“
Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird's throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
”
”
William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
“
When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.
”
”
Tom Waits
“
Willow, you know that you said you couldn't tell how I felt at the rest stop?"
I nodded, and he took my hand, laying it flat on his chest with his own resting over it. "Can you tell now?" he asked.
His heart beat firmly under my hand; my own pulse was pounding so hard that I could barely think straight. Closing my eyes, I took a deep, steadying breath, and then another as I tried to clear my mind, to feel what he was feeling. For a moment there was just the softness of our breathing--then all at once it washed over me in a great wave.
He was in love with me, too.
I opened my eyes. Alex was still holding my hand to his chest, watching me, his expression more serious than I'd ever seen it. Unable to speak, I slowly dropped my hand and wrapped my arms around him. His own arms came around me as he rested his head on my hair.
"I really do, you know," he said, his voice rough.
"I know," I whispered back. "I do, too.
”
”
L.A. Weatherly (Angel (Angel, #1))
“
When you invite people to share in your miracle, you create future allies during rough weather.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
“
Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Nyawira asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriama Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.'
'I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Kamiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.'
'Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Nyawira pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Meena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Tharu. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!'
'I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Kamiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads … Not that I read everything, but …'
'I am sure that those epics and Puranas, even the Gita, were all written by men,' Nyawira said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?
”
”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Wizard of the Crow)
“
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
That there’s Henrietta’s mother,” he said, pointing to a lone tombstone near the cemetery’s edge, surrounded by trees and wild roses. It was several feet tall, its front worn rough and browned from age and weather.
”
”
Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
“
The room was amazing. It was all glass, including the domed roof, and in all directions it offered a view of the Atlantic Ocean stretching empty into the distance, hinting of eternity.
”
”
Robert B. Parker (Rough Weather (Spenser, #36))
“
At that time, I well remember whatever could excite - certain accidents of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and creeping outside the basement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was wild, it was pitch dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to man - too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced by white and blinding bolts.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë
“
You are not a mere storyteller. Your face is weathered, your hands rough with work - you have traveled far, I think.
”
”
Joanna Ruth Meyer (Echo North (Echo North, #1))
“
As he worked on the room, and as it began slowly to take a shape, he realized that for many years, unknown to himself, he had had an image locked somewhere within him like a shamed secret, an image that was ostensibly of a place but which was actually of himself. So it was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study. As he sanded the old boards for his bookcases, and saw the surface roughnesses disappear, the gray weathering flake away to the essential wood and finally to a rich purity of grain and texture—as he repaired his furniture and arranged it in the room, it was himself that he was slowly shaping, it was himself that he was putting into a kind of order, it was himself that he was making possible.
”
”
John Williams (Stoner)
“
No, no it is not man's nature. I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.
”
”
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
“
Changes in technology come along roughly every five to seven years, so no one can ever have any expectation of permanence in the workplace. People's skills will always need upgrading. But the right kind of education for the twenty-first century is the one that prepares us to weather these changes—and which does so equally, without regard to where we are from or what your parents do.
”
”
Fiona Hill (There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century)
“
Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose: winter's rough Colorado winds and hip-high, sheep-slaughtering snows; the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek the puny shade, and the tawny infinitude of wheatstalks bristle, blaze. At last, after September, another weather arrives, an Indian summer that occasionally endures until Christmas.
”
”
Truman Capote (In Cold Blood)
“
well, as Auden wondered: Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough? Will it alter my life altogether? O tell me the truth about love.
”
”
Stephen Fry (More Fool Me)
“
We had a rough day, considered ice cream but, given the weather, opted for sex against the wall.
”
”
Elizabeth Dyer (Defenseless (Somerton Security, #1))
“
will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough? Will it alter my like altogether? O tell me the truth about love
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
Russell said something in Sicilian about stormy weather conditions that roughly translates into “You never can tell how things are going to work out. The weather’s in God’s hands.” I
”
”
Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
“
Under the Greenwood Tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see no enemy
But winter and rough weather.
”
”
Matt Haig (How to Stop Time)
“
That was true, Iris would sometimes think, about marriage: it was only a boat, too. A wooden boat, difficult to build, even more difficult to maintain, whose beauty derived at least in part from its unlikelihood. Long ago the pragmatic justifications for both marriage and wooden-boat building had been lost or superseded. Why invest countless hours, years, and dollars in planing and carving, gluing and fastening, caulking and fairing, when a fiberglass boat can be had at a fraction of the cost? Why struggle to maintain love and commitment over decades when there were far easier ways to live, ones that required no effort or attention to prevent corrosion and rot? Why continue to pour your heart into these obsolete arts? Because their beauty, the way they connect you to your history and to the living world, justifies your efforts. A long marriage, like a classic wooden boat, could be a thing of grace, but only if great effort was devoted to its maintenance. At first your notions of your life with another were no more substantial than a pattern laid down in plywood. Then year by year you constructed the frame around the form, and began layering memories, griefs, and small triumphs like strips of veneer planking bent around the hull of everyday routine. You sanded down the rough edges, patched the misunderstandings, faired the petty betrayals. Sometimes you sprung a leak. You fell apart in rough weather or were smashed on devouring rocks. But then, as now, in the teeth of a storm, when it seemed like all was lost, the timber swelled, the leak sealed up, and you found that your craft was, after all, sea-kindly.
”
”
Ayelet Waldman (Red Hook Road)
“
Our friendship to me will always be a lighthouse. Standing strong, no matter how rough life’s seas are. Together we’ll weather any storm and our friendship will always shine as it has from the beginning, until the very end of time. Our story needs no filter. Our story has not ended . . . friendship never ends!
”
”
Sudeep Nagarkar (Our Story Needs No Filter)
“
The difference between her and me might be figured by that between the stately ship, cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide between them the rule of the great deep. No, the 'Louisa Bretton' never was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own counsel, and spins no yarns.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
“
Of one thing we may be sure, we can never escape the external stimuli that cause vexation. The world is full of them, and though we were to retreat to a cave and live the remainder of our days alone, we still could not lose them. The rough floor of the cave would chafe us, the weather would irritate us and the very silence would cause us to fret
”
”
A.W. Tozer
“
Like tiny islands on the horizon, they can vanish in rough seas. Even in calm weather, their coral gradually erodes, pickled by salt and heat. Yet they form the shoals of a life. Some offer safe lagoons and murmuring trees. Others crawl with pirates and reptiles. Together they connect a self with the mainland and society. Plot their trail and a mercurial past becomes visible.
Memories feel geological in their repose, solid and true, the bedrock of consciousness.
”
”
Diane Ackerman (An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain)
“
He communicated (what I very much needed) a sense of the gusto with which life ought, wherever possible, to be taken. I fancy it was on a run with him in the sleet that I first discovered how bad weather is to be treated—as a rough joke, a romp.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life)
“
If there is fear or confusion in your life, it is because you lack commitment. The very thought, "I am here in this world to do seva," dissolves the "i" and when the "i" dissolves, worries dissolve. Seva is not something you do out of convenience or for pleasure. The ultimate purpose of life is to be of service. An uncommitted mind is miserable. A committed mind may at times experience rough weather but it will reap the fruits of its toil. When you make service your sole purpose in life, it eliminates fear, focuses your mind and gives you meaning.
”
”
Ravi Shankar (Celebrating Silence)
“
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
“
I'm going. A lot is possible. The weather's nice, Captain. Look: such a beautiful, solid,
rough sky -you'd almost feel like pounding a block of wood into it and hanging yourself on
it. Only because of the hyphen between yes and no? Is no to blame for yes, or yes for no?
I'll have to think about that.
”
”
Georg Büchner (Woyzeck)
“
torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities (Bantam Classics))
“
It was ideal apple-eating weather; the whitest sunlight descended from the purest sky, and an easterly wind rustled, without ripping loose, the last of the leaves on the Chinese elms. Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose: winter's rough Colorado winds and hip-high, sheep-slaughtering snows; the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek the puny shade, and the tawny infinitude of wheatstalks bristle, blaze
”
”
Truman Capote (In Cold Blood)
“
He inquired next what Allan had seen in the stranger to take such a fancy to? Allan had seen in him—what he didn't see in people in general. He wasn't like all the other fellows in the neighborhood. All the other fellows were cut out on the same pattern. Every man of them was equally healthy, muscular, loud, hard-hearted, clean-skinned, and rough; every man of them drank the same draughts of beer, smoked the same short pipes all day long, rode the best horse, shot over the best dog, and put the best bottle of wine in England on his table at night; every man of them sponged himself every morning in the same sort of tub of cold water and bragged about it in frosty weather in the same sort of way; every man of them thought getting into debt a capital joke and betting on horse-races one of the most meritorious actions that a human being can perform. They were, no doubt, excellent fellows in their way; but the worst of them was, they were all exactly alike. It was a perfect godsend to meet with a man like Midwinter—a man who was not cut out on the regular local pattern, and whose way in the world had the one great merit (in those parts) of being a way of his own.
”
”
Wilkie Collins (Armadale)
“
The only thing that lasts forever is the fact that nothing lasts forever," Madame Weatherberry said. "Just like the weather, people have seasons, too—we all go through periods of rain and sunshine—but we can't let a particularly rough winter destroy our faith in the spring, otherwise we'll always be stuck in the snow."
"This doesn't feel like a winter, it feels like an ice age," Brystal said. "What if this isn't a season? What if it's more than just a phase?"
"Either way, it's up to you to change it," Madame Weatherberry said.
”
”
Chris Colfer (A Tale of Witchcraft... (A Tale of Magic, #2))
“
I replied that I did not quite know what my ailment had been, but that I had certainly suffered a good deal especially in mind. Further, on this subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for the details of what I had undergone belonged to a portion of my existence in which I never expected my godmother to take a share. Into what a new region would such a confidence have led that hale, serene nature! The difference between her and me might be figured by that between the stately ship cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old, dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide between them the rule of the great deep. No, the "Louisa Bretton" never was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own counsel, and spins no yarns.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
“
Just like a ship at sea, our lives can encounter rough waters. But with the right crew, we can weather any storm.
”
”
Jeff Ocaya
“
We are grateful to people who occasionally help out, but we elevate them to a higher moral plane when they consistently do so, when we can count on them to show up rain or shine, not just when the boss is looking or free coffee is being served ... Along these lines, we value people who are loyal to their groups, who do not jump ship at the first rough weather.
”
”
Christopher Peterson (Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification)
“
The heyday of the Norse, which lasted roughly from A.D. 800 to about 1200, was not only a byproduct of such social factors as technology, overpopulation and opportunism. Their great conquests and explorations took place during a period of unusually mild and stable weather in northern Europe called the Medieval Warm Period-some of the warmest four centuries of the previous 8,000 years.
”
”
Brian M. Fagan (The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850)
“
She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way," explained Bingo. "I thought we would meet her and bow, and you could see her, you know, and then we would walk on."
"Of course," I said, "that's enough excitement for anyone, and undoubtedly a corking reward for tramping three miles out of one's way over ploughed fields with tight boots, but don't we do anything else? Don't we tack on to the girl and buzz along with her?"
"Good Lord!" said Bingo, honestly amazed. "You don't suppose I've got nerve enough for that, do you? I just look at her from afar off and all that sort of thing. Quick! Here she comes! No, I'm wrong!"
It was like that song of Harry Lauder's where he's waiting for the girl and says, "This is her-r-r. No, it's a rabbut." Young Bingo made me stand there in the teeth of a nor'-east half-gale for ten minutes, keeping me on my toes with a series of false alarms, and I was just thinking of suggesting that we should lay off and give the rest of the proceedings a miss, when round the corner there came a fox-terrier, and Bingo quivered like an aspen. Then there hove in sight a small boy, and he shook like a jelly. Finally, like a star whose entrance has been worked up by the personnel of the ensemble, a girl appeared, and his emotion was painful to witness. His face got so red that, what with his white collar and the fact that the wind had turned his nose blue, he looked more like a French flag than anything else. He sagged from the waist upwards, as if he had been filleted.
He was just raising his fingers limply to his cap when he suddenly saw that the girl wasn't alone. A chappie in clerical costume was also among those present, and the sight of him didn't seem to do Bingo a bit of good. His face got redder and his nose bluer, and it wasn't till they had nearly passed that he managed to get hold of his cap.
The girl bowed, the curate said, "Ah, Little. Rough weather," the dog barked, and then they toddled on and the entertainment was over.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse
“
Just like the weather, people have seasons, too- we all go through periods of rain and sunshine-but we can't let a particularly rough winter destroy our faith in the spring, otherwise we'll always be stuck in the snow.
”
”
Chris Colfer (A Tale of Witchcraft... (A Tale of Magic, #2))
“
You are stronger than you think. I have weathered many storms, tragedies, and heartaches in my life–and here I am still standing. Here you are still standing. Joy is right around the corner you just have to change your focus and look for it. And that can be rough. Rough roads can be unbearable, but you can walk them. Sometimes when you come to the end of yourself–give yourself a chance to dig in deeper. Look for the good, and you’ll find strength you never knew you had.
”
”
Michelle Muriel
“
In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall.
”
”
Alice Walker (Everyday Use)
“
I had no idea what humans were capable of. I heard they were crafty, but how are they able to do such things?
You mean harness light and water? Speedy asked. Change the weather?
Yes.
It's only the beginning, Speedy said. There are more marvels waiting. Some not so marvelous.
Such as?
Be not in haste, said the tortoise.
There is nothing here but time.
If you live long enough, you will see.
Of course, though, you will see them from your cage.
Live long enough? I asked. Are there mortal dangers here?
The tortoise chuckled.
The boy doesn't always take very good care of his prisoners, Rex the lizard chimed in.
What do you mean? He doesn't feed us enough?
Sometimes he doesn't understand what we need to survive, Rex answered. Sometimes he plays too rough.
How can a creature able to bend the laws of nature be so cruel? I asked.
”
”
Patrick Jennings (We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes)
“
they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
“
It’s not about over-the-top gestures to me,” he finally says almost shyly.
“It’s all the tiny moments that go to make a real love story. The funny things that go wrong like when one of you forgets your anniversary or does something silly. They all become part of your story. And you add to it with every argument or slammed door that you have. Every birthday or Christmas that you mould into a thing that only the two of you recognise. It’s taking care of each other when you’re throwing up or have a cold, it’s huddling under the duvet together laughing so hard your ribs hurt. It’s holding the other one when they’re frightened, knowing you will do anything to make them feel better again. It’s like being two pebbles on a beach. You start off individual shapes and then the weather and proximity means you rub the rough spots off so in the end you’re smooth with a patina that only echoes one other person.
”
”
Lily Morton (Best Man (Close Proximity, #1))
“
Alaska seems like the most rough-and-tumble spot in the world. Everyone there seems to be running from something in the Lower 48, whether it’s the law, the tax man, or their ex. Alaska’s where you go to forget your past, especially when you owe your past a shitload in child support. The state motto should be “Love fishing but hate your kids? Alaska.” Forget the Jackass movies. I’d like to do a hidden-camera show where we get a guy with a salt-and-pepper mustache, put him in an ATF windbreaker, have him walk into any Alaska bar or honky-tonk after quitting time, and say, “I have a warrant for . . .” and just watch everyone jump out the window. It’s never “I was born and raised in Alaska, lived here my whole life.” It’s usually something like, “My business partner faked his own death and then tried to kill me, but that was before my wife had her gender reassignment . . .” Basically Alaska is the cold-weather Florida. It’s Florida without the Jews. The state capital should be spelled “Jew? NO!
”
”
Adam Carolla (President Me: The America That's in My Head)
“
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
“
If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man’s nature, which has done the business for Captain Benwick.’
‘No, no, it is not man’s nature. I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.’
‘Your feelings may be the strongest,’ replied Anne, ‘but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It would be to hard indeed if woman’s feelings were to be added to all this…
”
”
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
“
weather forecast that it was going to be rough and had taken a pill. Miss Abbott was tramping up and down the narrow lower deck, having, perhaps instinctively, hit upon that part of the ship which after the first few hours is deserted by almost everyone. In the plan shown to passengers it was called the promenade deck. It was Jemima who first noticed the break in the weather. A kind of thin warmth fell across the page of her book;
”
”
Ngaio Marsh (Singing in the Shrouds (Roderick Alleyn, #20))
“
I fancy my father thought me an odd child, and had little fondness for me; though he was very careful in fulfilling what he regarded as a parent's duties. But he was already past the middle of life, and I was not his only son. My mother had been his second wife, and he was five-and-forty when he married her. He was a firm, unbending, intensely orderly man, in root and stem a banker, but with a flourishing graft of the active landholder, aspiring to county influence: one of those people who are always like themselves from day to day, who are uninfluenced by the weather, and neither know melancholy nor high spirits. I held him in great awe, and appeared more timid and sensitive in his presence than at other times; a circumstance which, perhaps, helped to confirm him in the intention to educate me on a different plan from the prescriptive one with which he had complied in the case of my elder brother, already a tall youth at Eton. My brother was to be his representative and successor; he must go to Eton and Oxford, for the sake of making connexions, of course: my father was not a man to underrate the bearing of Latin satirists or Greek dramatists on the attainment of an aristocratic position. But intrinsically, he had slight esteem for "those dead but sceptred spirits"; having qualified himself for forming an independent opinion by reading Potter's Aeschylus, and dipping into Francis's Horace. To this negative view he added a positive one, derived from a recent connexion with mining speculations; namely, that scientific education was the really useful training for a younger son. Moreover, it was clear that a shy, sensitive boy like me was not fit to encounter the rough experience of a public school. Mr. Letherall had said so very decidedly. Mr. Letherall was a large man in spectacles, who one day took my small head between his large hands, and pressed it here and there in an exploratory, suspicious manner - then placed each of his great thumbs on my temples, and pushed me a little way from him, and stared at me with glittering spectacles. The contemplation appeared to displease him, for he frowned sternly, and said to my father, drawing his thumbs across my eyebrows -
'The deficiency is there, sir-there; and here,' he added, touching the upper sides of my head, 'here is the excess. That must be brought out, sir, and this must be laid to sleep.'
I was in a state of tremor, partly at the vague idea that I was the object of reprobation, partly in the agitation of my first hatred - hatred of this big, spectacled man, who pulled my head about as if he wanted to buy and cheapen it. ("The Lifted Veil")
”
”
George Eliot (The Lifted Veil (Fantasy and Horror Classics))
“
Wit, Sir Knight, may do much. He is a quick, apprehensive knave, who sees his neighbours blind side, and knows how to keep the leegage when his passions are blowing high. But valour is a sturdy fellow, that makes all split. He rows against both wind and tide, and makes way notwithstanding; and, therefore, good Sir Knight, while I take advantage of the fair weather in our noble master’s temper, I will expect you to bestir yourself when it grows rough.
”
”
Walter Scott
“
In explosive gasps Chook introduced us and we went inside. I could see that she was elderly by Chook’s standards. Perhaps twenty-six or -seven. A brown-eyed blonde, with the helpless mournful eyes of a basset hound. She was a little weathered around the eyes. In the lounge lights I saw that the basic black had given her a lot of good use. Her hands looked a little rough. Under the slightly bouffant skirt of the black dress were those unmistakable dancer’s legs, curved and trim and sinewy.
”
”
John D. MacDonald (The Deep Blue Good-By)
“
The Gauls’ own ships were built and rigged in a different manner from ours. They were made with much flatter bottoms, to help them to ride shallow water caused by shoals or ebb-tides. Exceptionally high bows and sterns fitted them for use in heavy seas and violent gales, and the hulls were made entirely of oak, to enable them to stand any amount of shocks and rough usage. The cross-timbers, which consisted of beams a foot wide, were fastened with iron bolts as thick as a man’s thumb. The anchors were secured with iron chains instead of ropes. They used sails made of raw hides or thin leather, either because they had no flax and were ignorant of its use, or more probably because they thought that ordinary sails would not stand the violent storms and squalls of the Atlantic and were not suitable for such heavy vessels. In meeting them the only advantage our ships possessed was that they were faster and could be propelled by oars; in other respects the enemy’s were much better adapted for sailing such treacherous and stormy waters. We could not injure them by ramming because they were so solidly built, and their height made it difficult to reach them with missiles or board them with grappling-irons. Moreover, when it began to blow hard and they were running before the wind, they weathered the storm more easily; they could bring in to shallow water with greater safety, and when left aground by the tide had nothing to fear from reefs or pointed rocks – whereas to our ships all these risks were formidable.
”
”
Gaius Julius Caesar (The Conquest of Gaul)
“
Just sit right back
And you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailin' lad,
The Skipper brave and sure,
Five passengers set sail that day,
For a three hour tour,
A three hour tour.
The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost.
The Minnow would be lost.
The ship set ground on the shore
Of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan,
The Skipper too.
The millionaire
And his wife,
The movie star,
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligan's Isle.
So this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.
The first mate and his Skipper too
Will do their very best,
To make the others comf'terble
In their tropic island nest.
No phone, no lights, no motor car,
Not a single luxury
Like Robinson Crusoe
It's primitive as can be.
So join us here each week my friends,
You're sure to get a smile,
From seven stranded castaways
Here on Gilligan's Isle!
”
”
Sherwood Schwartz (Inside Gilligan's Island: A Three-Hour Tour Through The Making Of A Television Classic)
“
Formerly there were two ways. One was to take the ferry. This is the way I came on my first visit, and I have to say it was strange. All the passengers – and there weren’t many – went below and lay down on whatever horizontal surface they could find. Many covered their faces with their coats, as if hiding. Just after we left port, the snack bar closed. All this seemed a little odd, and then we hit the open sea and we began to roll and pitch in a weirdly restrained way. I am not the most experienced of sailors, but I have been on a few boats in my time – including once through the Beagle Channel in South America, which isn’t so much a water passage as a trampoline for boats – and I can say that I had never encountered anything quite like this. It wasn’t rough, but just slowly, cumulatively, peculiarly unsettling. The problem, as it was explained to me later, is that the ferry must have a flat bottom to get in among the shallows around St Mary’s, the main port of the Scillies, but this means that it sits on the water like a cork, which guarantees a lot of motion even on the smoothest days. In rough weather, I was told, you will often have the novel experience of being sick on the ceiling.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain)
“
O Tell Me The Truth About Love - Poem by WH Auden
Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't even there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
income. Because I want to not do what he says and make my own schedule. What’s the big deal, Meyer? You’ll be back.” Meyer had walked to the window and was looking out across Central Park. The weather was pleasant, and he considered going out onto the porch, but the wind looked rough. The roof terrace would be better, but not by much. That was the problem with tall buildings. You got a great view for an exorbitant price, but it’s like architects forgot how quickly the weather changed as you climbed higher in the air. He took a beat before replying. He didn’t want to admit how much he’d been looking forward to seeing her. Besides, telling Heather
”
”
Sean Platt (Invasion (Alien Invasion, #1))
“
There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?
”
”
Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)
“
They went on among the tilted stones and rough grass, the wind coming from the woods cold in the sunlight. A stone angel in her weathered marble robes, the downcast eyes. The old people's voices drift across the lonely space, murmurous above these places of the dead. The lichens on the crumbling stones like a strange green light. The voices fade. Beyond the gentle clash of weeds. He sees them stoop to read some quaint inscription and he pauses by an old vault that a tree has half dismantled with its growing. Inside there is nothing. No bones, no dust. How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy
“
Falstaff is the most unusual figure in fiction. He is almost entirely a good man, a glorious, life-affirming good man, and there is hardly a good man in dramatic literature. There has always been an England, an older England, which was sweeter, purer, where the hay smelled better and the weather was always springtime and the daffodils blew in the gentle warm breezes. You feel a nostalgia for it in Chaucer, and you feel it all throughout Shakespeare. Falstaff is a refugee from that world. He has to live by his wits, he has to be funny, he has no place to sleep if he doesn’t get a laugh out of his patron. It’s a rough modern world that he’s living in. You’ve got to be able to see that look in his eyes that comes out of the age that never existed, the one that exists in the heart of all English poetry.
”
”
Orson Welles
“
If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man’s nature, which has done the business for Captain Benwick.’
‘No, no, it is not man’s nature. I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.’
‘Your feelings may be the strongest,’ replied Anne, ‘but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.
”
”
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
“
I looked to Dean to see if he agreed, but he was just sitting there, staring at the silent TV screen. Somehow, I doubted he was enthralled by the weather report.
“Dean?” I said. He didn’t respond.
“Dean.” Lia reached her foot out and shoved him with her heel. “Earth to Redding.”
Dean looked up. Blond hair hung in his face. Brown eyes stared through us. He said something, but the words were garbled in his throat, caught halfway between a grunt and a whisper.
“What did you say?” Sloane asked.
“Bind them,” Dean said, his voice still rough, but louder this time. “Brand them. Cut them. Hang them.” He shut his eyes, and his hands curled into fists.
“Hey.” Lia was beside him in a second. “Hey, Dean.” She didn’t touch him, but she stayed by his side. The look on her face was fiercely protective—and terrified.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Killer Instinct (The Naturals, #2))
“
When you can’t feel or act in a way that connects you to your bigger-picture goal of warmth and harmony, it’s worth attempting a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” strategy, focusing on the in-the-moment possibilities for awareness, kindness, and responsiveness. A finer-grained attention to what you are each doing to cause bad interactions can enable you to notice what each of you could do differently and gently lead you away from dwelling in a miasma of emotional negativity that toxifies the whole relational atmosphere. Attention to process, not outcome; awareness in the moment; tuning in to your own emotional weather—these are valuable mindfulness techniques under any circumstances, but they are particularly important to creating the moments of repair or attunement that can then promote a more positive big picture. As
”
”
Daphne de Marneffe (The Rough Patch: Marriage and the Art of Living Together)
“
Dismissed as a philistine, a boor, a drunk, and an incompetent, Grant has been subjected to pernicious stereotypes that grossly impede our understanding of the man. As a contemporary newspaper sniffed, Grant was “an ignorant soldier, coarse in his taste and blunt in his perceptions, fond of money and material enjoyment and of low company.”14 In fact, Grant was a sensitive, complex, and misunderstood man with a shrewd mind, a wry wit, a rich fund of anecdotes, wide knowledge, and penetrating insights. Many acquaintances remembered the “silent” Grant as the most engaging raconteur they ever met. His weather-beaten appearance during the war, when he wore simple military dress, often caked with mud, could be misleading, for an inner fineness and delicacy lay beneath the rough-hewn exterior. At the same time, Grant could be surprisingly naive and artless in business and politics.
”
”
Ron Chernow (Grant)
“
(Romance is) not about over-the-top gestures to me,” he finally says almost shyly. “It’s all the tiny moments that go to make a real love story. The funny things that go wrong like when one of you forgets your anniversary or does something silly. They all become part of your story. And you add to it with every argument or slammed door that you have. Every birthday or Christmas that you mould into a thing that only the two of you recognise. It’s taking care of each other when you’re throwing up or have a cold, it’s huddling under the duvet together laughing so hard your ribs hurt. It’s holding the other one when they’re frightened, knowing you will do anything to make them feel better again. It’s like being two pebbles on a beach. You start off individual shapes and then the weather and proximity means you rub the rough spots off so in the end you’re smooth with a patina that only echoes one other person.
”
”
Lily Morton
“
While British Bomber Command believed in leveling entire cities, the Americans considered themselves “precision bombers,” a term that implied attacks exclusively against military targets out of revulsion at indiscriminately killing civilians. But because the skies of central Europe were chronically overcast, half of Eighth Air Force’s bomb tonnage was dropped using “blind bombing” radar techniques; often, as few as one out of ten bombs fell within half a mile of an obscured target. Even when conditions were ideal for bombardiers—this was the case in roughly one sortie of seven—less than a third of all bombs detonated within a thousand feet of the aiming point. The term “precision bombing,” Spaatz conceded, was intended “in a relative, not a literal sense.” Bad weather also caused frequent diversions to secondary targets such as rail yards, a practice that amounted to emptying bomb bays over city centers.
”
”
Rick Atkinson (The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe 1944-1945 (The Liberation Trilogy))
“
Ahoy!” a seaman called out. “The English frigate Polaris, ten days out from Antigua, bound for Portsmouth.”
“Ahoy, yerself!” It was O’Shea’s rough brogue. She’d never heard sweeter music. “This be the clipper Sophia, of no particular country at the moment. Seven days out from Tortola, bound for…well, bound for here. Captain requests permission to board.”
Gray. It had to be Gray.
The officers of the Polaris exchanged wary looks.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake.” Sophia pushed forward to the ship’s rail and cupped her hands around her mouth, calling, “Permission to board granted!”
A cheer rose up from the other ship’s deck. “It’s her, all right!” a voice called. Stubb’s, Sophia thought.
Oh, but she hardly cared who was on the other deck. She cared only for the strong figure swinging across the watery divide as the two ships came abreast. Turning back toward the center of the ship, she pushed her way through the sweaty throng of sailors, desperate to get to him. Her foot caught on a rope, and she tripped-
But it didn’t matter. Gray was there to catch her.
And he was still wearing those sea-weathered, fire-scarred boots. No doubt for sentimental reasons.
“Steady there,” he murmured, catching her by the elbows. She looked up to meet his beautiful blue-green eyes. “I have you.”
“Oh, Gray.” She launched herself into his arms, clinging to his neck as he laughed and spun her around. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
And he was. Every strong, solid, handsome inch of him. Sophia buried her face in his throat, breathing in his scent. Lord, how she’d missed him.
She pulled away, bracing her hands on his shoulders to study his face. “I can’t believe you came after me.”
“I can’t believe you actually left.” He lowered her to the deck, and her hands slid to his arms. “I thought you were bluffing with that bit. I’d have never allowed you to go.
”
”
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
“
March 10 MORNING “In my prosperity I said I shall never be moved.” — Psalm 30:6 “MOAB is settled on his lees, he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel.” Give a man wealth; let his ships bring home continually rich freights; let the winds and waves appear to be his servants to bear his vessels across the bosom of the mighty deep; let his lands yield abundantly: let the weather be propitious to his crops; let uninterrupted success attend him; let him stand among men as a successful merchant; let him enjoy continued health; allow him with braced nerve and brilliant eye to march through the world, and live happily; give him the buoyant spirit; let him have the song perpetually on his lips; let his eye be ever sparkling with joy — and the natural consequence of such an easy state to any man, let him be the best Christian who ever breathed, will be presumption; even David said, “I shall never be moved;” and we are not better than David, nor half so good. Brother, beware of the smooth places of the way; if you are treading them, or if the way be rough, thank God for it. If God should always rock us in the cradle of prosperity; if we were always dandled on the knees of fortune; if we had not some stain on the alabaster pillar; if there were not a few clouds in the sky; if we had not some bitter drops in the wine of this life, we should become intoxicated with pleasure, we should dream “we stand;” and stand we should, but it would be upon a pinnacle; like the man asleep upon the mast, each moment we should be in jeopardy. We bless God, then, for our afflictions; we thank Him for our changes; we extol His name for losses of property; for we feel that had He not chastened us thus, we might have become too secure. Continued worldly prosperity is a fiery trial. “Afflictions, though they seem severe, In mercy oft are sent.
”
”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening—Classic KJV Edition: A Devotional Classic for Daily Encouragement)
“
Dog Talk
…
I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously
into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes
as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high
music of smell, that we know so little about.
Tonight Ben charges up the yard; Bear follows. They run into the
field and are gone. A soft wind, like a belt of silk, wraps the house.
I follow them to the end of the field where I hear the long-eared
owl, at wood’s edge, in one of the tall pines. All night the owl will
sit there inventing his catty racket, except when he opens pale
wings and drifts moth-like over the grass. I have seen both dogs
look up as the bird floats by, and I suppose the field mouse hears
it too, in the pebble of his tiny heart. Though I hear nothing.
Bear is small and white with a curly tail. He was meant to be idle
and pretty but learned instead to love the world, and to romp
roughly with the big dogs. The brotherliness of the two, Ben and
Bear, increases with each year. They have their separate habits,
their own favorite sleeping places, for example, yet each worries
without letup if the other is missing. They both bark rapturously
and in support of each other. They both sneeze to express plea-
sure, and yawn in humorous admittance of embarrassment. In the
car, when we are getting close to home and the smell of the ocean
begins to surround them, they both sit bolt upright and hum.
With what vigor
and intention to please himself
the little white dog
flings himself into every puddle
on the muddy road.
Somethings are unchangeably wild, others are stolid tame. The
tiger is wild, the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are
tame. The wild things that have been altered, but only into
a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in
both worlds. Ben is devoted, he hates the door between us, is
afraid of separation. But he had, for a number of years, a dog
friend to whom he was also loyal. Every day they and a few others
gathered into a noisy gang, and some of their games were bloody.
Dog is docile, and then forgets. Dog promises then forgets. Voices
call him. Wolf faces appear in dreams. He finds himself running
over incredible lush or barren stretches of land, nothing any of us
has ever seen. Deep in the dream, his paws twitch, his lip lifts.
The dreaming dog leaps through the underbrush, enters the earth
through a narrow tunnel, and is home. The dog wakes and the
disturbance in his eyes when you say his name is a recognizable
cloud. How glad he is to see you, and he sneezes a little to tell
you so.
But ah! the falling-back, fading dream where he was almost
there again, in the pure, rocky weather-ruled beginning. Where
he was almost wild again, and knew nothing else but that life, no
other possibility. A world of trees and dogs and the white moon,
the nest, the breast, the heart-warming milk! The thick-mantled
ferocity at the end of the tunnel, known as father, a warrior he
himself would grow to be.
…
”
”
Mary Oliver (Dog Songs: Poems)
“
Nick tugged her head back, his tormented gaze raking over her face. His trembling fingertips traced the line of her cheek and jaw. “My God. Lottie…” As his panicked exploration continued, he discovered the bruises on her throat, and he uttered a cry of fury. “Holy hell! Your neck. He dared to… I’m going to slaughter that bastard—”
Lottie placed her fingers over his mouth. “I’m all right,” she said gently. Feeling the way his large body shook, she drew her hand over his chest in a calming stroke. After the traumatic events of the past hours, it was so wonderful to be with him that her lips curved in a wobbly smile. She gazed into his dusty, sweat-streaked face with concern. “In fact, I believe I may be in better condition than you, my darling.”
A primitive groan came from his throat, and he clutched her with his right arm, bending over her hungrily. “I love you,” he said in a low, shaken voice. “I love you so much, Lottie.” His lips covered hers in a fiercely ardent kiss.
Clearly he was too unsettled to recall that there were others in the room. Lottie turned her face away with a muffled laugh. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “Not here, darling. Later, with more privacy, we can—” She was silenced as Nick seized her mouth once more. Suddenly she found herself pushed up against the wall by six feet of aroused, overwrought male. Realizing that there was no hope of subduing him, Lottie stroked his broad back in an effort to soothe him. He possessed her with deep, fervent kisses, while his lungs worked so violently that she could feel his rib cage expanding with each breath. She tried to comfort him, gently rubbing the back of his neck as his mouth worked roughly over hers. His breath came in ragged shivers, and in between kisses he breathed her name as if it were a prayer. “Lottie… Lottie…” Each time she tried to answer, he dove for her mouth again.
“Sydney,” Sir Grant said after some prolonged throat-clearing had failed to capture his attention. “Ahem. Sydney…”
After a long time, Nick finally lifted his head.
Lottie pushed at his chest, making him loosen his grip on her. Red-faced and breathless, she saw that Sayer had developed a keenly absorbing interest in the weather outside the window, while Daniel had excused himself to wait outside.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Worth Any Price (Bow Street Runners, #3))
“
She'd loved birds long before her physical limitations kept her grounded. She'd found a birding diary of her grandmother's in a trunk in the attic when she was Frankie's age, and when she asked her father about it, he dug through boxes on a shelf high above her head, handing down a small pair of binoculars and some field guides.
She'd seen her first prothonotary warbler when she was nine, sitting alone on a tupelo stump in the forest, swatting at mosquitoes targeting the pale skin behind her ears. She glanced up from the book she was reading only to be startled by an unexpected flash of yellow. Holding her breath, she fished for the journal she kept in her pocket, focusing on the spot in the willow where he might be. A breeze stirred the branches, and she saw the brilliant yellow head and underparts standing out like petals of a sunflower against the backdrop of leaves; the under tail, a stark white. His beak was long, pointed and black; his shoulders a mossy green, a blend of the citron yellow of his head and the flat slate of his feathers. He had a black dot of an eye, a bead of jet set in a field of sun. Never had there been anything so perfect. When she blinked he disappeared, the only evidence of his presence a gentle sway of the branch. It was a sort of magic, unveiled to her. He had been hers, even if only for a few seconds.
With a stub of pencil- 'always a pencil,' her grandmother had written. 'You can write with a pencil even in the rain'- she noted the date and time, the place and the weather. She made a rough sketch, using shorthand for her notes about the bird's coloring, then raced back to the house, raspberry canes and brambles speckling bloody trails across her legs. In the field guide in the top drawer of her desk, she found him again: prothonotary warbler, 'prothonotary' for the clerks in the Roman Catholic Church who wore robes of a bright yellow. It made absolute sense to her that something so beautiful would be associated with God.
After that she spent countless days tromping through the woods, toting the drab knapsack filled with packages of partially crushed saltines, the bottles of juice, the bruised apples and half-melted candy bars, her miniature binoculars slung across one shoulder. She taught herself how to be patient, how to master the boredom that often accompanied careful observation. She taught herself how to look for what didn't want to be seen.
”
”
Tracy Guzeman (The Gravity of Birds)
“
The farther down the ladder from Anglo-American U.S. citizen to undocumented indigenous Mexican one is positioned, the more degrading the treatment by supervisors, the more physically taxing the work, the more exposure to weather and pesticides, the more fear of the government, the less comfortable one's housing, and the less control over one's own time. Of course, the people on every level of the hierarchy suffer. Yet suffering is also roughly cumulative from top to bottom.
”
”
Seth Holmes (Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States)
“
Meyer had walked to the window and was looking out across Central Park. The weather was pleasant, and he considered going out onto the porch, but the wind looked rough. The roof terrace would be better, but not by much. That was the problem with tall buildings. You got a great view for an exorbitant price, but it’s like architects forgot how quickly the weather changed as you climbed higher in the air. He took a beat before replying. He didn’t want to admit how much he’d been looking forward to seeing her. Besides, telling Heather about the ayahuasca ceremony he’d already booked with the shaman (and paid for in full) seemed like a jinx. You weren’t supposed to plan surprises for your ex-wife —even drug-related surprises. They both understood that, but the way Meyer sneaked around behind Piper’s back made both him and Heather feel guilty.
”
”
Sean Platt (Invasion (Alien Invasion, #1))
“
A mature man does not lament aging, engage in adoration of the self through cosmetic treatments, and partake of drug therapy to prolong his virility. An independent thinker does not capitulate to societal pressures or other forms of coercion. I look forward to developing the bark of a rough man, the weathered, tough-skinned covertures that men take on only when they stand straight into the wind. I shall guard against disappointment, rebuff domination by cruel men, and repudiate the easy. I must steadfastly decline capitulating to the demands of power mongers by curing their favor at the cost of surrendering my inbreed essence. I resolve to battle any wicked person whom attempts to intimate me, maintain personal convictions, and honor my heritage. I need to summon the audacity to go against the grain, eschew shortcuts, and to work from intuition of a person who knows that logic is only half of the equation for true success. In order to live life through both the heart and the mind, I resolve to accept my unusual nature and embrace living spontaneously without shame, remorse, or regret.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
Today St. Kitts is the only Leeward Island, of the Caribbean, that still grows sugar cane. However, sugar cane is very expensive to grow, harvest, and process. The fields are now state owned and the entire island crop is processed in one government-run factory. The dozens of sugar plantations, which had dotted the island, climbing from the shore up into the mountains, were gradually abandoned. In time, the handsome stone structures -- complete factories-- fell to wind, weather, and vandalism. Here and there on the island one can still see a signature smokestack rising a hundred feet into the sky, or the egg-shaped base of an old windmill. The possibility of a merger with other Leeward Islands and the Virgin Islands has been debated, as has the growing problem of drug trafficking, in which St Kitts & Nevis, like most small Caribbean islands, has become involved. The people of Nevis are themselves deeply split, roughly between the population of the southern towns, which favor independence, and the rest of the island, which does not. Were Nevis to become independent, it would be the world's smallest sovereign state after the Vatican, which naturally gives rise to concerns about its economic viability.
”
”
Carol Boyle (ST. KITTS & NEVIS: Where Two Oceans Meet (Carol's Worldwide Cruise Port Itineraries Book 1))
“
খারাপ বা বাজে আবহাওয়া বলে কিছুই নেই! এটা শুধুই ‘আবহাওয়া’। ঘূর্ণিঝড়, ভূমিকম্প, বৃষ্টিপাত ইত্যাদি স্বাভাবিক প্রাকৃতিক প্রক্রিয়া। বিদ্রূপাত্মকভাবে, যখন সেগুলো ঘটে, আমরা সেগুলোকে বলি ‘খারাপ’!
”
”
Ziaul Haque
“
A rock, a large piece of rock weathers off a cliff and dives deep into a pool of gushing water. Back washed, It journeys roughly and knocks of other rocks, smashing through the waves as it loses itself in scattered pieces except for its core. That core travels far and wide, it coarsely gets ground by gravel pieces smaller than itself and bullied by boulders all of which it bears up as it withstands the pressure of a distant journey off the shore. At some point, it gets dry and it encounters mud, it gets smeared dirty but the mud doesn't stick, the rain washes of the mud and it rolls off into the sand. It dances in the sand and dives into the bottom of the waves.
Rising like a phoenix through the ashes, it emerges polished, looking more beautiful than it did when it got edged of the cliff. It rises a pebble, smooth and sleek. Coveted by rocks starting their dive.
To be a pebble you have to run the turbulent tidal race.
”
”
Victor Manan Nyambala
“
A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears. See how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change places and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
- King Lear
”
”
Robert B. Parker (Rough Weather (Spenser, #36))
“
Denis’ cave to be such a regular haunt for hundreds of thousands of years is not usual. You can see why though. Despite the gritty weather, it’s a highly desirable residence; a waterfront property overlooking a picturesque river, the rustic estate boasts a wide rectangular south-facing entrance, into a nine-by-eleven-meter main chamber served by a working vertical chimney for a fireplace or kitchen stove, with three smaller secluded side galleries for bedrooms or even a study. Total floor plan: roughly 270 square meters. In 2008, the remains of one
”
”
Adam Rutherford (A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes)
“
He was handsome... she would give him that. Although not in the way of Theo, who had been blessed with the refined features and golden hair of a young Apollo. Devon Ravenel's dark good looks were bold and raffish, weathered with a cynicism that made him look every bit his twenty-eight years. She felt a shock every time she looked up into his eyes, the blue of a rough winter ocean, the vivid irises rimmed with blue-black. His face was smooth shaven, but the lower half was shadowed with a beard grain that even the sharpest razor would not completely remove.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
“
There is nothing called 'bad or rough weather'! It is just 'weather'. The cyclone, earthquake, rainfall etc. are normal processes of nature. Ironically, if they occur, we call them 'bad'!
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”
Ziaul Haque
“
When I initially heard a description of the search area and the scenario, I was certain this would be a wasted effort. I suspected there was very little we could do, given the huge size of the search area, rough terrain, terrible weather, age of the track (around 52 hours old), and the lack of resources. Clearly, I was wrong. I underestimated the ability of a trained SAR dog. – Deb Tirmenstein
”
”
Susan Bulanda (Ready to Serve, Ready to Save: Strategies of Real-Life Search and Rescue Missions)
“
In Mureth House there was not only physical comfort but mental and spiritual comfort as well. You could be yourself here. You could say what you liked without the slightest fear of being misunderstood and you could do what you liked without the slightest fear of giving offence.
”
”
D.E. Stevenson (Winter and Rough Weather (Dering Family #3))
“
There was an impression that sailors were tough and almost revelled in discomfort; in particular, it was thought that discomfort was necessary to keep men awake when on duty. It was also claimed that hammocks were more comfortable than bunks in rough weather, though there was no obvious desire amongst officers, most of whom had used hammocks, to give up their bunks. The traditional RN messing was unlikely to provide a balanced diet.
”
”
D.K. Brown (Nelson to Vanguard: Warship Design and Development, 1923–1945)
“
Suddenly the confusing image he had sought so desperately came back unbidden; Brianna's face, with its broad, clean bones, blue eyes set slantwise about a long, straight nose. But Brianna's face grown older, weathered to bronze, rough-cut and toughened by masculinity and experience, blue eyes gone black with a murderous rage. Jamie Fraser
”
”
Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
“
Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Visual Companion)
“
A particular feature of Stevenson’s oeuvre is the way in which characters that appear in one book may crop up in another context in a quite different title. Readers like this because in a way it reflects the way the world is; our lives are not linear narratives–they are meandering stories that take place in diverse settings and that are peopled by characters who drop in and out at various stages.
”
”
D.E. Stevenson (Winter and Rough Weather (Dering Family #3))
“
Again, we wake, our neighbor yelling at his son,
poor kid standing by the porch. Tracking mud,
he backs from the shouting, his father's raised fist.
Later, I will see him sulking near our feed shed,
knotting an old piece of garden hose, kicking dust.
I'll smile, ask if he's OK. But right now,
I listen to John's quiet breathing beside me.
Faith, they say, is Abraham asked to slaughter
his boy on a mountaintop. But sometimes
it's just the peeling shed in gray weather,
the leather harness softened, then gone rough.
All day today, the back pond will teem with carp.
The clover will brighten. For now, we lie together
into late morning. Some days, it is enough.
”
”
Bruce Snider (Fruit (Volume 1) (Wisconsin Poetry Series))
“
Twenty-seven years later It wasn’t until 2006 that Norman had the courage to look up the National Transportation Safety Board’s Accident Report for the crash and read the transcription of the pilot’s radio conversation with air traffic control. They had been doomed almost from takeoff. The pilot was using an underpowered plane with insufficient instruments on a rough day. He didn’t get a weather briefing or file a flight plan. He shouldn’t have taken off let alone headed into the storm. Thirty seconds into the flight he seemed lost and he was warned three times by air traffic control not to continue flying as he was. Big Bear airport was at an altitude of 2,100 m (7,000 ft) and was unmanned. Even with the right instruments and a modern plane it would have been all but impossible to land that day. Norman also went back up to the mountain to where Sandra had fallen. He paid his respects and continued up to the site of the crash. He was surprised, but even from that high vantage point he couldn’t see the meadow where he had been rescued. The big ridge blocked it out. So how had he known where to head for that day? Had he sensed the most likely place to find another human being? Was he lucky? Or maybe, just maybe, someone was looking out for him. This story is a brief retelling of the events in Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad, published by HarperPress. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © 2009 Norman Ollestad.
”
”
Collins Maps (Extreme Survivors: 60 of the World’s Most Extreme Survival Stories)
“
We Will Survive
October 16, 2024 at 10:35 AM
Verse 1
When the world feels heavy, and the night seems long
We gather strength, we find our song
Through stormy weather and the darkest nights
We hold on tight, and we fight the fight
Chorus
We will survive tough times, we’ll rise above the pain
With hearts so strong, we’ll face the rain
Hand in hand, through every climb
We will survive, we will survive tough times
Verse 2
When the road gets rough, and we’re feeling low
With hope in our hearts, together we’ll go
Through trials and tears, we’ll stand tall
In the face of it all, we’ll never fall
Chorus
We will survive tough times, we’ll rise above the pain
With hearts so strong, we’ll face the rain
Hand in hand, through every climb
We will survive, we will survive tough times
Bridge
Through the fire and the flames, we find our light
In the darkest hour, we hold on tight
With every step, every tear we shed
We build a future, we look ahead
Verse 3
In unity we find our way
With love and courage, we’ll seize the day
Through the ups and downs, we’ll persevere
With every breath, we’ll conquer fear
Chorus
We will survive tough times, we’ll rise above the pain
With hearts so strong, we’ll face the rain
Hand in hand, through every climb
We will survive, we will survive tough times
Outro
So here’s to us, through thick and thin
With every struggle, we begin again
Together strong, through life’s tough rhymes
We will survive, we will survive tough times
”
”
James Hilton-Cowboy
“
they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
“
It is abundantly clear that our planet is warming. But not only the warming itself will change our world as we know it. We are already seeing changing weather patterns with extreme weather and droughts. We are already in the middle of three pandemics: The HIV/Aids pandemic is slowly retreating, the seventh cholera pandemic that started in the 1960s is still not under control, and the tuberculosis pandemic infects roughly one third of the human population. The World Health Organization warns about the spreading of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria with 900,000 cases each year. Microbiologists warn about the spreading of antibiotics-resistance genes in a great number of pathogenic bacteria, and they expect us to reach a point when antibiotics are no longer effective. Think of Victorian London with diseases like syphilis, cholera, typhus — there were no antibiotics available back then and a lot of people died a gruesome death. What has disease to do with climate
”
”
Annelie Wendeberg (1/2986 (1/2986, #1))
“
It was good for me to be afflicted. (Psalm 119:71) It is a remarkable occurrence of nature that the most brilliant colors of plants are found on the highest mountains, in places that are the most exposed to the fiercest weather. The brightest lichens and mosses, as well as the most beautiful wildflowers, abound high upon the windswept, storm-ravaged peaks. One of the finest arrays of living color I have ever seen was just above the great Saint Bernard Hospice near the ten-thousand-foot summit of Mont Cenis in the French Alps. The entire face of one expansive rock was covered with a strikingly vivid yellow lichen, which shone in the sunshine like a golden wall protecting an enchanted castle. Amid the loneliness and barrenness of that high altitude and exposed to the fiercest winds of the sky, this lichen exhibited glorious color it has never displayed in the shelter of the valley. As I write these words, I have two specimens of the same type of lichen before me. One is from this Saint Bernard area, and the other is from the wall of a Scottish castle, which is surrounded by sycamore trees. The difference in their form and coloring is quite striking. The one grown amid the fierce storms of the mountain peak has a lovely yellow color of a primrose, a smooth texture, and a definite form and shape. But the one cultivated amid the warm air and the soft showers of the lowland valley has a dull, rusty color, a rough texture, and an indistinct and broken shape. Isn’t it the same with a Christian who is afflicted, storm-tossed, and without comfort? Until the storms and difficulties allowed by God’s providence beat upon a believer again and again, his character appears flawed and blurred. Yet the trials actually clear away the clouds and shadows, perfect the form of his character, and bestow brightness and blessing to his life. Amidst my list of blessings infinite Stands this the foremost, that my heart has bled; For all I bless You, most for the severe. Hugh Macmillan
”
”
Lettie B. Cowman (Streams in the Desert: 366 Daily Devotional Readings)
“
Enough of these games. Raziel rose in a quick motion; he gripped her head in his hands and kissed her harshly, shoving her up against the wall. Open to me, he thought. Her arms twined around his neck as she responded. Using the connection their past history gave them, he delved deep, deeper into her mind, probing her roughly. He could feel her slight tremor as she allowed him in, opening up layer after layer to him, until there were no more to be explored. Finally
”
”
L.A. Weatherly (Angel Fire (Angel, #2))
“
In a remote area on the western side of the island, near the town of Marrawah, a pod of sperm whales was stranded on the beach. One big male came to shore first. Over the next twenty-four hours, another thirty-four whales stranded themselves, including calves and pregnant mothers.
Whale stranding is one of the heartbreaking mysteries of the animal world. It is little understood. At this moment no scientific reasoning mattered as we encountered the tragedy unfolding on that Tasmanian beach.
I felt so helpless. All I could do was be there as the huge, gorgeous sea mammals fought pitifully to stay alive. The weather was cold, even though it was officially the Tasmanian summer, and the seas were too rough to get a boat out to help the whales. We put our arms around the dying animals, spoke to them, and looked into their eyes to share in their pain and grief. By the end of the day I was so cold that I had trouble getting my pants off over my pregnant belly. It took me half an hour of struggling in the car park to strip off my soaking-wet clothes and get into some warm, dry gear. Physically, emotionally, and even spiritually, it had been an exhausting day.
I pondered what communication the baby inside me would have gotten from the event. The dying whales had sung among themselves. Steve and I spoke back and forth over their stranded bodies. What did baby Igor pick up on? Through our experiences, we were beginning to form our very own tiny wildlife warrior, even before the baby was born. Igor had only just begun his education.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
Pretty rough-looking bruise you have there,” Preacher said. “Can I get you anything for that lip? I have a first aid kit in the kitchen.” “I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head. “How about if we settle up and—” “I don’t have anything for a kid’s fever. Except a room. With a lock on the door so you feel safe. You don’t want to pass up an offer like that in this weather, with a kid who might be coming down with something. I look big and mean, but I’m about as safe as you get. Unless you’re wildlife.” He grinned at her. “You don’t look mean,” she said timidly. “It can make women and little kids real nervous—and I hate that part. You on the run?” he asked her. She lowered her eyes. “What d’you think? I’m gonna call the cops? Who did that to you?” She immediately started to cry. “Aw. Hey. Don’t.” She put her head down on folded arms on the tabletop and sobbed. “Aw. Come on. Don’t do that. I never know what to do.” Hesitatingly, squeamishly, he touched her back and she jumped. He touched one of her hands, very lightly. “Come on, don’t cry. Maybe I can help.” “No. You can’t.” “Never know,” he said, lightly patting her hand. She
”
”
Robyn Carr (Shelter Mountain (Virgin River, #2))
“
ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
“
sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow- 5 of 670
”
”
Anonymous
“
The goal was to build a model that represented the climate system. This was no small task. Weather models are concerned only about what’s happening in the atmosphere. The atmosphere has a memory of roughly one week. That’s why your local weather forecast goes out only about a week.
”
”
Heidi Cullen (The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet)
“
Susan came down the hall in a white dress that fit her well. She looked like she was receiving an Academy Award for stunningness. I
”
”
Robert B. Parker (Rough Weather (Spenser, #36))
“
The weatherman had said it might rain, so everyone was sure it wouldn't. In L.A., where the weather is the same three hundred and fifty-five days a year, the weatherman is right about fifteen percent of the time, roughly the same average as the handicappers at Santa Anita, astrologers, and the guys who predict lower gasoline prices. Faith in the U.S. Meteorological Service does not run high in Los Angeles.
”
”
Timothy Hallinan (The Four Last Things (Simeon Grist Mystery, #1))