn it in his mind, reason his way through it. But once he became a biologist, he constantly had to climb out of the bathtub to look up a fact.

Indeed, it is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed in any longer. Or is it not so very curious after all? It is a matter of great importance. Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people—what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in.

Ancient astrology was rather different from the modern horoscope. Its more learned practitioners enjoyed intellectual respectability, and there was a substantial overlap between astrology and philosophy. People would consult astrologers on anything, from the time and manner in which they were going to die to who was likely to win in the chariot-races that afternoon. The chronology of the origins and development of astrology are impossible to establish, and were debated even in the ancient world. Suffice it to say here that the Western tradition was one of many traditions: Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern. It was Ptolemy, the Hellenistic geographer and astrologer, who first laid the technical foundations of Western astrology in his Tetrabiblos (‘Four Books’). But the rise in the prominence of astrology was closely tied to the Roman imperial regime. It greatly benefited emperors to have their sovereignty ‘written in the stars’.

Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a café makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issues some improvised leaflet. The glacier begins to melt; a joke makes the rounds and the apparently immovable regime suddenly looks vulnerable and absurd. But it's almost impossible to convey the extent to which North Korea just isn't like that. South Koreans who met with long-lost family members after the June rapprochement were thunderstruck at the way their shabby and thin northern relatives extolled Fat Man and Little Boy. Of course, they had been handpicked, but they stuck to their line. There's a possible reason for the existence of this level of denial, which is backed up by an indescribable degree of surveillance and indoctrination. A North Korean citizen who decided that it was all a lie and a waste would have to face the fact that his life had been a lie and a waste also. The scenes of hysterical grief when Fat Man died were not all feigned; there might be a collective nervous breakdown if it was suddenly announced that the Great Leader had been a verbose and arrogant fraud. Picture, if you will, the abrupt deprogramming of more than 20 million Moonies or Jonestowners, who are suddenly informed that it was all a cruel joke and there's no longer anybody to tell them what to do. There wouldn't be enough Kool-Aid to go round. I often wondered how my guides kept straight faces. The streetlights are turned out all over Pyongyang—which is the most favored city in the country—every night. And the most prominent building on the skyline, in a town committed to hysterical architectural excess, is the Ryugyong Hotel. It's 105 floors high, and from a distance looks like a grotesquely enlarged version of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (or like a vast and cumbersome missile on a launchpad). The crane at its summit hasn't moved in years; it's a grandiose and incomplete ruin in the making. 'Under construction,' say the guides without a trace of irony. I suppose they just keep two sets of mental books and live with the contradiction for now.

In the civilization of our times, it is normal, and almost obligatory, for cookery and fashion to take up most of the culture sections, for chefs and fashion designers now enjoy the prominence that before was given to scientists, composers and philosophers. Gas burners, stoves and catwalks meld, in the cultural coordinates of our time, with books, laboratories and operas, while TV stars and great footballers exert the sort of influence over habits, taste and fashion that was previously the domain of teachers and thinkers

The industrialisation of England had quickened during Hardy’s life and in the novel he places great importance on rural culture and the need of man to interact with, and understand the natural world, however indifferent it may be to human survival. The author does not sketch a portrait of an idyllic rural scene, but highlights and details the devastating consequences and brute force of the natural world. Hardy uses these disasters to underline the prominence of chance or luck in life, rather than benevolent design by a creator and how this might impact moral decisions. Impressionist art also influences Hardy’s perception of reality and what knowledge each individual is capable of attaining in any situation.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descen

The act of courtship is consummated as a public ritual, where the hopeful males – in their moment of prominence – perform in front of a peer group, or even the whole city, before the female chooses her partner and accepts his package of sperm. She may then kill and eat him, which is thought to be a great honour for the victim, although even Portia suspects that the males do not quite see it that way.

...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

Poor boy. With a name like Atticus, every word he utters ought to be inspired and wise, spoken with a voice that compels all within earshot to sit up and listen. I wonder how disappointed Atticus’s parents must be. Such a noble and lofty name full of great expectations, and they end up with a heavyset boy with a prominent brow and underdeveloped frontal lobe who says “um” a lot and scratches himself in the cafeteria.

I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror; something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth saving. The personages in these pages are not men. Their humanity is buried, or they themselves have buried it, under an offense received or inflicted on someone else. The evil and insane SS men, the Kapos, the politicals, the criminals, the prominents, great and small, down to the indifferent slave Häftlinge, all the grades of the mad hierarchy created by the Germans paradoxically fraternized in a uniform internal desolation. But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.

You don't have to be educated to be intelligent, eloquent to be wise, rich to be powerful, famous to be important, shameful to be popular, prominent to be superior, wealthy to be generous, influential to be fortunate, celebrated to be kind, famous to be hopeful, shameful to be happy, celebrated to be blessed, heartless to be strong, militant to be firm, loud to be assertive, cocky to be ambitious, overbearing to be dominant, nor aggressive to be determined. And you also don't have to be connected to be successful, gifted to be great, talented to be exceptional, connected to be brilliant, gifted to be extraordinary, talented to be successful, weak to be humble, frail to be meek, timid to be gentle, delicate to be humane, tame to be peaceful, vulnerable to be moderate, schooled to be cultured, literate to be civilized, conceited to be sophisticated, refined to be accomplished, well-bred to be polished, nor learned to be enlightened.

Who was this mysterious founding member of an order that would grow in such prominence in history and legend? Why was this last knight never named as plainly as the others? The answer to that mystery is the beginning of a great adventure.

Paul knew what he was talking about when he called Christians “earthen vessels.” We’re baked clay. We’re privy pots. The advance of the gospel will never occur on account of us. This helps explain why God chose none of the early preachers among the apostles because of his superior intellect, position, or prominence. As I wrote in my book Twelve Ordinary Men, these twelve were so ordinary it defies all human logic: not one teacher, not one priest, not one rabbi, not one scribe, not one Pharisee, not one Sadducee, not even a synagogue ruler—nobody from the elite. Half of them or so were fishermen, and the rest were common laborers. One, Simon the Zealot, was a terrorist, a member of a group who went around with daggers in their cloaks, trying to stab Romans. Then there was Judas, the loser of all losers. What was the Lord doing? He picked people with absolutely no influence. None of the great intellects from Egypt, Greece, Rome, or Israel was among the apostles. During the New Testament time, the greatest scholars were very likely in Egypt. The most distinguished philosophers were in Athens. The powerful were in Rome. The biblical scholars were in Jerusalem. God disdained all of them and picked clay pots instead.

Edward Rutledge, a prominent South Carolina politician, wrote in December that arming freed slaves tended “more effectually to work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the colonies than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of.

But no one had been able to adequately capture the thing about her she herself most admired—how she could say more with her eyebrows than all the books in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She was proud of those prominent crescents and used them to great effect in daily life.

They may call you "Stupid" because of what you've done in the past. Hey, you are going to be "Prominent" because of what the Lord has done. The stupid "S" in Saul was exchange to become the Prominent "P" in Paul... and you ask why? It's because of what the Lord has done, Give thanks!

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Virginia elites had taken the best land for themselves, leaving the former indentured servants land poor and resentful. Inequalities of class proved the source of great tension in the colony, fostering instances of rebellion great and small. These tensions were buried when race entered the picture as the prime dividing line for status within the colony. There would be no alliance between blacks and lower-class whites, who each in their own way had legitimate grievances against their overlords. Instead, poor whites, encouraged by the policies of the elites, took refuge in their whiteness and the dream that one day they, too, could become slave owners, though only a relative handful could ever hope to amass the land, wealth, and social position of the most prominent members of the Virginia gentry, who gained their place early on and would keep it for decades to come.

Singe stopped. “You are quite right about Medford Shale, Garrett.” Great-uncle Medford had figured prominently in the case where I’d first made Singe’s acquaintance. “Just as you were right about me needing no distractions if I am to follow this trail. Perhaps I can have Doris knock you out, then have Marsha knock Doris out, then pray that a building collapses on Marsha.” “Or we could all take a hint and save the chatter till later.” “You could do that. But I am willing to bet that none of you are able.” Was it Mama Garrett’s boy who’d said that this ratgirl desperately needed some self-confidence? She sure didn’t lack for it in this crowd.

Here, dear reader, you must summon patient compassion. Try to imagine the hardships of a military officer triply burdened by close relationships with political leaders and the national news media, an Ivy League PhD, and wartime triumphs leading an elite airborne division. Our hero somehow survived in spite of it all. He rose against his handicaps, triumphing over the awful mark of Princeton University, that great gathering place for outcasts, rebels, and the socially obscure. He secured higher military rank even though he had been successful in combat. He adroitly worked CBS News, the Washington Post, and the United States Senate, yet still rose to prominence.

I advise you to look for a chance to break away, to find a subject you can make your own. That is where the quickest advances are likely to occur, as measured by discoveries per investigator per year. Therein you have the best chance to become a leader and, as time passes, to gain growing freedom to set your own course. If a subject is already receiving a great deal of attention, if it has a glamorous aura, if its practitioners are prizewinners who receive large grants, stay away from that subject. Listen to the news coming from the hubbub, learn how and why the subject became prominent, but in making your own long-term plans be aware it is already crowded with talented people. You would be a newcomer, a private amid bemedaled first sergeants and generals. Take a subject instead that interests you and looks promising, and where established experts are not yet conspicuously competing with one another, where few if any prizes and academy memberships have been given, and where the annals of research are not yet layered with superfluous data and mathematical models.

Perhaps we expect gay public figures and other prominent queer people to come out, to stand and be counted, so they can do the work we’re unwilling to do to change the world, to carry the burdens we are unwilling to shoulder, to take the stands we are unwilling to make. As individuals, we may not be able to do much, but when we’re silent when someone uses the word “gay” as an insult, we are falling short. When we don’t vote to support equal marriage rights for all, we are falling short. When we support musicians like Tyler, the Creator, we are falling short. We are failing our communities. We are failing civil rights. There are injustices great and small, and even if we can only fight the small ones, at least we are fighting.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, another powerful Democratic leader, was known as a defender of civil rights during his three decades on the Supreme Court. But what many do not know is that Justice Black was a prominent and secretive member of the KKK. He supposedly resigned membership in 1925, but it was later discovered that he was subsequently welcomed back into the Klan and given a lifetime membership.

go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him, If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find Him there is no need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory, Who so loved you that He went to the Cross and bore the punishment and the shame of your sins and died for you. Seek Him, seek His face, and all other things shall be added unto you.

War was a great leveller. It smoothed out the furrows between men; it proved the futility of snobbism and the comparative unimportance of position and prominence when faced with a universal problem. The Armistice came in time to prevent Gerald from seeing the ugliness and horror of war from personal fighting experience, but those months at Bushey shook him to a certain extent, and acted as a splendid antidote to self-importance.

In the modern era, teachers and scholarship have traditionally laid strenuous emphasis on the fact that Briseis, the woman taken from Achilles in Book One, was his géras, his war prize, the implication being that her loss for Achilles meant only loss of honor, an emphasis that may be a legacy of the homoerotic culture in which the classics and the Iliad were so strenuously taught—namely, the British public-school system: handsome and glamorous Achilles didn’t really like women, he was only upset because he’d lost his prize! Homer’s Achilles, however, above all else, is spectacularly adept at articulating his own feelings, and in the Embassy he says, “‘Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones / who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, / loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now / loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her’ ” (9.340ff.). The Iliad ’s depiction of both Achilles and Patroklos is nonchalantly heterosexual. At the conclusion of the Embassy, when Agamemnon’s ambassadors have departed, “Achilles slept in the inward corner of the strong-built shelter, / and a woman lay beside him, one he had taken from Lesbos, / Phorbas’ daughter, Diomede of the fair colouring. / In the other corner Patroklos went to bed; with him also / was a girl, Iphis the fair-girdled, whom brilliant Achilles / gave him, when he took sheer Skyros” (9.663ff.). The nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos played an unlikely role in a lawsuit of the mid-fourth century B.C., brought by the orator Aeschines against one Timarchus, a prominent politician in Athens who had charged him with treason. Hoping to discredit Timarchus prior to the treason trial, Aeschines attacked Timarchus’ morality, charging him with pederasty. Since the same charge could have been brought against Aeschines, the orator takes pains to differentiate between his impulses and those of the plaintiff: “The distinction which I draw is this—to be in love with those who are beautiful and chaste is the experience of a kind-hearted and generous soul”; Aeschines, Contra Timarchus 137, in C. D. Adams, trans., The Speeches of Aeschines (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 111. For proof of such love, Aeschines cited the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos; his citation is of great interest for representing the longest extant quotation of Homer by an ancient author. 32

At home in Warsaw, Nathan and Sarah made a point of only speaking a renascent Hebrew with their children, brought back to everyday usage only a few decades earlier after being used almost exclusively for liturgical purposes for centuries on end. This linguistic revival has no parallel in the annals of nations. It was led by the likes of Professor Klausner and most prominently by the trailblazing linguist Eliezer Ben Yehuda, whose great-grandson was one of my classmates in Jerusalem.

Authority does not have to be a person or institution which says: you have to do this, or you are not allowed to do that. While this kind of authority may be called external authority, authority can appear as internal authority, under the name of duty, conscience, or super-ego. As a matter of fact, the development of modern thinking from Protestantism to Kant's philosophy, can be characterized as the substitution of internalized authority for an external one. With the political victories of the rising middle class, external authority lost prestige and man's own conscience assumed the place which external authority once had held. This change appeared to many as the victory of freedom. To submit to orders from the outside (at least in spiritual matters) appeared to be unworthy of a free man; but the conquest of his natural inclinations, and the establishment of the domination of one part of the individual, his nature, by another, his reason, will or conscience, seemed to be the very essence of freedom. Analysis shows that conscience rules with a harshness as great as external authorities, and furthermore that frequently the contents of the orders issued by man's conscience are ultimately not governed by demands of the individual self but by social demands which have assumed the dignity of ethical norms. The rulership of conscience can be even harsher than that of external authorities, since the individual feels its orders to be his own; how can he rebel against himself? In recent decades "conscience" has lost much of its significance. It seems as though neither external nor internal authorities play any prominent role in the individual's life. Everybody is completely "free", if only he does not interfere with other people's legitimate claims. But what we find is rather that instead of disappearing, authority has made itself invisible. Instead of overt authority, "anonymous" authority reigns.It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion. Whether a mother says to her daughter, "I know you will not like to go out with that boy", or an advertisement suggests, "Smoke this brand of cigarettes--you will like their coolness", it is the same atmosphere of subtle suggestion which actually pervades our whole social life. Anonymous authority is more effective than overt authority, since one never suspects that there is any order which one is expected to follow. In external authority it is clear that there is an order and who gives it; one can fight against the authority, and in this fight personal independence and moral courage can develop.But whereas in internalized authority the command, though an internal one, remains visible, in anonymous authority both command and commander have become invisible.It is like being fired at by an invisible enemy. There is nobody and nothing to fight back against.

The Rothschilds have been closely involved with the global elite since the inception of this group. The oldest known Rothschild went by the name of Uri Feibesch who lived in the early sixteenth century. His great great great grandson was Moses Bauer, who lived in the early eighteenth century. A well-known ancestor of this banking family was Mayer Amschel Bauer, an asset manager in Frankfurt am Main. Among other things he represented the money and assets of sovereign Wilhelm von Hessen. He became very rich, because he attended to the conveyance of the capital that belonged to this sovereign during the French Revolution. Mayer Amschel Bauer chose, without exception, women from very influential families that belonged to the global elite, for his sons. In the same way, his daughters married prominent bankers who also belonged to the global elite. All these families acted in the same way as the royal families: they married amongst themselves. Bauer’s sons were known as the “five Frankfurter”: they became bankers of five European countries.

Cabinet-making was a vexingly complicated matter, and the Chicago discussions understandably proceeded slowly. Politicians so frequently “annoyed” Lincoln with diversionary “invitations to dinner and tea,” or pressed minor patronage claims for themselves or their friends, that he found himself “unable to transact the private business for which he came.” The party faithful—prominent leaders and “lesser lights” alike—had flocked into town, some thirsting after cabinet posts, others “looking to take any office that pays well…anything they can get.

We have written the equations of water flow. From experiment, we find a set of concepts and approximations to use to discuss the solution--vortex streets, turbulent wakes, boundary layers. When we have similar equations in a less familiar situation, and one for which we cannot yet experiment, we try to solve the equations in a primitive, halting, and confused way to try to determine what new qualitatitive features may come out, or what new qualitative forms are a consequence of the equations. Our equations for the sun, for example, as a ball of hydrogen gas, describe a sun without sunspots, without the rice-grain structure of the surface, without prominences, without coronas. Yet, all of these are really in the equations; we just haven't found the way to get them out. ...The test of science is its ability to predict. Had you never visited the earth, could you predict the thunderstorms, the volcanoes, the ocean waves, the auroras, and the colourful sunset? A salutary lesson it will be when we learn of all that goes on on each of those dead planets--those eight or ten balls, each agglomerated from the same dust clouds and each obeying exactly the same laws of physics. The next great era of awakening of human intellect may well produce a method of understanding the qualitative content of equations. Today we cannot. Today we cannot see that the water flow equations contain such things as the barber pole structure of turbulence that one sees between rotating cylinders. Today we cannot see whether Schrodinger's equation contains frogs, musical composers, or morality--or whether it does not. We cannot say whether something beyond it like God is needed, or not. And so we can all hold strong opinions either way.

The greatest gift ever given to someone could be simply including them. In the little things. Most minor things. Great things happen all the time and are left unnoticed. The sun shines, rises and sets every day. We aren’t thankful enough for it. What makes us truly happy are these little yet prominently noticed things; a smile from someone you like, bare feet walk on the grass at a rainy day, the serenity of the beach, the scent of a flower or a mere acquaintance avoiding the wild plants at a pathway just because you asked. This is the definition of happiness from a simple person.

Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner. I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure.

And here before me stands a marvelously groomed little man who is pinning a hero's medal on me because some of his forebears were Alfred the Great and Charles the First, and even King Arthur, for anything I knew to the contrary. But I shouldn't be surprised if inside he feels as puzzled about the fate that brings him here as I. we are public icons, we two: he an icon of kingship, and I an icon of heroism, unreal yet very necessary; we have obligations above what is merely personal, and to let personal feelings obscure the obligations would be failing in one's duty. This was clearer still afterward, at lunch at the Savoy....; they all seemed to accept me as a genuine hero, and I did my best to behave decently, neither believing in it too obviously, nor yet protesting that I was just a simple chap who had done his duty when he saw it--a pose that has always disgusted me. Ever since, I have tried to think charitably of people in prominent positions of one kind or another. We cast them in roles, and it is only right to consider them as players, without trying to discredit them with knowledge of their off-stage life--unless they drag it into the middle of the stage themselves.

Within a year or two of Partition – despite all the massacres that had attended it – Hindu–Muslim relations appeared, almost miraculously, to have returned to normal in India. This was highlighted by Pakistan’s maiden Test tour of India, in 1952. It was by far the most prominent interaction between the two countries since their bloody separation. It was also less than five years since their inaugural war, over the former princely state of Kashmir, which was divided in the process. Yet the visiting Pakistanis were feted by India’s government in Delhi (where they also visited the shrine in Nizamuddin) and by rapturous crowds.

is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female’s offspring—one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently—even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as “sneaky fuckers.

(Almanack Jack talking to Michael Cullen) - The unemployed should be treated as great gifts to a nation, because if they didn’t in their largeness of spirit agree to be unemployed, all the other toffee-nosed bastards who’ve got jobs couldn’t hold them. The unemployed should be fed and pampered, given double pay to what they’d get if they were working. There should be special centres where they could queue up for a daily ration of cigars. One prominent motto of my Democratic Republic of Euphoria would be: Hail to the unemployable, because they should inherit the earth in payment for letting the guilt-ridden neurotics of the world work.

One article on reproductive strategies was titled "Sneaky Fuckers." Kya laughed. As is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female's offspring- one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently- even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as "sneaky fuckers." Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. "Unworthy boys make a lot of noise," Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone. Another article delved into the wild rivalries between sperm. Across most life-forms, males compete to inseminate females. Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other's flesh. Though very ritualized, the conflicts can still end in mutilations. To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods. Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removes sperm ejected by a previous opponent before he supplies his own. Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

On November 22, 1860, James Clement Furman, a prominent Baptist minister and first president of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, published an open letter that encapsulated the South’s great abiding fear of what would happen if slavery were abolished. “Then every negro in South Carolina and every other Southern State will be his own master; nay, more than that, will be the equal of every one of you.” Another Southern orator, quoted in the New York Herald, issued an even more vivid warning. “What will you do with these people? Will you allow them to sit at your own table, marry your daughters, govern your States, sit in your halls of Congress and perhaps be president of the United States?

So, we have an element newly prominent in American religious and political life, a new form of entitlement, a self-declared elect. What some have seen as a resurgence of Christianity, or at least a bold defense of American cultural tradition—even as another great awakening!—has brought a harshness, a bitterness, a crudeness, and a high-handedness into the public sphere that are only to be compared to the politics, or the collapse of politics, in the period before the Civil War. Its self-righteousness fuels the damnedest things—I use the word advisedly—notably the acquisition of homicidal weapons. I wonder what these supposed biblicists find in the Gospels or the Epistles that could begin to excuse any of it.

Sargon, the obscure adventurer who had emerged as though from nowhere to nurture this proud ambition, to extinguish the independence of neighboring city-states and to rule supreme over the “totality of the lands under heaven,” had always remained the model of a Mesopotamian strongman. Almost two thousand years after his foundation of Akkad, he remained the cynosure of great kings. Indeed, in the decades before the Persian conquest, the obsession with him had become a veritable craze. At Susa, the capital of Elam, a victory memorial originally inscribed by Sargon’s grandson had been lovingly dusted down and put on prominent display; in Akkad itself, when a statue of the great man was excavated, Nabonidus had come rushing in high excitement to inspect it, and to supervise its restoration. Museums had sprung up everywhere: at Ur, for instance, the antiquities collection maintained by Nabonidus’ daughter, Princess En-nigaldi-Nanna, had been carefully labeled and put on display for the edification of the public. Meanwhile, in Babylon itself, scholars pored over great libraries of archives, tracing ancient documents, recycling archaic phrases, looking to the distant past to legitimize the needs and whims of their masters. The people of Mesopotamia, living as they did amid the lumber of millennia, had always been profoundly respectful of antiquity. Rather than feeling oppressed by it, they recycled it, cannibalized it, and turned it to their advantage.

...obscurantist feature in social scientists trying to combine pluralism with environmentalism. They are so preoccupied with the role of prejudice in creating hostile environments that they perpetually deny the obvious, that stereotypes are rough generalizations about groups derived from long-term observation. Such generalizations are usually correct in describing group tendencies and in predicting certain collective actions, even if they do not adequately account for differences among individuals. Nonetheless, as Goldberg explains, the self-described pluralist and prominent psychologist Gordon Allport went out of his way in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) to reject stereotypes as factually inaccurate as well as socially harmful. For Allport and a great many other social Scientists, nothing is intuitively correct unless it is politically so.

While Agrippa never ruled in his own right his genes were intermingled in the blood of the Domus Augusta and it was his descendants who were destined for prominence. His daughter Vipsania Agrippina married Augustus’ step-son Tiberius, and through her Agrippa was grandfather to Drusus the Younger. As son-in-law to Augustus, his other daughter, Agrippina the Elder, married Germanicus, the son of Drusus the Elder (Nero Claudius Drusus), and through her Agrippa was the grandfather both of the future emperor Caligula and Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Emperor Nero – Agrippa’s great-grandson. Iulia also bore Agrippa three sons who were adopted by Augustus himself as his heirs, all of whom met tragic ends while still young men. Had they lived, and one of these succeeded him as emperor, the story of the Roman Empire may have taken a very different course.

Schnall’s strong reaction to the failed replication of her own work provoked a mixed reaction from the psychological community. While many psychologists were bewildered by her response, a number of prominent US psychologists voiced support for her position. Dan Gilbert from Harvard University likened Schnall’s battle to the plight of Rosa Parks, and he referred to some psychologists who conducted or supported replications as “bullies,” “replication police,” “second stringers,” McCarthyists, and “god’s chosen soldiers in a great jihad.” Others accused the so-called replicators of being “Nazis,” “fascists,” and “mafia.” Rather than viewing replication as an intrinsic part of best scientific practice, Gilbert and his supporters framed it as a threat to the reputation of the (presumably brilliant) researchers who publish irreproducible findings, stifling their creativity and innovation

It did not take Bunch very long, amid the politicking and the revelry, to discover the darker side of life in Charleston’s homes. “The frightful atrocities of slaveholding must be seen to be described,” he wrote in a private letter that wound up prominently positioned in the official slave-trade correspondence of the Foreign Office. “My next-door neighbor, a lawyer of the first distinction and a member of the Southern Aristocracy, told me himself that he flogged all his own people—men and women—when they misbehaved. I hear also that he makes them strip, and after telling them that they were to consider it as a great condescension on his part to touch them, gives them a certain number of lashes with a cow-hide. The frightful evil of the system is that it debases the whole tone of society—for the people talk calmly of horrors which would not be mentioned in civilized society. It is literally no more to kill a slave than to shoot a dog.

Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience." Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is. Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others. The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success. Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all. Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace. Loyalty is not demanded; it is created. Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message. The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel. The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way. People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes. Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk. The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.

The bust of the General was unquestionably the finest bust I ever saw. For your life you could not have found a fault with its wonderful proportion. This rare peculiarity set off to great advantage a pair of shoulders which would have called up a blush of conscious inferiority into the countenance of the marble Apollo. I have a passion for fine shoulders, and may say that I never beheld them in perfection before. The arms altogether were admirably modeled. Nor were the lower limbs less superb. These were, indeed, the ne plus ultra of good legs. Every connoisseur in such matters admitted the legs to be good. There was neither too much flesh, nor too little,—neither rudeness nor fragility. I could not imagine a more graceful curve than that of the os femoris, and there was just that due gentle prominence in the rear of the fibula which goes to the conformation of a properly proportioned calf. I wish to God my young and talented friend Chiponchipino, the sculptor, had but seen the legs of Brevet Brigadier General John A. B. C. Smith.

Darwin and Nietzsche were the common spiritual and intellectual source for the mean-spirited and bellicose ideological assault on progress, liberalism, and democracy that fired the late-nineteenth-century campaign to preserve or rejuvenate the traditional order. Presensitized for this retreat from modernity, prominent fin-de-siècle aesthetes, engages literati, polemical publicists, academic sociologists, and last but not least, conservative and reactionary politicians became both consumers and disseminators of the untried action-ideas. Oscar Wilde and Stefan George were perhaps most representative of the aristocratizing aesthetes whose rush into dandyism or retreat into cultural monasticism was part of the outburst against bourgeois philistinism and social levelling. Their yearning for a return to an aristocratic past and their aversion to the invasive democracy of their day were shared by Thomas Mann and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose nostalgia for the presumably superior sensibilities of a bygone cultivated society was part of their claim to privileged social space and position in the present. Although they were all of burgher or bourgeois descent, they extolled ultra-patrician values and poses, thereby reflecting and advancing the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the merits and necessities of elitism. Theirs was not simply an aesthetic and unpolitical posture precisely because they knowingly contributed to the exaltation of societal hierarchy at a time when this exaltation was being used to do battle against both liberty and equality. At any rate, they may be said to have condoned this partisan attack by not explicitly distancing themselves from it. Maurice Barrès, Paul Bourget, and Gabriele D'Annunzio were not nearly so self-effacing. They were not only conspicuous and active militants of antidemocratic elitism, but they meant their literary works to convert the reader to their strident persuasion. Their polemical statements and their novels promoted the cult of the superior self and nation, in which the Church performed the holy sacraments. Barrès, Bourget, and D'Annunzio were purposeful practitioners of the irruptive politics of nostalgia that called for the restoration of enlightened absolutism, hierarchical society. and elite culture in the energizing fires of war.

Bollywood's economic workings are more mysterious. It still exists in what was known as the informal and high-risk sector of the Indian economy. Banks rarely invest in Bollywood, where moneylenders are rampant, demanding up to 35 percent interest. The big corporate houses seem no less keen to stay away from filmmaking. A senior executive with the Tatas, one of India's prominent business families, told me, "We went into Bollywood, made one film, lost a lot of money, and got out of it fast," adding that "the place works in ways we couldn't begin to explain to our shareholders." Since only six or seven of the two hundred films made each year earn a profit, the industry has generated little capital of its own. The great studios of the early years of the industry are now defunct. It is outsiders- regular moneylenders, small and big businessmen, real estate people, and, sometimes, mafia dons- who continue to finance new films, and their turnover, given the losses, is rapid. Their motives are mixed: sex, glamour, money laundering, and, more optimistically, profit. They rarely have much to do with the desire to make original, or even competent, films.

Most whites in America have a consciousness of race that is very different from that of minorities. They do not attach much importance to the fact that they are white, and they view race as an illegitimate reason for decision-making of any kind. Many whites have made a genuine effort to transcend race and to see people as individuals. They often fail, but their professed goal is color-blindness. Some whites have gone well beyond color-blindness and see their race as uniquely guilty and without moral standing. Neither the goal of color-blindness nor a negative view of their own race has any parallel in the thinking of non-whites. Most whites also believe that racial equality, integration, and “diversity” flow naturally from the republican, anti-monarchical principles of the American Revolution. They may know that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves but they believe that the man who wrote “all men are created equal” had a vision of the egalitarian, heterogeneous society in which we now live. They are wrong. Earlier generations of white Americans had a strong racial consciousness. Current assumptions about race are a dramatic reversal of the views not only of the Founding Fathers but of the great majority of Americans up until the 1950s and 1960s. Change on this scale is rare in any society, and the past views of whites are worth investigating for the perspective they provide on current views. It is possible to summarize the racial views that prevailed in this country until a few decades ago as follows: White Americans believed race was a fundamental aspect of individual and group identity. They believed people of different races differed in temperament, ability, and the kind of societies they built. They wanted America to be peopled by Europeans, and thought only people of European stock could maintain the civilization they valued. They therefore considered immigration of non-whites a threat to whites and to their civilization. It was common to regard the presence of non-whites as a burden, and to argue that if they could not be removed from the country they should be separated from whites socially and politically. Whites were strongly opposed to miscegenation, which they called “amalgamation.” Many injustices were committed in defense of these views, and many of the things prominent Americans of the past said ring harshly on contemporary ears. And yet the sentiment behind them—a sense of racial solidarity—is not very different from the sentiments we find among many non-whites today.

Great empires throughout history, including the Romans and the Mongols, could rise and rule for centuries because they understood the need for overwhelming power. The United States, the most powerful force in modern times, could only ensure the constancy of its own superiority and the supremacy of its values if it continually nurtured its power and the will to use it when necessary. Obama’s extraordinary statement confirmed for me two things. First, he wanted to depart from the postwar American policy of peace through strength. He wanted peace through understanding. This wasn’t a result of personal weakness. It stemmed from his belief that the projection of American power had caused more harm than good. He truly viewed himself as “a citizen of the world.” As such he wanted to reach a broad international consensus on pivotal issues that he believed would be shared by all or most major powers. This necessarily detracted from America’s traditional global prominence and was interpreted as weakness by Iran and other powers that didn’t share his view. My second take from this conversation was that the chances of an American military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities under Obama were practically nil. Even if he built an American military option, he was unlikely to use it preemptively. And the Iranians would know it. This meant he would conduct negotiations with them on their nuclear capabilities without the most important card up his sleeve. Hiding

There was something of an unwritten code about working in the office of Rudy Giuliani, as I suppose there is in most organizations. In his case, the message was that Rudy was the star at the top and the successes of the office flowed in his direction. You violated this code at your peril. Giuliani had extraordinary confidence, and as a young prosecutor I found his brash style exciting, which was part of what drew me to his office. I loved it that my boss was on magazine covers standing on the courthouse steps with his hands on his hips, as if he ruled the world. It fired me up. Prosecutors almost never saw the great man in person, so I was especially pumped when he stopped by my office early in my career, shortly after I had been assigned to an investigation that touched a prominent New York figure who dressed in shiny tracksuits and sported a Nobel-sized medallion around his neck. The state of New York was investigating Al Sharpton for alleged embezzlement from his charity, and I was assigned to see if there was a federal angle to the case. I had never even seen Rudy on my floor, and now he was at my very door. He wanted me to know he was personally following the investigation and knew I would do a good job. My heart thumped with anxiety and excitement as he gave me this pep talk standing in the doorway. He was counting on me. He turned to leave, then stopped. “Oh, and I want the fucking medal,” he said, then walked away. But we never made a federal case. The state authorities charged Sharpton, and he was acquitted after a trial. The medal stayed with its owner.

What you call ‘Western civilization.’ Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know—or as I hope you know, since you passed my course—the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps—Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on—but the same forces, the same gods.” “And then they died.” “Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they’ve ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not—and believe me, plenty of people weren’t very fond of Rome, either—America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here.

I have done it! exclaimed Saphira. She arched her neck and loosed a jet of blue and yellow flame into the upper reaches of the building. I know my true name! She spoke a single line in the ancient language, and the inside of Eragon’s mind seemed to ring with a sound like a bell, and for a moment, the tips of Saphira’s scales gleamed with an inner light, and she looked as if she were made of stars. The name was grand and majestic, but also tinged with sadness, for it named her as the last female of her kind. In the words, Eragon could hear the love and devotion she felt for him, as well as all the other traits that made up her personality. Most he recognized; a few he did not. Her flaws were as prominent as her virtues, but overall, the impression was one of fire and beauty and grandeur. Saphira shivered from the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail, and she shuffled her wings. I know who I am, she said. Well done, Bjartskular, said Glaedr, and Eragon could sense how impressed he was. You have a name to be proud of. I would not say it again, however, not even to yourself, until we are at the…at the spire we have come to see. You must take great care to keep your name hidden now that you know it. Saphira blinked and shuffled her wings again. Yes, Master. The excitement running through her was palpable. Eragon sheathed Brisingr and walked over to her. She lowered her head until it was at his level. He stroked the line of her jaw, and then pressed his forehead against her hard snout and held her as tightly as he could, her scales sharp against his fingers. Hot tears began to slide down his cheeks. Why do you cry? she asked. Because…I’m lucky enough to be bonded with you. Little one.

Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?” Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a contrary opinion: I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an expressive shake of the head, adding soon, “Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr. Brocklehurst.” “Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk;” and bending from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair opposite Mrs. Reed’s. “Come here,” he said. I stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before him. What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth! “No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?” “They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer. “And what is hell? Can you tell me that?” “A pit full of fire.” “And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?” “No, sir.” “What must you do to avoid it?” I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.” “How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily. I buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since,—a good little child, whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same could not be said of you were you to be called hence.” Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down on the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself far enough away. “I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress.

Amy, listen to me.  Listen to me.  Don't you ever let them tell you you're ugly!  Don't ever let them tell you you're dirty.  You're a beautiful person, inside and out, thoughtful, sensitive and kind.  I don't care what Sylvanus says, or what anyone else thinks.  You'll find yourself a nice man to marry someday, and if your family's trying to convince you otherwise, it's only because they have an unpaid servant in you and they don't want to lose you." He heard what sounded like a gulp, then a sniffle. "Amy?" "I — I'm sorry, Ch-Charles.  No one's ever said anything like that to me before, and . . . and I j-just don't know what to make of it —" "Oh, God, don't cry.  I don't know how to deal with tearful females, truly I don't." "I c-can't help it, you're being so nice to me, saying that I'm beautiful when really, I'm not, and — "You are beautiful, Amy, and don't you ever forget it." "You can't say that, you've never even seen me!" "Come here." "I am here." "Come closer, then, and let me judge the issue for myself." She did. "Now, place my hands on your face." Sniffling, she took his hands within her own.  Or tried to, given that hers were half the size of his and dainty as a bird's foot. And then she raised them to her face, placing one on each hot, tearstained cheek. The minute he felt her flesh beneath his, Charles knew this was a mistake.  A big mistake.  But to stop now would crush her. "Ah, Amy.  How can you think you're ugly?  Your skin is so soft that it feels like roses after a morning rain." "It's too dark.  Bronzy.  Not at all the color of Ophelia's and Mildred's." "And who says skin has to be milk-white to be beautiful?" "Well . . . no one, I guess." He gently pressed his thumbs against her cheeks, noting that they were hot with blush, soft as thistledown, and that the delicate bones beneath were high and prominent.  "And look at these cheekbones!  I know women — aristocratic women, mind you — who'd kill for cheekbones like these.  High cheekbones are a mark of great beauty, you know." "High cheekbones are a mark of Indian blood." "Amy." "Yes?" "Stop it." "I'm sorry." He continued on, now tracing the curve of her brow, and the bridge of her nose.  He had lost his eyesight, but it was amazing what his hands could see. "You have a lovely nose," he said. "It's too strong." "No it isn't.  Close your eyes." She did.  He could feel the fragile veneer of her eyelids, trembling faintly beneath his fingertips, and long, long lashes that brushed those cheekbones he had so admired. "What color are your eyes, Amy?" "Brown." "What color brown?  Brown like conkers?  Brown like nutmeg?  Brown like black?" "Brown like mud." "Can you think of a more flattering word?" "No." His hands moved out over her face, learning its shape, before touching the plaited, pinned-up mass of her hair.  It was straight, he could tell that much.  Shiny like glass, as soft as a fern.  He wished it was down. Good God, man, whatever are you thinking?! "My hair's brown, too," Amy said, her voice now a tremulous, barely audible whisper. "Brown like mud?" he cajoled. "No.  Brown like black.  And when the sun comes out, it's got reddish undertones." "It sounds very pretty." "It's not, really.  It's just hair." "Just hair.  Do you ever wear it down?" "No." "Why not?" "It gets in the way of things." "Don't you think that someday, a man will wish to drag his fingers through all this hair?" "No . . . no respectable man." He shook his head, his heart aching for her.  "Oh, Amy." He

Fine art galleries are the excellent setups for exhibiting art, generally aesthetic art such as paints, sculptures, and digital photography. Basically, art galleries showcase a range of art designs featuring contemporary and traditional fine art, glass fine art, art prints, and animation fine art. Fine art galleries are dedicated to the advertising of arising artists. These galleries supply a system for them to present their jobs together with the works of across the country and internationally popular artists. The UNITED STATE has a wealth of famous art galleries. Lots of villages in the U.S. show off an art gallery. The High Museum of Fine art, Alleged Gallery, Henry Art Gallery, National Gallery of Art Gallery, Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Agora Gallery, Rosalux Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, The Alaska House Gallery, and Anchorage Gallery of History and Art are some of the renowned fine art galleries in the United States. Today, there are on the internet fine art galleries showing initial artwork. Several famous fine art galleries show regional pieces of art such as African fine art, American art, Indian fine art, and European art, in addition to individual fine art, modern-day and modern fine art, and digital photography. These galleries collect, show, and keep the masterpieces for the coming generations. Many famous art galleries try to entertain and educate their local, nationwide, and international audiences. Some renowned fine art galleries focus on specific areas such as pictures. A great variety of well-known fine art galleries are had and run by government. The majority of famous fine art galleries supply an opportunity for site visitors to buy outstanding art work. Additionally, they organize many art-related tasks such as songs shows and verse readings for kids and grownups. Art galleries organize seminars and workshops conducted by prominent artists. Committed to quality in both art and solution, most well-known fine art galleries provide you a rich, exceptional experience. If you wish to read additional information, please visit this site

We can start with approximately nine traditional authors of the New Testament. If we consider the critical thesis that other authors wrote the pastoral letters and such letters as Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians, we'd have an even larger number. Another twenty early Christian authors20 and four heretical writings mention Jesus within 150 years of his death on the cross.21 Moreover, nine secular, non-Christian sources mention Jesus within the 150 years: Josephus, the Jewish historian; Tacitus, the Roman historian; Pliny the Younger, a politician of Rome; Phlegon, a freed slave who wrote histories; Lucian, the Greek satirist; Celsus, a Roman philosopher; and probably the historians Suetonius and Thallus, as well as the prisoner Mara Bar-Serapion.22 In all, at least forty-two authors, nine of them secular, mention Jesus within 150 years of his death. In comparison, let's take a look at Julius Caesar, one of Rome's most prominent figures. Caesar is well known for his military conquests. After his Gallic Wars, he made the famous statement, "I came, I saw, I conquered." Only five sources report his military conquests: writings by Caesar himself, Cicero, Livy, the Salona Decree, and Appian.23 If Julius Caesar really made a profound impact on Roman society, why didn't more writers of antiquity mention his great military accomplishments? No one questions whether Julius did make a tremendous impact on the Roman Empire. It is evident that he did. Yet in those 150 years after his death, more non-Christian authors alone comment on Jesus than all of the sources who mentioned Julius Caesar's great military conquests within 150 years of his death. Let's look at an even better example, a contemporary of Jesus. Tiberius Caesar was the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus' ministry and execution. Tiberius is mentioned by ten sources within 150 years of his death: Tacitus, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Seneca, Valerius Maximus, Josephus, and Luke.24 Compare that to Jesus' forty-two total sources in the same length of time. That's more than four times the number of total sources who mention the Roman emperor during roughly the same period. If we only considered the number of secular non-Christian sources who mention Jesus and Tiberius within 150 years of their lives, we arrive at a tie of nine each.25

Switching on the ground-floor lights, she checked the gas jet and the main gas plug and poured water over the smoldering, half-buried charcoal in the brazier. She stood before the upright mirror in the four-and-a-half-mat room and held up her skirts. The bloodstains made it seem as if a bold, vivid pattern was printed across the lower half of her white kimono. When she sat down before the mirror, she was conscious of the dampness and coldness of her husband’s blood in the region of her thighs, and she shivered. Then, for a long while, she lingered over her toilet preparations. She applied the rouge generously to her cheeks, and her lips too she painted heavily. This was no longer make-up to please her husband. It was make-up for the world which she would leave behind, and there was a touch of the magnificent and the spectacular in her brushwork. When she rose, the mat before the mirror was wet with blood. Reiko was not concerned about this. (...) The lieutenant was lying on his face in a sea of blood. The point protruding from his neck seemed to have grown even more prominent than before. Reiko walked heedlessly across the blood. Sitting beside the lieutenant’s corpse, she stared intently at the face, which lay on one cheek on the mat. The eyes were opened wide, as if the lieutenant’s attention had been attracted by something. She raised the head, folding it in her sleeve, wiped the blood from the lips, and bestowed a last kiss. (...) Reiko sat herself on a spot about one foot distant from the lieutenant’s body. Drawing the dagger from her sash, she examined its dully gleaming blade intently, and held it to her tongue. The taste of the polished steel was slightly sweet. Reiko did not linger. When she thought how the pain which had previously opened such a gulf between herself and her dying husband was now to become a part of her own experience, she saw before her only the joy of herself entering a realm her husband had already made his own. In her husband’s agonized face there had been something inexplicable which she was seeing for the first time. Now she would solve that riddle. Reiko sensed that at last she too would be able to taste the true bitterness and sweetness of that great moral principle in which her husband believed. What had until now been tasted only faintly through her husband’s example she was about to savor directly with her own tongue. Reiko rested the point of the blade against the base of her throat. She thrust hard. The wound was only shallow. Her head blazed, and her hands shook uncontrollably. She gave the blade a strong pull sideways. A warm substance flooded into her mouth, and everything before her eyes reddened, in a vision of spouting blood. She gathered her strength and plunged the point of the blade deep into her throat.

Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure.

My darling son: depression at your age is more common than you might think. I remember it very strongly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when I was about twenty-six and felt like killing myself. I think the winter, the cold, the lack of sunshine, for us tropical creatures, is a trigger. And to tell you the truth, the idea that you might soon unpack your bags here, having chucked in all your European plans, makes your mother and me as happy as could be. You have more than earned the equivalent of any university 'degree' and you have used your time so well to educate yourself culturally and personally that if university bores you, it is only natural. Whatever you do from here on in, whether you write or don't write, whether you get a degree or not, whether you work for your mother, or at El Mundo, or at La Ines, or teaching at a high school, or giving lectures like Estanislao Zuleta, or as a psychoanalyst to your parents, sisters and relatives, or simply being Hector Abad Faciolince, will be fine. What matters is that you don't stop being what you have been up till now, a person, who simply by virtue of being the way you are, not for what you write or don't write, or for being brilliant or prominent, but just for being the way you are, has earned the affection, the respect, the acceptance, the trust, the love, of the vast majority of those who know you. So we want to keep seeing you in this way, not as a future great author, or journalist or communicator or professor or poet, but as the son, brother, relative, friend, humanist, who understands others and does not aspire to be understood. It does not matter what people think of you, and gaudy decoration doesn't matter, for those of us who know you are. For goodness' sake, dear Quinquin, how can you think 'we support you (...) because 'that boy could go far'? You have already gone very far, further than all our dreams, better than everything we imagined for any of our children. You should know very well that your mother's and my ambitions are not for glory, or for money, or even for happiness, that word that sounds so pretty but is attained so infrequently and for such short intervals (and maybe for that very reason is so valued), for all our children, but that they might at least achieve well-being, that more solid, more durable, more possible, more attainable word. We have often talked of the anguish of Carlos Castro Saavedra, Manuel Meija Vallejo, Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, and so many quasi-geniuses we know. Or Sabato or Rulfo, or even Garcia Marquez. That does not matter. Remember Goethe: 'All theory (I would add, and all art), dear friend, is grey, but only the golden tree of life springs ever green.' What we want for you is to 'live'. And living means many better things than being famous, gaining qualifications or winning prizes. I think I too had boundless political ambitions when I was young and that's why I wasn't happy. I think I too had boundless political ambitions when I was young and that's why I wasn't happy. Only now, when all that has passed, have I felt really happy. And part of that happiness is Cecilia, you, and all my children and grandchildren. Only the memory of Marta Cecilia tarnishes it. I believe things are that simple, after having gone round and round in circles, complicating them so much. We should do away with this love for things as ethereal as fame, glory, success... Well, my Quinquin, now you know what I think of you and your future. There's no need for you to worry. You are doing just fine and you'll do better, and when you get to my age or your grandfather's age and you can enjoy the scenery around La Ines that I intend to leave to all of you, with the sunshine, heat and lush greenery, and you'll see I was right. Don't stay there longer than you feel you can. If you want to come back I'll welcome you with open arms. And if you regret it and want to go back again, we can buy you another return flight. A kiss from your father.

What did John have in mind in referring to that “great city”? Tonight’s broadcast news will use phrases like this: “Washington strongly reacted today to Moscow’s invasion of Georgia…,” or “London today took sharp exception to the bombing in Jerusalem…” Nations are frequently referred to, particularly by other countries, by the name of their capital city or a leading prominent city.

In the first place, the majority never read anything twice. The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers ‘I’ve read it already’ to be a conclusive argu- ment against reading a work. We have all known women who remembered a novel so dimly that they had to stand for half an hour in the library skimming through it before they were certain they had once read it. But the moment they became cer- tain, they rejected it immediately. It was for them dead, like a burnt-out match, an old railway ticket, or yesterday’s paper; they had already used it. Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life. Secondly, the majority, though they are sometimes frequent readers, do not set much store by reading. They turn to it as a last resource. They abandon it with alacrity as soon as any alternative pastime turns up. It is kept for railway journeys, illnesses, odd moments of enforced solitude, or for the process called ‘reading oneself to sleep’. They sometimes combine it with desultory conversation; often, with listening to the radio. But literary people are always looking for leisure and si- lence in which to read and do so with their whole attention. When they are denied such attentive and undisturbed reading even for a few days they feel impoverished. Thirdly, the first reading of some literary work is often, to the literary, an expe- rience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before. But there is no sign of anything like this among the other sort of readers. When they have finished the story or the novel, nothing much, or nothing at all, seems to have happened to them. Finally, and as a natural result of their different behaviour in reading, what they have read is constantly and prominently present to the mind of the few, but not to that of the many. The former mouth over their favourite lines and stanzas in soli- tude. Scenes and characters from books provide them with a sort of iconography by which they interpret or sum up their own experience.

You’re a haaaard man, McGee” was Harold Peary’s inevitable retort as Gildersleeve. McGee and Gildersleeve lambasted each other throughout Marian’s long absence, the Gildersleeve character coming to full prominence during that time. They snarled and bickered, borrowed tools and forgot who owned them, fought it out with hoses while watering their lawns. In August 1941 The Great Gildersleeve became the first major series to spin out of another program; Peary and Gildersleeve left Wistful Vista for the town of Summerfield, where Gildersleeve would become the water commissioner and raise his niece and nephew.

However, like Elasti-Girl and Batgirl, many of the DC’s female characters got better treatment than the heroines featured in Marvel Comics. Scanning a comic book rack in the ’60s, the covers would tell two different stories about the women starring within those pages. Wonder Woman and Supergirl starred in comic books that featured their names on the covers. These heroines were often seen performing great feats of strength like battling monsters or stopping missiles with their bare hands. Batgirl’s name might be featured prominently on a cover of Detective Comics. The Doom Patrol’s Elasti-Girl was shown in the thick of battle fighting side by side with her male compatriots. On the Marvel Comics covers, Invisible Girl, Wasp, and Marvel Girl were shown struggling in the clutches of a villain, or watching helplessly from the background as their male teammates took care of business.

guests of the Palace, almost all of them Hollywood actors, European royalty, music greats, or the superrich and powerful. He found it all of only mild interest, although he did note that novelist Anne Rice’s picture was above and in a much more prominent position than Brigitte Bardot’s. The doctor entered a ballroom set up for a banquet and continued along with the throng out onto a terrace that overlooked Avenida Atlântica, the beach, and the ocean. Night had fallen. Across the street, under spotlights, men were playing beach volleyball. There

works of Maryam Jamilah, a convert to Islam from Judaism. She had chosen to live as a co-wife to an assistant to Maulana Maududi, the prominent Pakistani commentator on the Quran. Jamilah argued that the Islamic version of gender equity greatly benefits society. Others, like Fatima Mernissi, had previously argued that Islam clearly discriminated against women. Look at polygamy, wife-beating and the segregation of women, she implored.

The women did not know how he visited Englishmen in Calcutta during the day, only to be treated with contempt. Even a prominent clergyman to whom he had an introduction written by John Newton had refused to see him. And on his return to Manicktullo the two women now openly berated him. In his diary he wrote: I am in a strange land, alone, no Christian friend, a large family - and nothing to supply their wants...I am dejected, not for my sake but my family’s...In the evening (I) poured out my soul to God; but still my burden continued. The next day (I) had a pleasant time in prayer to God in the morning but afterwards the abusive treatment I receive from her who should be a help to me quite overcame my spirits. I was vexed, grieved, and shocked. I am sorry for her who never was hearty in the undertaking, her health has been much impaired, and her fears are great, though five parts of six are groundless...Oh that I may have wisdom from above...[10]

In a somewhat different form, noblewomen of 14th- to 16th-century Europe and England shaved or plucked their frontal scalp in order to create a prominent forehead: Elizabeth I, the great virgin queen, appears so in extant portraits. Widespread use of this style among aristocratic women in court led to its reference outside of court as “high brow.

Ancestral DNA research suggests that when the last real Viking died in an attack on Dublin in 1171, his marker carried on – with great vigour. A relatively new sub-type of M17 – S375 – is now prominent in the North Isles of Orkney, on the five major islands north of Gairsay. It is also carried by 30 per cent of men with the surname of Gunn who have taken DNA tests. Tradition, genealogy and history all begin to come together to form a narrative. It may be that the prevalence of S375 on the islands of Rousay, Westray, Eday, Sanday and Stronsay is linked to the well-attested phenomenon of social selection, where powerful men in the past sired many children with different women. In that way their Y chromosome markers were spread widely and quickly, much faster than if they had remained monogamous. And few men were more powerful in 12th-century Orkney than Svein Asleifsson.

the masters of mankind,” the merchants and manufacturers of England, pursue their “vile maxim: all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else.” Smith’s vile maxim should be familiar to us. It has considerable resonance today. We’ll look into its theoretical background next week. But as you should be aware, the vile maxim has become a leading idea of what’s called “libertarianism” in the United States. It was popularized by Ayn Rand. Greed is great, all for ourselves, nothing for anyone else. She was the guru of prominent figures, among them Alan Greenspan, the much-admired chair of the Federal Reserve for many years. Another acolyte is Paul Ryan, former Speaker of the House, the main intellectual architect of the domestic programs of the Trump administration—which are, in fact, motivated by the vile maxim.

The Chicago boys and their mentors had the good sense to maintain the highly efficient, nationalized copper producer Codelco, the world’s largest. That’s, of course, a radical violation of market principles, of neoliberal principles, but worthwhile since the company was the source of much of Chile’s export earnings and the basis of the state’s fiscal revenues. In general, it was close to a perfect experiment. It looked like a great success, if you ignored the human costs. In 1982, Friedman published the second edition of his manifesto, Capitalism and Freedom, celebrating the triumph of the cause. The timing was auspicious. In 1982 the Chilean economy crashed and had to be bailed out by state intervention. The state then controlled more of the economy than it had under Allende. Analysts who had their eyes open called it “the Chicago road to socialism.” The prominent OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) economist Javier Santiso described the “paradox [that] able economists committed to laissez-faire showed the world yet another road to a de facto socialized banking system

There is an unhelpful tendency to regard superspreaders – and events where superspreading has occurred – as anomalies out of the ordinary. This contributes relatively little to our understanding of infectious dynamics and is bound to exacerbate the stigmatisation of individuals, as it has e.g. during the early years of AIDS, when much sensationalistic and unjustified blame was laid at the feet of early HIV patient Gaetan Dugas (on which see McKay, 2014). Rather, superspreading is one 'tail' of a distribution prominent mainly because it is noticeable – statistical models predict that there are generally an equal number of 'greatly inferior spreaders' who are particularly ineffective in spreading the illness.

and prominent intellectual and political elites leaves the playing field open for others to step in and present themselves as advocates for the entire working or middle class or other distinct underrepresented groups. Indeed, politics since 2000 has been marked by the rise of populists—politicians who spurn “out-of-touch experts” and who claim to speak on behalf of millions of people with whom they in fact have no authentic connection, and in whom they have no genuine interest beyond securing votes to support their own often very personal agendas. In America, the first sign of things to come was during the Great Recession, with the emergence of the Tea Party movement in the Republican Party, inside and outside Congress. The movement formed in reaction to the efforts by the administration of Barack Obama to bail out the U.S. financial sector in the midst of the economic crisis. Its members initially presented themselves as fiscal conservatives, calling for the kind of lower taxes and limited government spending espoused by Ronald Reagan. They quickly moved on to oppose the administration’s promotion of universal health care and other social policies, and soon morphed into an activist protest movement supporting new candidates for office with a mixture of conservative, libertarian, and right-wing populist credentials. Many of these Tea Party candidates would later support Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

It seems as if historicist ideas easily become prominent in times of great social change. They appeared when Greek tribal life broke up, as well as when that of the Jews was shattered by the impact of the Babylonian conquest. There can be little doubt, I believe, that Heraclitus’ philosophy is an expression of a feeling of drift; a feeling which seems to be a typical reaction to the dissolution of the ancient tribal forms of social life. In modern Europe, historicist ideas were revived during the industrial revolution, and especially through the impact of the political revolutions in America and France. It appears to be more than a mere coincidence that Hegel, who adopted so much of Heraclitus’ thought and passed it on to all modern historicist movements, was a mouthpiece of the reaction against the French Revolution.

To be sure, most dropouts do not become geniuses or success stories. But prominent among the dropout titans of recent history are Bill Gates (Harvard), Steve Jobs (Reed College), Mark Zuckerberg (Harvard), Elon Musk (Stanford), Bob Dylan (University of Minnesota), Lady Gaga (New York University), and Oprah Winfrey (Tennessee State). Jack Ma never went to college, and neither did Richard Branson, who dropped out of high school at age fifteen. Creative force Kanye West dropped out of Chicago State University at age twenty to pursue a musical career; six years later he released his first album to great critical acclaim and commercial success: The College Dropout (2004). The point is not to encourage dropping out but rather to observe that these transformative figures were somehow able to learn what they needed to know. Here successful people and geniuses share a common trait: most are lifelong learning addicts. It’s a good habit to have.

When Ask met Embla he was overcome with joy, allured by her beauty, and filled with gratitude for the marvelous partner he’d been given. He ruled not over her, nor she over him. They were equal in dignity, though distinct in constitution. Together, male and female bore children—thus, they fulfilled their own divine image, becoming makers themselves. Their progeny, in turn, helped to maintain the balance between the garden groves and the skies. “Meanwhile, Taranus, Hu-Esus, and Beli came together and placed an icon amongst men. A great tree, rooted in the ground yet elevating its branches toward the skies. It served as an image of the All Father’s character, a reminder of the role man and woman were to serve by maintaining balance in Abred, the natural realm. By reaching to the Tree, the soul of man and woman together participated in Gwynfydd, a place beyond though not above the natural realm, a place where they could hold together the mysteries of nature. Yet the most prominent of the Great Tree’s progeny, while matching the Great Tree in beauty, differed in character. The Great Tree had always taken from the land no more and no less than it needed. It reached to the sun and absorbed waters from the nearby wellsprings, but never in excess. The Great Tree exemplified balance and harmony in Abred. Insofar as Ask and Embla maintained the balance of things, respected the agency of each element and creature, the Great Tree was a true Tree of Life. It nourished them in kind, channeling Awen into their souls. “The other tree, its progeny, rebelled against its own nature. It sought not balance nor harmony between the elements, but its own magnificence. It took from the land not as the land would freely give, but whatever it might use at the land’s expense. It could take no more light than the sun would offer, but drawing in all moisture from every surrounding wellspring and from the air itself, the temperate sun no longer exhibited a pleasant warmth, but a scorching heat. “But Ask and Embla, blinded by this Wayward Tree’s magnificence, failed to see its true character. Allured by its fruit, they took from it and ate. Thus, Ask and Embla came to resemble the Wayward Tree and forgot the Tree of Life. “Enraged by what he had seen, how his likeness had departed from Awen and the way of the Great Tree of Life, the All Father—Taranus, Hu-Esus, and Beli—dispatched an emissary, the one known as Michael, to Earth to salvage what had been lost.

The Second Middle Passage was the central event in the lives of African-American people between the American Revolution and slavery's final demise in December 1865. Whether slaves were themselves marched across the continent or were afraid that they, their families, or their friends would be, the massive deportation traumatized black people, both slave and free. Like some great, inescapable incubus, the colossal transfer cast a shadow over all aspects of black life, leaving no part unaffected. It fueled a series of plantation revolutions - cotton across the immense expanse of the Lower South, sugar in the lower Mississippi Valley, hemp in the upper valley - that created new, powerful slave societies. Although the magnitude of the changes and the vastness of the area effected - from the hills of Appalachia to the Texas plains - encouraged an extraordinary variety of social formations, no corner escaped the experience of the staple-producing plantation. Its presence resonated outside the region, eroding slavery on the seaboard South to such an extent that some portions of the Upper South - most prominently the border slave states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri - devolved from slave societies into societies with slaves. Finally, it accelerated the North's evolution from a society with slaves to a free society.

Those who view mathematical science, not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, whose intrinsic beauty, symmetry and logical completeness, when regarded in their connexion together as a whole, entitle them to a prominent place in the interest of all profound and logical minds, but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world, and those unceasing changes of mutual relationship which, visibly or invisibly, consciously or unconsciously to our immediate physical perceptions, are interminably going on in the agencies of the creation we live amidst...

to produce. As John Adams wrote, “Property monopolized or in the Possession of a few is a Curse to Mankind. We should preserve not an Absolute Equality.—this is unnecessary, but preserve all from extreme Poverty, and all others from extravagant Riches.”1 Here are ten steps that I think might help put us more on the course intended by the Revolutionary generation, to help us move beyond where we are stuck and instead toward what we ought to be: 1. Don’t panic Did the founders anticipate a Donald Trump? I would say yes. As James Madison wrote in the most prominent of his contributions to the Federalist Papers, “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”2 Just after Aaron Burr nearly became president, Jefferson wrote that “bad men will sometimes get in, & with such an immense patronage, may make great progress in corrupting the public mind & principles. This is a subject with which wisdom & patriotism should be occupied.”3 Fortunately the founders built a durable system, one that often in recent years has stymied Trump. He has tried to introduce a retrogressive personal form of rule, but repeatedly has run into a Constitution built instead to foster the rule of law.4 Over the last several years we have seen Madison’s checks and balances operate robustly. Madison designed a structure that could accommodate people acting unethically and venally. Again, our national political gridlock sometimes is not a bug but a feature. It shows our system is working. The key task is to do our best to make sure the machinery of the system works. This begins with ensuring that eligible citizens are able to vote. This ballot box is the basic building block of our system. We should appreciate how strong and flexible our Constitution is. It is all too easy, as one watches the follies and failings of humanity, to conclude that we live in a particularly wicked time. In a poll taken just as I was writing the first part of this book, the majority of Americans surveyed said they think they are living at the lowest point in American history.5 So it is instructive to be reminded that Jefferson held similar beliefs about his own era. He wrote that there were “three epochs in history signalized by the total extinction of national morality.” The first two were in ancient times, following the deaths of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, he thought, and the third was his own age.6 As an aside, Trump’s attacks on immigrants might raise a few eyebrows among the founders. Seven of the thirty-nine people who signed the Constitution were themselves born abroad, most notably Hamilton and James Wilson.7

In addition to wartime strategic interests, a complex combination of motives led to the final decision to issue the Balfour Declaration. Contemporary explanations tended to stress the Biblical romanticism of British officials’ interest in the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine and their sympathy for the plight of Jews in eastern Europe. The first scholarly accounts focused more on the political and diplomatic context in which British officials came to see Zionism as an ally. These early interpretations stressed the Balfour Declaration as a product of the activities of the Zionist Organization, or specifically of Dr Chaim Weizmann, the most prominent Zionist spokesman. Weizmann was engaged during the war in biochemical research for Britain’s Ministry of Munitions. His influential contacts and skilful persistence were credited with convincing British officials of the wartime propaganda value that a gesture of support for Zionism would carry in the United States and Russia, where Jews were believed to wield great power.

After Germany's collapse in 1918 Jewry became very powerful in Germany in all spheres of life, especially in the political, general intellectual and cultural, and, most particularly, the economic spheres. The men came back from the front, had nothing to look forward to, and found a large number of Jews who had come in during the war from Poland and the East, holding positions, particularly economic positions. It is known that, under the influence of the war and business concerned with it -- demobilization, which offered great possibilities for doing business, inflation, deflation -- enormous shifts and transfers took place in the propertied classes. There were many Jews who did not show the necessary restraint and who stood out more and more in public life, so that they actually invited certain comparisons because of their numbers and the position they controlled in contrast to the German people. In addition there was the fact that particularly those parties which were avoided by nationally minded people also had Jewish leadership out of proportion to the total number of Jews. That did not apply only to Germany, but also to Austria, which we have always considered a part of Germany. There the entire Social Democratic leadership was almost exclusively in Jewish hands. They played a very considerable part in politics, particularly in the left-wing parties, and they also became very prominent in the press in all political directions. (14 March 1946)

MANY YEARS AGO, I had joined the local news desk of a prominent newspaper in Bengaluru, the sleepy south Indian town that became the country’s Silicon Valley. After trying my hand at crime reporting and general business journalism, I developed an interest in tracking technology. Among other things in the mid noughties, I had half a page in the paper to feature new gadgets every week. Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung and a few other companies were regulars on the page. While I was enjoying my work, my salary needed a boost. (The media industry’s decline was just about beginning, and salaries were as poor then as they are today.) Getting out of the rather difficult circumstances that I found myself in, I moved on to the Economic Times to report on technology. The business daily was India’s largest pink paper by circulation, and I worked with some of the best journalists of the time. My job was mainly to write about technology services companies. Soon I got bored with tracking quarterly results and rehearsed statements. This was around 2012, and India’s start-up ecosystem was in its infancy. I quit the paper to join a start-up blog. I didn’t ask for a raise. I was just happy to be able to write about start-ups and their founders. It was something new, and their excitement was infectious. In those days, ‘start-up’ was not a mainstream beat in India. Only niche blogs wrote about them. On the personal front, there were months when I was flat broke. One evening I sold my old Nokia 5800 for ₹300 at a second-hand electronics shop to buy a packet of biryani. That is still the best biryani I’ve ever had. The two years at the start-up blog were also my best two years ever. As start-ups became the buzzword, I went back to the pink paper to write about them. I was able to upgrade my life a little. I moved into a middle-class apartment with my family. I got some furniture and so on. After selling the Nokia phone, I used a feature phone for a few days. But now I had to upgrade my phone. After much research, I zeroed in on a Micromax handset. Micromax, a Gurgaon-based company that began making handsets in 2008, had some smartphones that were affordable on a young journalist’s salary. It was also a leading brand and had some interesting features such as dual SIM and a great touchscreen display. Going from a phone that ran on Symbian (Nokia’s proprietary operating system that failed) to an Android-based phone was like suddenly being

Vasana is determinism that feels like free will. I’m reminded of my friend Jean, whom I’ve known for almost twenty years. Jean considers himself very spiritual and went so far in the early nineties as to walk way from his job with a newspaper in Denver to live in an ashram in western Massachusetts. But he found the atmosphere choking. “They’re all crypto Hindus,” he complained. “They don’t do anything but pray and chant and meditate.” So Jean decided to move on with his life. He’s fallen in love with a couple of women but has never married. He doesn’t like the notion of settling down and tends to move to a new state every four years or so. (He once told me that he counted up and discovered that he’s lived in forty different houses since he was born.) One day Jean called me with a story. He was on a date with a woman who had taken a sudden interest in Sufism, and while they were driving home, she told Jean that according to her Sufi teacher, everyone has a prevailing characteristic. “You mean the thing that is most prominent about them, like being extroverted or introverted?” he asked. “No, not prominent,” she said. “Your prevailing characteristic is hidden. You act on it without seeing that you’re acting on it.” The minute he heard this, Jean became excited. “I looked out the car window, and it hit me,” he said. “I sit on the fence. I am only comfortable if I can have both sides of a situation without committing to either.” All at once a great many pieces fell into place. Jean could see why he went into an ashram but didn’t feel like he was one of the group. He saw why he fell in love with women but always saw their faults. Much more came to light. Jean complains about his family yet never misses a Christmas with them. He considers himself an expert on every subject he’s studied—there have been many—but he doesn’t earn his living pursuing any of them. He is indeed an inveterate fence-sitter. And as his date suggested, Jean had no idea that his Vasana, for that’s what we’re talking about, made him enter into one situation after another without ever falling off the fence. “Just think,” he said with obvious surprise, “the thing that’s the most me is the thing I never saw.” If unconscious tendencies kept working in the dark, they wouldn’t be a problem. The genetic software in a penguin or wildebeest guides it to act without any knowledge that it is behaving much like every other penguin or wildebeest. But human beings, unique among all living creatures, want to break down Vasana. It’s not good enough to be a pawn who thinks he’s a king. We crave the assurance of absolute freedom and its result—a totally open future. Is this reasonable? Is it even possible? In his classic text, the Yoga Sutras, the sage Patanjali informs us that there are three types of Vasana. The kind that drives pleasant behavior he calls white Vasana; the kind that drives unpleasant behavior he calls dark Vasana; the kind that mixes the two he calls mixed Vasana. I would say Jean had mixed Vasana—he liked fence-sitting but he missed the reward of lasting love for another person, a driving aspiration, or a shared vision that would bond him with a community. He displayed the positives and negatives of someone who must keep every option open. The goal of the spiritual aspirant is to wear down Vasana so that clarity can be achieved. In clarity you know that you are not a puppet—you have released yourself from the unconscious drives that once fooled you into thinking that you were acting spontaneously.

If the disciples had their eyes set on great prominence and high rewards in eternity, they had to know the path to that end is marked by great suffering and endurance.

The personal case histories were the most encouraging. A prominent Los Angeles public relations executive has been living with MM for fourteen years, rides horses, and has an altogether active life on drug maintenance. An Arizona man survived MM and with his wife set up a foundation and website for other families bewildered by the diagnosis. I learned, for the first time, that Frank McGee, host of the Today show from 1971 to 1974, suffered from MM and kept it from everyone despite his ever more gaunt appearance. When he died after putting in another full week on the air his producers and friends were stunned. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, was another MM casualty, which led many to believe that he had established the high-profile multiple myeloma treatment center in Little Rock, Arkansas. This is a full-immersion process in which MM is the singular target under the commanding title of Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy. There is a Walton auditorium on the institute’s University of Arkansas medical school campus, but the institute itself was founded by Bart Barlogie, a renowned MM specialist from the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The institute has an impressive record, running well ahead of the national average for survival for those who are dealing with MM. One number is especially notable. The institute has followed 1,070 patients for more than ten years, and 783 have never had a relapse of the disease. Sam Walton was treated by Dr. Barlogie at MD Anderson before the Little Rock institute was founded, but the connection ended there. Walton, who’d had an earlier struggle with leukemia, didn’t survive his encounter with multiple myeloma, dying in April 1992, a time when life expectancy for a man his age with this cancer was short. I was unaware of all of this when I was diagnosed. I took comfort in the repeated reassurances of specialists that great progress in treating MM with a new class of drugs, your own body’s reengineered immunology system, was rapidly improving chances of a longer survival than the published five to ten years. As I began to respond to treatment the favored and welcome line was, “You’re gonna die but from something else.

southern star or constellation which once temporarily gained prominence in the sky, or may stand for some recurrent phenomenon, he most likely represented different ‘things’ on different occasions. Bali was guided by Venus, the guru of the asuras who, as we saw in “The Greatness of Saturn,” possesses the Sanjivani Vidya, which can revive the dead. Indeed, Venus is always dying (disappearing from view when it goes too close to the sun) and being reborn (reappearing after a predictable period of residence in the ‘underworld’). Asuras are known to be stronger at night, which they rule, but each dawn the potential chaos that night represents is dispelled by the sun, who reappears to separate the earth from the sky and to measure the world by rising in the east, appearing overhead at noon, and setting in the west. These may be the three great strides that the dwarf Vamana uses in The Begging of the Universe incident from the “The Greatness of Saturn” to subdue Bali and return him to the celestial underworld. Or perhaps the three steps are measured at the vernal equinox, when Vamana’s left foot reaches to the North (celestial)

in North India would have remained ‘unbrokenly’ visible to sky-watchers there. Diti was then the visible portion of the southern hemisphere of the heavens, a portion which changes (is ‘bound’ or ‘broken’) day by day as the Earth shifts her position in space. Diti and Aditi are the two wives of the Rishi Kashyapa (‘The Tortoise’), who is the tortoise-shaped firmament. Aditi, whom we met in “The Greatness of Saturn” in the chapter on the Sun, is the ‘mother’ (the home, the womb) of all the deities (stars, constellations, and planets). Prominent among Aditi’s s children are the twelve solar deities known as the Twelve Adityas (‘sons of Aditi’), each of which rules one month of the year (= one constellation of the zodiac). Each Adirya courses through the skies in his chariot drawn by seven green horses (the seven Vedic meters, which with the chariot represent all the Vedas and all there is to know, including infinite space). Aditi’s most famous child was Vamana, the incarnation of Vishnu who took birth that he might beg the universe back from Bali, king of the asuras (who reside in the southern celestial hemisphere). While Bali may represent some particular