Resistance Bands Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Resistance Bands. Here they are! All 54 of them:

Slowly his resistance ebbed. She felt the change in his body, the relaxing of tension, his shoulders curving around her as if he could draw her into himself. Murmuring her name, he brought her hand to his face and nuzzled ardently into her palm, his lips brushing the warm circlet of her gold wedding band. “My love is upon you,” he whispered…and she knew then that she had won.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
One phrase stuck in Fainy’s mind, and he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that night: It is time for all honest men to band together to resist the ravages of greedy privilege.
John Dos Passos (The 42nd Parallel (The U.S.A. Trilogy, #1))
I worry about exposing him to bands like Journey, the appreciation of which will surely bring him nothing but the opprobrium of his peers. Though he has often been resistant - children so seldom know what is good for them - I have taught him to appreciate all the groundbreaking musicmakers of our time - Big Country, Haircut 100, Loverboy - and he is lucky for it. His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me.
Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
We will not have any of these cases in the Soviet Union,” said a Soviet delegate confidently. Don Francis couldn’t resist saying to Marc Conant in his loudest stage whisper, “And they won’t, all right.” In a stern Russian accent, Francis continued: “You have AIDS—bang, bang, bang.” The Soviets were not amused.
Randy Shilts (And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition)
We’ll call him Maynard McSmollet and he can be from two towns over,” said Aidan, snickering. “No one really knew him that well, kept to himself, but he was crashing the party because he could never resist a kegger—or how about Roderick Spoon? Roddy. The Rodster. He was in band and played electric keyboards but got kicked out of several schools for setting small fires. Yeah, that’s better. What do you think, Gavriel?
Holly Black (The Coldest Girl in Coldtown)
After all, it is public opinion that social media exploits, and public opinion that has no patience for ambiguity, context, or breaks with tradition. Public opinion is not looking to change or to be challenged; it is what wants a band to keep making songs exactly like the hit they once had.
Jenny Odell (How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy)
This is no band of thieves. It’s the Resistance.
Sabaa Tahir (An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1))
Exercise” includes a combination of purposeful aerobic cardio work (e.g., swimming, cycling, jogging, group exercise classes), strength training (e.g., free weights, resistance bands, gym machines, mat Pilates, lunges, squats), and routines that promote flexibility and balance (e.g., stretching, yoga). It also includes leading a physically active life throughout the day (e.g., taking the stairs instead of the elevator; avoiding prolonged sitting; going for walks during breaks; engaging in hobbies such as dancing, hiking, and gardening).
Sanjay Gupta (Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age)
I want to be known as the 23 year-old who is foolishly in love with a Prince she can't see. I want to rejoice while holding the rose of singleness, even when my hands bleed from its thorns. I want to resist the urge to envy the pairs growing in the middle of my neighbors' gardens. I want to be rooted in the simple truth that unripen pairs taste like lies and lingering loneliness. 
I want to put Jesus on my bullet wound and cling to His heart wrenching hope because He was kind enough to be a Band-Aid when He should have stayed a King.
Katie Kiesler Nelson (22 and Single)
When we heard at first [John Brown] was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away" because he resisted the government. Which ways have they thrown their lives, pray? ---such would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves and murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by their enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not gain a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he won't gain anything by it." Well, no, I don;t suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul- and what a soul!- when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than a quart of blood, but that is not the market heroes carry their blood to.
Henry David Thoreau (A Plea For Captain John Brown)
She's selling CDs on the corner, fifty cents to any stoner, any homeboy with a boner. Sleet and worse - the weather's awful. Will she live? It's very doubtful. Life out here is never healthful. She puts a CD in her Sony. It's the about the pony and a pie with pepperoni and a mom with warm, clean hands who doesn't bring home guys from bands or make some sickening demands. The cold wind bites like icy snakes. She tries to move but merely shakes. Some thief leans down and simply takes. Her next CD's called Land Of Food. No one there can be tattooed or mumble things that might be crude and everything to eat is free, there's always a big Christmas tree and crystal bowls of potpourri. She's weak but still she play one more: She's on a beach with friends galore. They scamper down the sandy shore to watch the towering waves cascade and marvel at the cute mermaids who call to her and serenade. She can't resist. the water's fine. The rocks are like a kind of shrine. The foam goes down like scarlet wine. One cop stands up and says, "She's gone." The other shakes his head and yawns. It's barely 10:00, and life goes on.
Ron Koertge (Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses)
I asked once before, do you always court trouble, Miss Click, or does it just seem tae follow you where’er you go?” She flushed. So word of her run-in with Hero McClary had reached the doctor as well. Her face grew pinker, not from his mention of the feud but from his intense scrutiny. She managed as calmly as she could, “As I told Colonel Barr, the matter is settled.” His eyes sparked. “Nae, no’ settled. Nothing is ever settled with a clan like the McClarys. It matters no’ that you’re a woman. It matters greatly that you live alone.” She swallowed, not taking her eyes from his, and saw the warning and concern in their blueness. Wearily, elbows on the table, she rested her face in her hands. Gently but firmly his fingers encircled her wrists like iron bands and brought them back down. “Look at me, Lael, and say that you’ll come tae the fort, just for the winter.” Lael. Lay-elle. In his Highland brogue, it sounded like no name she had ever heard, yet she bristled at his familiarity. Her resistance to the notion of forting up doubled. “Nay,” was all she said as she looked away. Releasing her, he looked down at the bowl of food Ma Horn had set before him. Did he find turnips and greens disagreeable fare? Or was he regretting saying her given name? In a few days’ time, “Miss Click” had changed to “Lael.” “I’d best be going,” she said but made no move to do so. “Nae . . . stay.
Laura Frantz (The Frontiersman's Daughter)
AND A FEW THAT WEREN’T THE BEST IDEA. NO ONE THOUGHT THE ABILITY RESTRICTOR WOULD WORK—BUT IT DID. EXCEPT THE COUNCIL RUINED IT BY ORDERING SOPHIE TO WEAR IT AND… YEAH. I WISH I’D NEVER MADE IT. I DESTROYED IT, THOUGH—AND I’LL NEVER MAKE ANOTHER! I MADE THESE BLOCKER BANDS TO HELP SOPHIE WITH HER ENHANCING—AND THEY DEFINITELY DID THEIR JOB. BUT USING CRUSH CUFFS KINDA GOT ME STUCK IN THE MOST AWKWARD CONVERSATION EVER.… THE WARDEN ALSO WORKED PERFECTLY AND MONITORED ALVAR’S EVERY MOVE. BUT I WISH I’D MADE SURE IT WAS RESISTANT TO NULLS… FOR THE RECORD, THESE SENSE BLASTERS WERE ACTUALLY WORKING REALLY WELL UNTIL COUNCILLOR ZARINA FRIED ONE WITH LIGHTNING. STILL, I SHOULD’VE PUT AN OVERRIDE BECAUSE FITZ ALMOST GOT KILLED.
Shannon Messenger (Unlocked (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8.5))
She thinks she’s fighting against lethargy. She does jumping jacks in the motel courtyard, calls her best friend in Juneau from the motel pay phone and anxiously tries to reminisce about their shitty high school band. They sing an old song together, and she feels almost normal. But increasingly she finds herself powerless to resist the warmth that spreads through her chest, the midday paralysis, the hunger for something slow and deep and unnameable. Some maid has drawn the blackout curtains. One light bulb dangles. The dark reminds Angie of packed earth, moisture. What she interprets as sprawling emotion is the Joshua tree. Here was its birth, in the sands of Black Rock Canyon. Here was its death, and its rebirth as a ghostly presence in the human. Couldn’t it perhaps Leap back into that older organism? The light bulb pulses in time with Angie’s headache. It acquires a fetal glow, otherworldly.
Joe Hill (The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (The Best American Series))
There is little honour to be won by a numerous army over a few scattered bands, by men clad in mail over half-armed husbandmen and shepherds—of such conquest small were the glory. But if, as all Christian men believe, and as it is the constant trust of my countrymen, from memory of the times of our fathers,—if the Lord of Hosts should cast the balance in behalf of the fewer numbers and worse-armed party, I leave it with your Highness to judge what would, in that event, be the diminution of worship and fame. Is it extent of vassalage and dominion your Highness desires, by warring with your mountain neighbours? Know 187that you may, if it be God's will, gain our barren and rugged mountains; but, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge in wilder and more distant solitudes, and, when we have resisted to the last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers. Ay, men, women, and children, we will be frozen into annihilation together, ere one free Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master.
Walter Scott (Anne of Geierstein)
My father peed like a horse. His urine lowed in one great sweeping dream that started suddenly and stopped just as suddenly, a single, winking arc of shimmering clarity that endured for a prodigious interval and then disappeared in an instant, as though the outflow were a solid object—and arch of glittering ice or a thick band of silver—and not (as it actually approximated) a parabolic, dynamically averaged graph of the interesting functions of gravity, air resistance, and initial velocity on a non-viscous fluid, produced and exhibited by a man who’d just consumed more than a gallon of midwestern beer. The flow was as clear as water. When it struck the edge of the gravel shoulder, the sound was like a bed-sheet being ripped. Beneath this high reverberation, he let out a protracted appreciative whistle that culminated in a tunneled gasp, his lips flapping at the close like a trumpeters. In the tiny topsoil, a gap appeared, a wisp entirely unashamed. Bernie bumped about in the cargo bay. My father moved up close to peer through the windshield, zipping his trousers and smiling through the glass at my mother. I realized that the yellow that should have been in his urine was unmistakable now in his eyes. ‘’Thank goodness,’’ my mother said when the car door closed again. ‘’I was getting a little bored in here.
Ethan Canin (A Doubter's Almanac)
Business leadership is based on two elements: vision and technical competence. Top people in a given industry always embody at least one of those two elements. Sometimes, but rarely, they embody both of them. Simply put, vision is the ability to see what other people don’t. It’s a Ford executive named Lee Iacocca realizing that a market existed for an automobile that was both a racing car and a street vehicle—and coming up with the Mustang. It’s Steven Jobs realizing that computers needed to be sold in a single box, like a television sets, instead of piece by piece. About one hundred years ago, Walter Chrysler was a plant manager for a locomotive company. Then he decided to go into the car business, which was a hot new industry at the time. The trouble was, Walter Chrysler didn’t know a lot about cars, except that they were beginning to outnumber horses on the public roadways. To remedy this problem, Chrysler bought one of the Model T Fords that were becoming so popular. To learn how it worked, he took it apart and put it back together. Then, just to be sure he understood everything, he repeated this. Then, to be absolutely certain he knew what made a car work, he took it apart and put it together forty-eight more times, for a grand total of fifty. By the time he was finished, Chrysler not only had a vision of thousands of cars on American highways, he also had the mechanical details of those cars engraved in his consciousness. Perhaps you’ve seen the play called The Music Man. It’s about a fast-talking man who arrives in a small town with the intention of hugely upgrading a marching band. However, he can’t play any instruments, doesn’t know how to lead a band, and doesn’t really have any musical skills whatsoever. The Music Man is a comedy, but it’s not totally unrealistic. Some managers in the computer industry don’t know how to format a document. Some automobile executives could not change a tire. There was once even a vice president who couldn’t spell potato. It’s not a good idea to lack the fundamental technical skills of your industry, and it’s really not a good idea to get caught lacking them. So let’s see what you can do to avoid those problems.
Dale Carnegie (Make Yourself Unforgettable: How to Become the Person Everyone Remembers and No One Can Resist (Dale Carnegie))
If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not. It allows us to connect aspects of woman-identification as diverse as the impudent, intimate girl-friendships of eight- or nine-year-olds and the banding together of those women of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries known as Beguines who “shared houses, rented to one another, bequeathed houses to their room-mates … in cheap subdivided houses in the artisans’ area of town,” who “practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressing and living simply and not associating with men,” who earned their livings as spinners, bakers, nurses, or ran schools for young girls, and who managed–until the Church forced them to disperse–to live independent both of marriage and of conventual restrictions. It allows us to connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the women’s school around Sappho of the seventh century B.C.; with the secret sororities and economic networks reported among African women; and with the Chinese marriage resistance sisterhoods–communities of women who refused marriage, or who if married often refused to consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands–the only women in China who were not footbound and who, Agnes Smedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized successful women’s strikes in the silk mills. It allows us to connect and compare disparate individual instances of marriage resistance: for example, the type of autonomy claimed by Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century white woman genius, with the strategies available to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dickinson never married, had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and a smaller group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her way from Florida to Harlem to Columbia University to Haiti and finally back to Florida, moved in and out of white patronage and poverty, professional success and failure; her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical ”. Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.
Adrienne Rich (Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence)
Kirkus Star Review stated of Behind the Lines: "An excellent history that should catapult Miller to the top tier of popular historians.
Jeffrey B. Miller (Behind the Lines: WWI's little-known story of German occupation, Belgian resistance, and the band of Yanks who helped save millions from starvation.)
I am Doug Hammer, U.S. Army Green Beret, retired. I served my country in two wars, in combat and received the Purple Heart for my war wounds. Until recently, I was willing to put up with my country imprisoning conservatives who did not agree with the President. I was willing to accept the imprisoning of pastors and others who were not favored by the White House. My thought was that America elected the President, so we get what we deserve. However, I have concluded that the President is not legitimately in office, that he has the worst interests of the country at heart and that he is attempting to destroy the capitalistic system and install a socialist, even Communist, system in its place. I finally concluded that rumors of Russian troops, stationed at this base, being used to execute Americans were true. Our band of veterans, which we have named the American Resistance, has taken out those foreign troops. We take full responsibility for doing so. We are now in control of Fort Carson, along with the command structure of the active duty troops stationed at this base. We call on all American military personnel, wherever located in the world, to join with us in resisting this illegitimate administration, rebuking them and removing them from office, by force of arms, if necessary. May God bless America.
John Price (THE WARNING A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 2))
In 378, the emperor Valens confronted roving war bands of Germanic Goths at Adrianople near Constantinople. With a massive cavalry charge, the Goths shattered Valens’s army and killed the emperor. It was a disaster of the first order.28 The capital managed to shut its gates against the German invader. However, the price of the Eastern Empire’s survival was the loss of the West. One Germanic tribe after another—Goths, Vandals, Franks, Allemanni, Burgundians—shot westward through the Balkans, overrunning the Rhine frontier and the Roman provinces on the other side, including Italy. The basic framework of imperial government, like the Roman road system dating back to Caesar Augustus, collapsed under the strain. So did law and order. Only the Church held firm. In virtually every town, starting with Rome itself, its leaders became symbols of resistance. Like the young Genovefa (later canonized Saint Genevieve) in Paris, they rallied citizens to stand fast and defend their cities; like Pope Leo I with Attila the Hun, they struck deals with the invaders to spare their congregations. When negotiations failed they organized humanitarian relief for the devastated areas and offered words of comfort and hope when everything looked its bleakest. The Catholic bishop became the one upholder of a social and cultural order to which the people living in his diocese, including pagans, could still cling.
Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization)
Benefits of Smart Watch Fitness Band Have you been so busy in- hustle hard in life that your health is getting sidelined? Yes! Then your smart lifestyle needs smart choices like a fitness band on your wrist. Incorporate your health with daily activities and monitor your fitness level. Today these bands are filled with exciting features like step count, heart rate, sleep meter, calories burn etc. –these small wearable gadgets have made tracking your fitness easier than ever, helping you lead a healthier and fitter life. So let’s come down to the benefits of fitness bands. Why it’s time to upgrade from simple watches to smart ones. Your all-Rounder Fitness Companion. Track and monitor almost all your activities like heart rate, calories burn, step counts, blood pressure meter etc. HAMMER’s fitness trackers include all these features along with automatic sleep status monitoring. It will tell your sleep time, awake time, deepness and lightness of sleep. Basically it will give you all the data you need to make informed decisions about your health. You can alter your habits accordingly and lead a better lifestyle. Hammer Pulse Smart Watch for Body Temperature Daily Visual Progress of your Hard Work Smart Watch fitness bands can help you track numerous activities throughout the day. Seeing results of your effort is instant motivation booster. It motivates you to do more. With an LED Color HD display it shows you how much active you have been throughout the day. On days when laziness takes a toll on you– it reminds you to workout and be active. It helps you to push a little harder than before and excel in your workout regimes! Can be as Tough as you They are waterproof and dust resistant which makes it suitable for intense training as it won’t slip because of sweating and can be easily cleaned after workout sessions. They can be switched into different modes like freestyle walking, running, swimming and much more as per your requirements. Sweat in Style Who said you can’t train hard in style? Fashionable and light as feather design built, available in color varieties sets easily on your wrist. Either trendy sports wear or formals these fitness trackers just never go out of style. Hey, what’s up? Stay updated Just Synchronize your phone with your fitness band and receive phone calls, messages, notifications or share your progress on social media or with friends. Hammer Pulse Smart Watch Get set and go ! No matter how long your day was- they won’t ditch you. Lasts up to 24-36 hours after one charge. Hammer Pulse smart watchhas gone an extra mile and gives 7 Days battery backup with wireless charging . No wire No worry! No need to Squeak or Squeal, Pocket Friendly Price Gone are those days when you had to compromise on some features as per your price range. HAMMER offers all the features in products at really affordable prices. You get more at less here – witches say it’s to grab the deal magical prices. Health is Priority! smart watch for body temperature In these times when being healthy should be our priority. HAMMER has launched a new unisex smart watch Hammer Pulse which is best of both – a fashionable watch and an ultimate fitness tracker. It is packed with all the features of fitness band and unique features like ● Body temperature monitor ● oxygen saturation level monitor ● Weather updates ● Multiple sports modes ● IP67 waterproof- don’t be afraid to get wet. ● 24/7 monitor, vibrates and alert when any irregularities or abnormality is detected. So what are you waiting for? Get the benefits of a fitness tracker today and start working towards your dream body. You want it, you get it here at HAMMER. Browse, Shop and add a healthy addition to your daily life. Up your game and get your hands on one of these today !
Hammer
An infection or inflammation of the larynx is known as laryngitis (lar-in-JI .-tis). It commonly affects the vibrational qualities of the vocal folds. Hoarseness is the most familiar result. Mild cases are temporary and seldom serious. However, bacterial or viral infections of the epiglottis can be very dangerous. The resulting swelling may close the glottis and cause suffocation. This condition, acute epiglottitis (ep-ih-glot-TI .-tis), can develop rapidly after a bacterial infection of the throat. Young children are most likely to be affected. The Trachea The trachea (TRA .-ke.-uh), or windpipe, is a tough, flexible tube with a diameter of about 2.5 cm (1 in.) and a length of about 11 cm (4.33 in.) (Figure 23–6). The trachea begins anterior to vertebra C6 in a ligamentous attachment to the cricoid cartilage. It ends in the mediastinum, at the level of vertebra T5, where it branches to form the right and left main bronchi. The epithelium of the trachea is continuous with that of the larynx. The mucosa of the trachea resembles that of the nasal cavity and nasopharynx (look back at Figure 23–2a). The submucosa (sub-mu.-KO .-suh), a thick layer of connective tissue, surrounds the mucosa. The submucosa contains tracheal glands whose mucous secretions reach the tracheal lumen through a number of short ducts. The trachea contains 15–20 tracheal cartilages that stiffen the tracheal walls and protect the airway (see Figure 23–6a). They also prevent it from collapsing or overexpanding as pressure changes in the respiratory system. Each tracheal cartilage is C-shaped. The closed portion of the C protects the anterior and lateral surfaces of the trachea. The open portion of the C faces posteriorly, toward the esophagus (see Figure 23–6b). Because these cartilages are not continuous, the posterior tracheal wall can easily distort when you swallow, allowing large masses of food to pass through the esophagus. An elastic anular ligament and the trachealis, a band of smooth muscle, connect the ends of each tracheal cartilage (see Figure 23–6b). Contraction of the trachealis reduces the diameter of the trachea. This narrowing increases the tube’s resistance to airflow. The normal diameter of the trachea changes from moment to moment, primarily under the control of the sympathetic division of the ANS. Sympathetic stimulation increases the diameter of the trachea and makes it easier to move large volumes of air along the respiratory passageways.
Frederic H. Martini (Fundamentals of Anatomy & Physiology)
The bizarre schizoid style of the Trump administration becomes intelligible as an attempt to escape this dilemma. Elected as an agent of negation, President Trump must now promote positive policies and programs. Any direction he takes will alienate some of his supporters, who are bound together largely on the strength of their repudiations. A predilection for the mainstream will alienate most of them. Against this background, the loud and vulgar sound of the president’s voice becomes the signal for a mustering of the political war-bands. The subject at issue is often elite behavior unrelated to policy: “fake news” in the media, for example, or an NFL star kneeling during the National Anthem. Those who oppose Trump can’t resist the lure of outrage. Their responses tend to be no less loud or vulgar, and are sometimes more violent, than the offending message.80 Groups on the other side of the spectrum, now stoked to full-throated rant mode, rally reflexively to the president’s defense. I have described this process elsewhere.81 It’s a zero-sum struggle for attention that rewards the most immoderate voices—and, without question, Donald Trump is a master of the game. His unbridled language mobilizes his anti-elite followers, even as his policies appeal to more “conventional” Republicans and conservatives. Politically, it’s a high-wire act without a net. Trump was never a popular candidate. He’s not a popular president. To retain his base, he must provoke his opposition into a frenzy of loathing. Ordinary Americans, inevitably, have come to regard the president as the sum of all his rants. For our confused and demoralized elites, who have no clue about the game being played, Donald Trump looks something like the Beast of the Apocalypse, a sign of chaotic end-times. Writes the normally reflective Ian Buruma: “the act of undermining democratic institutions by abusing them in front of braying mobs is not modern at all. It is what aspiring dictators have always done.
Martin Gurri (The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium)
All successful people I know have a small band of supporters on one side and doubters on the other.
Scott Allan (Nothing Scares Me: Charge Forward With Confidence, Conquer Resistance, and Break Through Your Limitations (Bulletproof Mindset Mastery Series))
I don’t imagine that we can alter anything in our own lifetime. But one can imagine little knots of resistance springing up here and there—small groups of people banding themselves together, and gradually growing, and even leaving a few records behind, so that the next generations can carry on where we leave off.
George Orwell (1984)
Adam Smith had a sharper eye. As I quoted last time, he understood that the “masters of mankind,” the merchants and manufacturers, would make sure that their own interests are cared for no matter how grievous the effect on others and would follow their vile maxim: all for ourselves, nothing for anyone else. Madison didn’t see things this way at the time of the Convention, though it didn’t take long for him to gain a more realistic understanding of the world. Already by 1792 he recognized that the Hamiltonian developmental capitalist state would be a social system “substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty,” leading to “a real domination of the few under an apparent liberty of the many.” In a letter to Jefferson he deplored “the daring depravity of the times [as the] stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government—at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
The trees harbored a clearing where a multitude of white daisies with centers as yellow as pirate’s doubloons rippled in the breeze. Looking at them, Emma forgot her troubles. “There must be one for every angel in heaven,” she breathed. Steven, who had been spreading the picnic blanket on the ground, came to stand behind her. His hands rested lightly on her shoulders, and he bent to plant the lightest of kisses on her nape. “Today they all belong to just one angel—you.” She turned to look up at him, and his arms slipped naturally around her waist. He’d tossed his hat onto the picnic blanket, but the imprint of the band showed in his glossy brown hair, and Emma couldn’t resist touching it with the fingers of one hand. “Why did you have to go and get yourself blown up in Whitneyville?” she asked softly. “Life was so simple before I met you—I knew what I thought about everything.” A trace of a smile touched his lips. “And now?” “I’m confused, Steven. I’ve spent all my time with one man over the last few months and now here I am, standing in an ocean of daisies with quite another.” He brushed her mouth with his own. “If it helps, Miss Emma, I’m as muddled up as you are. A few weeks ago I just wanted to keep on moving. Now it’s like I’ve got lead in my boots.” Emma
Linda Lael Miller (Emma And The Outlaw (Orphan Train, #2))
Although these were easily the darkest days in Alfred’s life, they also were to become the most famous. The stories of his persevering against the Vikings transformed King Alfred into Alfred the Great. The story falls into a category that the modern ear can easily recognize and appreciate. From the legends of Robin Hood hiding out with his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest to the tales of men fighting in the underground French resistance during World War II, the modern listener has been well trained to be moved by the courageous nobility of continuing a campaign of resistance long after being driven into hiding. The seeming despair of a life of defiant resistance, while being hunted in one’s homeland, captures the imagination and takes on a romantic hue. But this was not a category of story that the Anglo-Saxon ear was accustomed to hearing. To his contemporaries, Alfred’s plight was an unqualified tragedy, utterly devoid of romanticism
Benjamin R. Merkle (The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great)
Commitmentphobics tend to resist being defined by a job or a career, even when they are successful. An example of this is the lawyer/writer who teaches and plays in a jazz band weekends. The bottom line is that they always want to feel that the possibility exists that they can get out from any job situation, should they want to. Some want to fairly often.
Steven Carter (MEN WHO CAN'T LOVE)
I recognised this set of thoughts and likened it to an elastic band. I realised that, in the first week of an adventure (or indeed of any great change in life), you are stretching yourself away from normality but you are still bound to it by a giant elastic band. Every fibre in your being wants to just let go, to give up the fight for forward motion and snap you right back to normality. To comfort, to knowing, to safety, to certainty. The further you move from what is familiar, the greater the resistance of the elastic band. It’s a test: how badly do you really want to be there? What are you willing to put up with in order to carry on?
Anna McNuff (Anna's Adventures Boxset: Books 1 - 3: The Pants of Perspective, The United States of Adventure, Llama Drama.)
holster, and Ridge let him. “Yes, sir.” He waited for Bockenhaimer to point out that neither pilots nor colonels had the experience necessary to command army installations, but the general merely leaned forward to squint at the papers. “Retirement?” He leaned closer, a delighted smile stretching his lips. “Retirement!” Ridge resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He wondered if the general had been a drunk before they shipped him out here—could this place have been a punishment for him as well?—or if commanding a remote prison full of felons had driven him to drink. “Yes, sir,” Ridge said. “If you could tell me about the S.O.P. here and give me a few—” Bockenhaimer jumped to his feet, wobbled—Ridge caught him and held him upright despite being surprised—and lunged for the window. “Is that my flier? I can leave today?” “Yes, sir. But I’d appreciate it if you—” The general threw open the window and waved to the pilot. “Wait for me, son. I’m already packed!” Oddly, the wobbling didn’t slow Bockenhaimer down much when he ran around the desk and out the door. Ridge’s mouth was still hanging open when the general appeared in the courtyard below, a bag tucked under his arm as he raced along the cleared sidewalks. “That’s… not exactly how the change-of-command ceremonies I’ve seen usually go.” Ridge hadn’t been expecting a parade and a marching band, not in this remote hole, but a briefing would have been nice. He removed his fur cap and pushed a hand through his hair, surveying his new office. He wondered how long it would take to get rid of the alcohol odor. He also wondered how long that poor potted plant in the corner had been dead. Hadn’t that young captain been the general’s aide? He couldn’t have had some private come in to make sure the place was cleaned? Maybe the staff was too busy guarding the prisoners, and the officers had to wield their own brooms here. Ridge was looking for the fort’s operations manuals when a knock came at the door. “Sir?” Captain Heriton, the officer who had met him at the flier, leaned in, an apprehensive look on his face. His pale hair and pimples made him look about fifteen instead of the twenty-five or more he must be. “Yes?” “It’s about that woman… she said she was dropped off yesterday—we got a big load of new convicts—and that she doesn’t remember the number she was issued.” “The number?” “Yes, sir. The prisoners are issued numbers instead of being called by name. Keeps down the in-fighting. Some of them are prisoners of war and pirates, and there are a few former soldiers, and some of those clansmen from up in the north hills. It’s easier if they start out with new identities here. The general didn’t brief you?” The captain glanced toward the window—the flier had already taken off. “I guess he did leave abruptly.” “Abruptly, yes, that’s a word.” Not the word Ridge would have used, but he couldn’t bring himself to badmouth the general yet, not until he had spent a couple of weeks here and gotten a true feel for where he had landed. “You don’t happen to know where the operations manuals are, do you?” “They should be in here somewhere, sir.” The captain started to lean back into the hall. “The woman’s report, Captain,” Ridge said dryly. He knew the man hadn’t found it, but wasn’t ready to let some prisoner wander around without
Lindsay Buroker (The Dragon Blood Collection, Books 1-3)
Webster responded on October 10 with An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, the first pro-Constitution pamphlet.45 He explained why the armed populace would remain sovereign under a constitution with an army but no bill of rights: Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.
Stephen P. Halbrook (The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms)
In defense of Madison’s stand, we should recall that his mentality was precapitalist. He assumed that the people who would run the country, those who had the wealth of the nation, would be “enlightened gentlemen,” people who have the good of the society at heart, not their own fortunes. They would be like the mostly mythical Roman noblemen who were an image for the Framers, even providing the names for the pseudonymous pamphlets of the intellectual elite. Adam Smith had a sharper eye. As I quoted last time, he understood that the “masters of mankind,” the merchants and manufacturers, would make sure that their own interests are cared for no matter how grievous the effect on others and would follow their vile maxim: all for ourselves, nothing for anyone else. Madison didn’t see things this way at the time of the Convention, though it didn’t take long for him to gain a more realistic understanding of the world. Already by 1792 he recognized that the Hamiltonian developmental capitalist state would be a social system “substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty,” leading to “a real domination of the few under an apparent liberty of the many.” In a letter to Jefferson he deplored “the daring depravity of the times [as the] stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government—at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations.” Not an unfamiliar picture.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
Key Apache Warriors Cochise—one of the great Chiricahua (Chokonen) chiefs. Born c. 1805. No known pictures exist but he was said to be very tall and imposing, over six feet and very muscular. Son-in-law to Mangas Coloradas. Died in 1874, probably from stomach cancer. Chihuahua—chief of the Warm Springs band (Red Paint people) of the Chiricahua. Fought alongside Geronimo in the resistance. Died in 1901. Fun—probably a cousin to Geronimo and among his best, most trusted warriors. Fun committed suicide in captivity in 1892, after becoming jealous over his young wife, whom he also shot. Only slightly wounded, she recovered. Juh—pronounced “Whoa,” “Ho,” or sometimes “Who.” Chief of the Nedhni band of the Apache, he married Ishton, Geronimo’s “favorite” sister. Juh and Geronimo were lifelong friends and battle brothers. Juh died in 1883. Loco—chief of the Warm Springs band. Born in 1823, the same year as Geronimo. Once was mauled by a bear and killed it single-handedly with a knife, but his face was clawed and his left eye was blinded and disfigured. Known as the “Apache Peacemaker,” he preferred peace to war and tried to live under reservation rules. Died as a prisoner of war from “causes unknown” in 1905, at age eighty-two. Lozen—warrior woman and Chief Victorio’s sister. She was a medicine woman and frequent messenger for Geronimo. She fought alongside Geronimo in his long resistance. Mangas Coloradas—Born in 1790, he was the most noted chief of the Bedonkohe Apache. A massive man for his era, at 6'6” and 250 pounds, he was Geronimo’s central mentor and influence. He was betrayed and murdered by the U.S. military in 1863. Geronimo called his murder “the greatest wrong ever done to the Indians.” Mangas—son of the great chief Mangas Coloradas, but did not succeed his father as chief because of his youth and lack of leadership. Died as a prisoner of war in 1901. Naiche—Cochise’s youngest son. Succeeded older brother Taza after he died, becoming the last chief of the free Chiricahua Apache. Nana—brother-in-law to Geronimo and chief of the Warm Springs band. Sometimes referred to as “Old Nana.” Died as a prisoner of war in 1896. Victorio—chief of the Warm Springs band. Noted and courageous leader and a brilliant military strategist. Brother and mentor to warrior woman Lozen. Slain by Mexicans in the massacre of Tres Castillos in 1880.
Mike Leach (Geronimo: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior)
I get caught in a hell-world of some sort. In the initial phase, I’m aware of and merging with a kind of network of light, with a sense that this network or fabric contains all possibilities of experience. Each point of light represents a human experience, like what the Buddhists call a “seed-thought”. One of these points could be “fear of dying.” Things change so quickly, that this fear-seed usually doesn’t develop into a full-blown panic state. But if I get fixated on it, or resist letting it pass, I get stuck and the movement stops. The shimmering network freezes and congeals: it becomes brittle, harsh and glaring, like steel wires and bands. It closes in on me, like an immense spider’s web, tighter and tighter, as in Stan Grof ’s description of BPM-II. There is dread and terror associated with it and it can develop into a fullblown hallucination of a hell-realm. (These can occur with psilocybe mushrooms and LSD, too). It’s a fully developed hell, with demons torturing me, reminiscent of concentration camp accounts or the torture chambers of the Inquisition. It has a historical feel to it, as if I’m a participant-observer of collective human history, since I know these are not personal memories from my life. Being aware of the possibility of such hellish experiences and centering preparation would definitely reduce the chances of getting stuck in them (RM).
Ralph Metzner (The Toad and the Jaguar)
Beth taught me a simple exercise to help understand the importance of scapular positioning and control, a movement known as Scapular CARs, for controlled articular rotations: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and place a medium to light resistance band under your feet, one handle in each hand (a very light dumbbell also works). Keeping your arms at your sides, raise your shoulder blades, and then squeeze them back and together; this is retraction, which is where we want them to be when under load. Then drop them down your back.
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
also implement weight training, because lifting weights or doing resistance exercises (using resistance bands, weight machines, or your own body weight) is one of the best ways to help with insulin resistance. While aerobic exercise helps your body use insulin better and decreases storage of visceral (abdominal) fat, resistance training makes your body more sensitive to insulin and helps your muscles take up more glucose (sugar) from the blood, thereby lowering blood sugar. Even simply exercising before or right after you eat something with higher carbohydrate levels can help reduce any resulting swings in your blood sugar and insulin release.
James DiNicolantonio (The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got It All Wrong--and How Eating More Might Save Your Life)
Joseph too was now firmly established in the public mind as the leader of the Nez Perce, and in public depictions he became both fiercer and greater. To those in the West, who saw each confrontation and Indian escape as another bloody step toward their own extinction, he became the embodiment of all that was dark and cunning in the Indian character. For those in the East, who rankled at the cruelty and ineffectiveness of the government’s Indian policy and were not in harm’s way from Indian actions, he became a heroic symbol of noble resistance—the father figure of a beleaguered band of men, women, and children who were accomplishing a brilliant escape from the relentless pursuit of the bumbling U.S. military. The man who was spending his days trying to move lodges and herds of horses and his nights worrying over a newborn infant and a wounded wife was being elevated in the public imagination to the status of a red Napoleon or red fiend; and he was becoming the lightning rod for a national debate on the justice and sufficiency of the government’s Indian policy. On the trail, however, the issues were much less abstract and much more dire. The warriors had little fear of pursuing soldiers because they knew that most were on foot and had proven cowardly when forced to fight armed men rather than sleeping women and children. They shared mocking stories of how the soldiers in the grove of trees had cried like babies when they were trapped, and they formed teepee-shaped piles of horse dung on the trail behind as a signal of derision to any troops who might be following.
Kent Nerburn (Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy)
Every hour, complete 10 to 20 air squats. Stand at your desk. Get your heart rate up with a brisk walk to the bathroom or water fountain 10 times a day. Bring a resistance band to your office to get in a quick 10-rep set of bicep curls between tasks.
Gabrielle Lyon (Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well)
Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.46
Stephen P. Halbrook (The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms (Independent Studies in Political Economy))
It was that which emboldened the shadowy part of myself and lured me to darkness’ embrace. Its sirens’ song echoed louder and louder in my heart. How could I resist? My strength was stretched and stretched, like a rubber band about to snap.
Marc Arginteanu (Lazarus Dot: A short story: A Felix Hoenniker Medical Murder Mystery)
thief in law was a practical dissident and a proto-capitalist. His violations of the colonizer’s criminal code were secretly cheered as acts of civil disobedience and patriotic resistance. He was celebrated as a nationalist hero—a kind of racketeering Robin Hood with a merry band of psychopaths.
Michael Pullara (The Spy Who Was Left Behind: Russia, the United States, and the True Story of the Betrayal and Assassination of a CIA Agent)
Sans haine mais sans oubli (Without hate but without forgetting),
Gwen Strauss (The Nine: How a Band of Daring Resistance Women Escaped from Nazi Germany - The Powerful True Story)
Tronstad returned to Trondheim, where he had resumed his teaching and studies at NTH. He channeled most of his prodigious energy, however, into his activities with the underground resistance, working particularly closely with several bands of university students who were pushing back against the German hold on the country.
Neal Bascomb (The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb)
Instead of extending the sedentary time period, break it up with some movement first thing in the morning. This isn’t a workout—it’s just going through the motions to give your body some nutritious movement. Perform a few repetitions of exercises that target the major movements: body weight squats and hip hinges and upper body pressing and pulling with light resistance bands or dumbbells. You won’t feel like doing this right when you get out of bed. Do it anyway, just for a few minutes. If you can establish this habit, you’ll wonder how you ever started your day without it. Your body and mind will feel much sharper and you’ll have fewer kinks in your muscles and joints.
Scott H Hogan (Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body)
He pushed my dress up around my waist and hooked his fingers into the elastic band of my underwear. The air condensed into something thin and infinitely flammable. “What are you doing?” “Eating dessert.” Christian eased my hips up so he could pull my underwear down before he returned to his seat. “You don’t like dessert.” My voice had gone to smoke, as insubstantial as the remnants of my resistance. Christian’s slow, answering smile throbbed in my blood. “I changed my mind.
Ana Huang
If Pulcheria were able to pose as the human embodiment of the Theotokos, in so doing she would be blurring the line between Christianity and the rituals of imperial cult, which had existed since pagan times. This would also raise the disturbing question, whether it was the bishop or the imperial family who had the right to define the nature of Christian piety and liturgical practice. A law of Theodosius II promulgated in 425, for example, reassures those who fail to participate in some public ceremony related to civic cult in order to attend a church service because 'due reverence is paid to the emperor when God is worshipped'. This law reveals that Christian liturgy had now taken precedence over the old civic cult, but it also shows a blurring between the person of the emperor and the person of Christ. One can see why a bishop of Constantinople might have resisted this. Nestorius may have suspected that Theodosius was using Pulcheria to draw the Church even more tightly under the control of the imperial family.
Kate Cooper (Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women)
At their invitation we crowded into the spacious control cabin of the great airship, where scientific gear occupied every available cubic—perhaps hypercubic—inch. Among the fantastical glass envelopes and knottings of gold wire as unreadable to us as the ebonite control panels scrupulously polished and reflecting the Arctic sky, we were able here and there to recognize more mundane items—here Manganin resistance-boxes and Tesla coils, there Leclanché cells and solenoidal magnets, with electrical cables sheathed in commercial-grade Gutta Percha running everywhere. Inside, the overhead was much higher than expected, and the bulkheads could scarcely be made out in the muted light through three hanging Fresnel lenses, the mantle behind each glowing a different primary color, from sensitive-flames which hissed at different frequencies. Strange sounds, complex harmonies and dissonances, resonant, sibilant, and percussive at once, being monitored from someplace far Exterior to this, issued from a large brass speaking-trumpet, with brass tubing and valvework elaborate as any to be found in an American marching band running back from it and into an extensive control panel on which various metering gauges were ranked, their pointers, with exquisite Breguet-style arrowheads, trembling in their rise and fall along the arcs of italic numerals. The glow of electrical coils seeped beyond the glass cylinders which enclosed them, and anyone’s hands that came near seemed dipped in blue chalk-dust. A Poulsen’s Telegraphone, recording the data being received, moved constantly to and fro along a length of shining steel wire which periodically was removed and replaced. “Ætheric impulses,” Dr. Counterfly was explaining. “For vortex stabilization we need a membrane sensitive enough to respond to the slightest eddies. We use a human caul—a ‘veil,’ as some say.” “Isn’t a child born with a veil believed to have powers of second sight?” Dr. Vormance inquired. “Correct. And a ship with a veil aboard it will never sink—or, in our case, crash.” “Things have been done to obtain a veil,” darkly added a junior officer, Mr. Suckling, “that may not even be talked about.
Thomas Pynchon (Against the Day)
On the appointed day, I waited in the vestibule of the boardinghouse until his car rolled up the Chermin de Verey, turned around, and parked outside the gate. He disliked my housemistress intensely and refused to park on school property in case he ran into her. I got into the car, and we drove south in silence, over little highways that wiggled precariously through the mountains, on main streets through half-abandoned villages, on back roads past quiet factories with dark eyes shattered into their windowpanes, past geraniums and lace curtains and dingy cafes. My grandfather pointed out monuments to the Resistance along the way, sad gray stones tucked up onto the banks of the road, where bands of men had been denounced, discovered, shot down. Entire villages, he told me, had been massacred because they wouldn't surrender their resistance fighters. Women and children had burned alive because they would not speak. As I listened, I thought of all the times my grandmother complained to me that Americans had no sense of history. Now I understood that she meant Americans had no sense of her history, of our history. Here the past was everywhere, an entire continent sown with memories. For the first time, I wondered if she had sent me back so I could learn what it was like to live in that punishing landscape. I cracked open the window a tiny bit; I felt suffocated. The wind pierced the silence inside the car, whose pneumatic suspension system I imagined pumping more air into itself to hold the weight of those stories. I wondered what life would be like without that load to carry.
Miranda Richmond Mouillot (A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France)
If we frame every situation in terms of right and wrong, we never have to wrestle with complexity; if we define the world in narrow bands of black and white, we don’t have to parse out endless shades of gray.
David L. Ulin (The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time)
The notion that elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy, indeed any policy, is a gift to [founder and leader of Singapore] Lee Kuan Yew supporters or indeed the Chinese communist party, who also believe this to be true. There is of course a long tradition of doubting the efficacy of the democratic process. But I would like to think that his tradition has been expelled long ago from the heart of Europe. It now seems that the euro crisis has brought it back. I urge you all to band together in a collective bid to resist it. Democracy is not a luxury to be afforded to the creditors and denied to the debtors. Indeed, it is the lack of democratic process in the heart of our monetary union that is perpetuating the euro crisis. Then again, I might be wrong. Colleagues, if you think that I am wrong, if you agree with Wolfgang, then I invite you to say so explicitly by proposing that elections should be suspended in countries like Greece until the country's programme is completed. What is the point of spending money on elections and asking our people to get all fired up to elect governments that will have no capacity to change anything?
Yanis Varoufakis (Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment)
When he got out of the car to do his business, my mother stared straight ahead. But I turned to watch. There was always something wild and charismatically uncaring about my father’s demeanor in these moments, some mysterious abandonment of his frowning and cogitative state that already meant a lot to me, even though at that age I understood almost nothing about him. Paulie had long ago stopped whispering 'perv' to me for observing him as he relieved himself. She of course, kept her head n her novels. I remember that it was cold that day, and windy but that the sky had been cut from the crackling blue gem field of a late midwestern April. Outside the car, as other families sped past my father stepped to the leeward side of the open door then leaning back from the waist and at the same time forward the ankles. His penis poked out from his zipper for this part, Bernie always stood up at the rear window. My father paused fo a moment rocking slightly while a few indistinct words played on his lips. Then just before his stream stared he tiled back his head as if there were a code written in the sky that allowed the event to begin. This was the moment I waited for, the movement seemed to be a marker of his own private devotion as though despite his unshakable atheism and despite his sour, entirely analytic approach to every affair of life, he nonetheless felt the need to acknowledge the heavens in the regard to this particular function of the body. I don't know perhaps I sensed that he simply enjoyed it in a deep way that I did. It was possible I already recognized that the eye narrowing depth of his physical delight in that moment was relative to that paucity of other delights in his life. But in any case the prayerful uplifting of his cranium always seemed to democratize him for me, to make him for a few minutes at least, a regular man. Bernie let out a bark. ‘’Is he done?’’ asked my mother. I opened my window. ‘’Almost.’’ In fact he was still in the midst. My father peed like a horse. His urine lowed in one great sweeping dream that started suddenly and stopped just as suddenly, a single, winking arc of shimmering clarity that endured for a prodigious interval and then disappeared in an instant, as though the outflow were a solid object—and arch of glittering ice or a thick band of silver—and not (as it actually approximated) a parabolic, dynamically averaged graph of the interesting functions of gravity, air resistance, and initial velocity on a non-viscous fluid, produced and exhibited by a man who’d just consumed more than a gallon of midwestern beer. The flow was as clear as water. When it struck the edge of the gravel shoulder, the sound was like a bed-sheet being ripped. Beneath this high reverberation, he let out a protracted appreciative whistle that culminated in a tunneled gasp, his lips flapping at the close like a trumpeters. In the tiny topsoil, a gap appeared, a wisp entirely unashamed. Bernie bumped about in the cargo bay. My father moved up close to peer through the windshield, zipping his trousers and smiling through the glass at my mother. I realized that the yellow that should have been in his urine was unmistakable now in his eyes. ‘’Thank goodness,’’ my mother said when the car door closed again. ‘’I was getting a little bored in here.
Ethan Canin (A Doubter's Almanac)
You should be thanking me, Vriska. The way that animal was looking at you…he was getting ideas about…” Vriska barely heard his next, crude words. She had resisted, punching him before, but now he had gone too far. She could take the insults to her self. but Julian was a good, honorable man. He didn’t deserve to be so slandered. She shoved past Rharreth, pass the Warriors holding Brathac, and slam the punch as hard as she could into his already broken nose, savoring the grinding of bone beneath her fist. Brathac howled, his head snapping back. “What makes you think I don’t welcome his attentions? That human prince has more honor in a drop of his blood than you have in your whole body.” Vriska cocked her fist back to throw another punch. Someone grabbed her, yanking her arm around before she could land the second punch.
Tara Grayce (Shield Band (Elven Alliance, #6))