Ruled By The Moon Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Ruled By The Moon. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Please, amigo. We need you, Kimosabe, O Mighty Powerful One. We need you more than the earth rises in the west." The sun rises in the east, dickhead." Only if you're standing on the earth. If you're on the moon, the earth rises in the west.
Simone Elkeles (Rules of Attraction (Perfect Chemistry, #2))
The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon
Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.
Elif Shafak (The Forty Rules of Love)
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
The lions sing and the hills take flight. The moon by day, and the sun by night. Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool. Let the Lord of Chaos rule. -chant from a children's game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age
Robert Jordan (Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time, #6))
Because the beings from that planet are now circling Earth in a ship the size of a small moon, threatening to destroy all human life if we don’t cooperate.
Steven Decker (The Balance of Time (Time Chain #2))
Sometimes when we're not paying attention, relationships hap­pen. There is no rule that requires two people in love to be ex­actly alike. In fact, there is some scientific evidence to suggest that on a genetic level, the people who are the most opposite are the most likely to have a healthy and long-lasting pairing. But really, who can explain the mysteries of attraction? Blame it on Cupid. The moon. The shape of a smile. Both of you can thrive on your differences, as long as you respect them. You say tomato, he says tomahto . Let it happen, Dive in head first. We usually learn the most about ourselves from people who are different from us. —Miss Independent (ella varner)
Lisa Kleypas (Smooth Talking Stranger (Travises, #3))
Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars.
Hermann Hesse
There's no shame in fear. But understand this - the coward is ruled by fear, while the hero rides it like a wild stallion.
David Gemmell (Dark Moon)
For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.
W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon and Sixpence)
The first rule about a black woman’s hair is you don’t talk about a black woman’s hair. And the second rule is you don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair without getting written permission first.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so short-sighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lover’s of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full. (9)
Elif Shafak
If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a Witch. You make your own rules. You are free and beautiful. You
Margot Adler (Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America)
It was like noticing the sun. You couldn't help but see it, to turn to face the heat of it, to bask in the glory of it. But often when the sun is high in the sky, the moon is up there, too. A dim memory of what she will be in the night, but there, nonetheless, dim and misty, hard and white. At night, there is only the moon, the sun is nowhere to be seen. There are no distractions when the moon rules the sky.
Laurell K. Hamilton (Cerulean Sins (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #11))
You may have the dark and cold street life, ruled by the lessor light of the moon. During this time I restore my temple, and later awake to greet the awesome radiance of the sun-star.
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
My mother, Nicolette, is the Katagaria Grand Regis Ursulan- so don’t start no shit, won’t be no shit. Quick rule rundown. No fighting, no biting, no magick. You break the rules, we break body parts and you’re banned from here…if you survive. In short, come in peace or leave in pieces. (Dev)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Bad Moon Rising (Dark-Hunter, #18; Were-Hunter, #4; Hellchaser, #2))
To the High Queen of Elfhame, Above me is the same silvery moon that shines down on you. Looking at it makes me recall the glint of your blade pressed against my throat and other romantic moments. I do not know what keeps you from returning to the High Court—whether it is vexation with me, or whether, having spent time in the mortal world, you have come to believe that a life free of the Folk is better than one ruling over them. In my most wretched hours, I believe you will never come back. Why would you, save for your ambition? You have always known exactly what I am and seen all my failings, all my weaknesses and scars. I flattered myself that at moments you had feelings for me other than contempt, but even were that true, they would be but watered wine beside the feast of your other, greater desires. And yet my heart is buried with you in the strange soil of the mortal world, as it was drowned with you in the cold waters of the Undersea. It was yours before I could admit it, and yours it shall ever remain. Cardan
Holly Black (The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3))
I know everything about everything and before I dry off completely, which is something I truly hate, you better go outside, collect Trates, and have both your asses out of here or I’m going to lose what little patience I have. You will play by the rules I’ve set up for sanctuary, or I’ll use your entrails for armbands. (Savitar)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dark Side of the Moon (Dark-Hunter, #9; Were-Hunter, #3))
Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. Fox said, people will live forever. If they die they will not die for long. Wolf said, no, people will die, people must die, all things that live must die, or they will spread and cover the world, and eat all the salmon and the caribou and the buffalo, eat all the squash and all the corn. Now one day Wolf died, and he said to the fox, quick, bring me back to life. And Fox said, No, the dead must stay dead. You convinced me. And he wept as he said this. But he said it, and it was final. Now Wolf rules the world of the dead and Fox lives always under the sun and the moon, and he still mourns his brother.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
Tangled Moon ~ Sometimes you have to break the rules. Sometimes you have to let go of the past. And sometimes you have to accept the impossible.
Olivia Stocum (Tangled Moon)
Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (Fairyland, #3))
Shoot the moon," Aurora says dreamily. "Would it bleed, do you think? I think it would. I think it would bleed...shooting stars.
Sara Ryan (The Rules for Hearts (Battle Hall Davies, #2))
Water will run by rule; the actual sun / Will scrupulously rise and set; / No little man lives in the exacting moon / And that is that, is that, is that.
Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
The moon is queen of everything. She rules the oceans, rivers, rain. When I am asked whose tears these are; I always blame the moon.
Lucille Clifton
I am apart of the group of wild ones, us women who speak to the moon. We crave passion, live with wide open hearts and we wear our hearts on ur sleeves too. Often told we are too much, but taming our spirit isn’t something we’ll ever do. Love us as we are, we create our own rules.
Nikki Rowe
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness. Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful. Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms, and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance. Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure. Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten the night. He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong. Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs. Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of you; through those who endure sickness and trial. Happy those who endure in peace, for they will be crowned.
Francis of Assisi
Like fingers pointing to the moon, other diverse disciplines from anthropology to education, behavioral economics to family counseling, similarly suggest that the skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
one of the first rules of police work is that trouble will always come looking for you, so there’s no point looking for it.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
These fourteen phases from full moon to new also have their result, and for the Egyptian consciousness this result was achieved through Isis. These fourteen phases are ruled by Isis.
Rudolf Steiner (Egyptian Myths And Mysteries)
I try so hard, and it is still not working. I wear the same clothes as the others. I say the same words at the same times: good morning, hi, how are you, I'm fine, good night, please, thank you, you're welcome, no thank you, not right now. I obey the traffic laws; I obey the rules. I have ordinary furniture in my apartment, and I play my unusual music very softly or use headphones. But it is not enough. Even as hard as I try, the real people still want me to change, to be like them.
Elizabeth Moon (The Speed of Dark)
ON THE DAY I DIE On the day I die, when I'm being carried toward the grave, don't weep. Don't say, He's gone! He's gone. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets and the moon sets, but they're not gone. Death is a coming together. The tomb looks like a prison, but it's really release into union. The human seed goes down in the ground like a bucket into the well where Joseph is. It grows and comes up full of some unimagined beauty. Your mouth closes here, and immediately opens with a shout of joy there. --------------------------------- One who does what the Friend wants done will never need a friend. There's a bankruptcy that's pure gain. The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night. A rose's rarest essence lives in the thorn. ---------------------------------- Childhood, youth, and maturity, and now old age. Every guest agrees to stay three days, no more. Master, you told me to remind you. Time to go. ----------------------------------- The angel of death arrives, and I spring joyfully up. No one knows what comes over me when I and that messenger speak! ------------------------------------- When you come back inside my chest no matter how far I've wandered off, I look around and see the way. At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come then, I'll sit up and sing. -------------------------------------- Last night things flowed between us that cannot now be said or written. Only as I'm being carried out and down the road, as the folds of my shroud open in the wind, will anyone be able to read, as on the petal-pages of a turning bud, what passed through us last night. ------------------------------------- I placed one foot on the wide plain of death, and some grand immensity sounded on the emptiness. I have felt nothing ever like the wild wonder of that moment. Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, Suffer the pain. Your desire must be disciplined, and what you want to happen in time, sacrificed.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems)
Men of dreams, the lovers and the poets, are better in most things than the men of my sort; the men of intellect. You take your being from your mothers. You live to the full: it is given you to love with your whole strength, to know and taste the whole of life. We thinkers, though often we seem to rule you, cannot live with half your joy and full reality. Ours is a thin and arid life, but the fullness of being is yours; yours the sap of the fruit, the garden of lovers, the joyous pleasaunces of beauty. Your home is the earth, ours the idea of it. Your danger is to be drowned in the world of sense, ours to gasp for breath in airless space. You are a poet, I a thinker. You sleep on your mother's breast, I watch in the wilderness. On me there shines the sun; on you the moon with all the stars. Your dreams are all of girls, mine of boys—
Hermann Hesse (Narcissus and Goldmund)
The moon by day the sun by night, deaf woman, blind men, jackdaw fool, let the lord of Chaos rule.
Robert Jordan
The Moon rules our emotional nature, how we react in situations, and what is needed in our lives to make us feel emotionally safe and secure.
Rosemary Breen (Horoscope Compatibility for All the Zodiac Signs)
As the sun rules the day and the moon governs the night, so too, we are connected by: the air that we breathe, light that we see and the darkness that follows. Life is too short to waste it on disagreements. Surely, we can all agree to disagree. So let us find a common ground, form a union and spread joy, happiness and freedom around the world for the benefit of you, me and the future generations to come.
Raymond Beresford Hamilton (Identity Assumption)
This place…” He trailed off to gaze up at the moon. “It’s one of those special places where you feel like time doesn’t exist. Where it will always be summer, where I’ll always wake up with you.
K.L. Walther (The Summer of Broken Rules)
If he ever sang, she thought, the song would be so unbearably gorgeous, it would soar over spires of stone and steel, and pierce the hearts of humans and other creatures, and he could rule the world.
Thea Harrison (Oracle's Moon (Elder Races, #4))
But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
Must be a yearning deep in the human heart to stop the people from doing as they please. Rules, laws--always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good"--not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
Jack wasn't worried. Wherever Mirie was stuck, she had probably taken over and was ruling as the de facto empress.
C.L. Bevill (Amber Moon (Moon Trilogy, #2))
A rule of the blue road: Be careful going in search of adventure—it’s ridiculously easy to find.
William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways: A Journey into America)
You think you cannot live anymore. You think that the light of your soul has been put out and that you will stay in the dark forever. But when you are engulfed by such solid darkness, when you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. And only then do you come to realize that eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere. You see him in the drop of water that falls into the ocean, in the high tide that follows the waxing of the moon, or in the morning wind that spreads its fresh smell; you see him in the geomancy symbols in the sand, in the tiny particles of rock glittering under the sun, in the smile of a newborn baby, or in your throbbing vein. How can you say Shams is gone when he is everywhere and in everything?
Elif Shafak (The Forty Rules of Love)
One can see [...] that the so-called governing powers are cardboard characters that mask the true ruling factors of our culture. Of course, those who manipulate the nation are not stupid. Rulers throughout history are only as powerful as the people who support them allow them to be.
Peter Moon (The Black Sun: Montauk's Nazi-Tibetan Connection)
The most important thing is love," said Leigh-Cheri. "I know that now. There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon." Leigh-Cheri sent that message to Bernard through his attorney. The message continued, "I'm not quite 20, but, thanks to you, I've learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn't that be the way to make love stay?" The next day, Bernard's attorney delivered to her this reply: Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free. Leigh-Cheri went out in the blackberries and wept. "I'll follow him to the ends of the earth," she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.
Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)
History is people with ships and weapons wiping out those who forgot to invent them. Every civilisation begins with a genocide. It is the rule of the universe. The immutable law of the jungle, even this one made of concrete. You can see it in the movement of the stars, and in the dance of every atom. The rich will enslave the penniless. The strong will crush the weak.
Shehan Karunatilaka (The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida)
Science is about recognizing patterns. [...] Everything depends on the ground rules of the observer: if someone refuses to look at obvious patterns because they consider a pattern should not be there, then they will see nothing but the reflection of their own prejudices.
Christopher Knight (Who Built the Moon?)
PLANETARIUM Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750–1848) astronomer, sister of William; and others. A woman in the shape of a monster a monster in the shape of a woman the skies are full of them a woman ‘in the snow among the Clocks and instruments or measuring the ground with poles’ in her 98 years to discover 8 comets she whom the moon ruled like us levitating into the night sky riding the polished lenses Galaxies of women, there doing penance for impetuousness ribs chilled in those spaces of the mind An eye, ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’ from the mad webs of Uranusborg encountering the NOVA every impulse of light exploding from the core as life flies out of us Tycho whispering at last ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’ What we see, we see and seeing is changing the light that shrivels a mountain and leaves a man alive Heartbeat of the pulsar heart sweating through my body The radio impulse pouring in from Taurus I am bombarded yet I stand I have been standing all my life in the direct path of a battery of signals the most accurately transmitted most untranslatable language in the universe I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo- luted that a light wave could take 15 years to travel through me And has taken I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images for the relief of the body and the reconstruction of the mind.
Adrienne Rich (Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970)
During Aurangzeb’s rule, which lasted for forty-nine years from 1658 onwards, there were many phases during which Pandits were persecuted. One of his fourteen governors, Iftikhar Khan, who ruled for four years from 1671, was particularly brutal towards the community. It was during his rule that a group of Pandits approached the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Punjab and begged him to save their faith. He told them to return to Kashmir and tell the Mughal rulers that if they could convert him (Tegh Bahadur), all Kashmiri Pandits would accept Islam. This later led to the Guru’s martyrdom, but the Pandits were saved.
Rahul Pandita (Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir)
The diversity of sounds rule my ever presence with their highs and blows, encompassing the totality of sensual experience. I'm a child of the sirens of knowledge, a warrior for the truth in a world of washed perspectives and harsh realities. My voice cries the initial cry of the unborn into the perplexing illusion. I long for the realization of the human drama, the defeat of the dogs war, and the unity of existence. The beloved Gods of virtue have been undersold for the bleeding bread of empathy. I now awaist the triumphant roar of destiny, dressed in the inviting hand of a mother, perplexed by discovering, aroused by spirit. The door is open, the road transformed. The exit code to civilization is hacked beyond dispair, chased but the moon toward the freeing sun, on our journey to light. This is an open plea to the beautiful insanity of your hearts. It is time to consummate the kiss of oblivion into the obsidian of love!
Serj Tankian
History is people with ships and weapons wiping out those who forgot to invent them. Every civilisation begins with a genocide. It is the rule of the universe.
Shehan Karunatilaka (The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida)
Paks, if you've got a fault it's that you're too willing to be ruled. I know what you'll say—you'll say that's how a good soldier is.
Elizabeth Moon (The Deed of Paksenarrion (The Deed of Paksenarrion, #1-3))
Surely, as a rule, some little bit of moonlight would filter through the clouds, through the clinks in the canopy of trees, and find the ground. Not tonight. Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight-a lunar eclipse, a new moon. A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn't cold.
Stephenie Meyer (New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2))
Stevie: "If you think he's a lecher and all men are disgusting, why do you want me to date?" Zena: "Because, Stevie. Now and then, when the moon is full and bluish, when the galaxy is all calm and peaceful and serenity rules and even the falling stars are falling gracefully, and the wind creates a beautiful song, that's when you find one outstanding man. Kind. Loyal. Funny and smart, great in bed but not kinky. A lover in his head and in his body. A man who doesn't think as a dick-obsessed monkey with a brain the size of a testicle, but one who is thoughtful and can hold his emotions in one hand and hug you close with the other. A man who is a hunky, manly man but who can talk to you like your best girlfriend, because that's what he wants to be for you. Your best friend." (Page 44)
Cathy Lamb (Such a Pretty Face)
I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madrone trees on the horizon. The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon. I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the stars around it to shame. I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head.
Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
Lady Dance's music wasn't a magic charm. I'd misunderstood. We had all failed to understand. The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive. 'Rejoice,' came the soft voice of Lady Dance in my mind. 'Watch the moon and stars...' Death had ruled my life till I met Lady Dance. Her dance had set me free.
Jackie French (Lady Dance)
We look back on history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling; revolutions and counter-revolutions succeeding one another; wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed; one nation dominant and then another. As Shakespeare’s King Lear puts it, “the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.” In one lifetime I’ve seen my fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, and the great majority of them convinced – in the words of what is still a favorite song – that God has made them mighty and will make them mightier yet. I’ve heard a crazed Austrian announce the establishment of a German Reich that was to last for a thousand years; an Italian clown report that the calendar will begin again with his assumption of power; a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius. I’ve seen America wealthier than all the rest of the world put together; and with the superiority of weaponry that would have enabled Americans, had they so wished, to outdo an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of conquest. All in one little lifetime – gone with the wind: England now part of an island off the coast of Europe, threatened with further dismemberment; Hitler and Mussolini seen as buffoons; Stalin a sinister name in the regime he helped to found and dominated totally for three decades; Americans haunted by fears of running out of the precious fluid that keeps their motorways roaring and the smog settling, by memories of a disastrous military campaign in Vietnam, and the windmills of Watergate. Can this really be what life is about – this worldwide soap opera going on from century to century, from era to era, as old discarded sets and props litter the earth? Surely not. Was it to provide a location for so repetitive and ribald a production as this that the universe was created and man, or homo sapiens as he likes to call himself – heaven knows why – came into existence? I can’t believe it. If this were all, then the cynics, the hedonists, and the suicides are right: the most we can hope for from life is amusement, gratification of our senses, and death. But it is not all.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Being “up to something” was the unnamable and unforgiveable crime for which any American male could be indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in one breath. He wondered how things had gotten rigged so that the male half of the race must always behave to suit feminine rules and feminine logic, like a snotty-nosed school boy in front of a stern teacher.
Robert A. Heinlein (The Man Who Sold the Moon and Orphans of the Sky)
Know, O my sisters, that the moon power is the Power of women, the light that shines in the darkness, the tides that rule the inner planes. The maiden moon governs all growth and all beginnings, and so it is that we draw on her power for those purposes for which our help has been requested.
Marion Zimmer Bradley (The Forests of Avalon: Avalon Book 2)
The Emperor is dead! So too his right hand - now cold, now severed! But mark these dying shadows, twinned and flowing bloody and beaten, down and away from mortal sight... From sceptre's rule dismissed, from gild candelabra the light now fled, from a hearth ringed in hard jewels seven years this warmth has bled... The Emperor is dead. So too his master'd companion, the rope cut clean. But mark this burgeoning return - faltering dark, the tattered shroud - embracing children in Empire's dying light. Hear now the dirge faint reprised, before the sun's fall, this day spills red on buckled earth, and in obsidian eyes vengeance chimes seven times..." ―Call to Shadow, Felisin (I.i. 1-18)
Steven Erikson (Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1))
I have established my throne in heaven, and my kingdom rules over all. The day is mine, and mine also the night; I established the sun and moon. I set all the boundaries of the earth; I made both summer and winter. The earth is mine, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. All things are from me and through me and to me.
Zhang Yun (Understand God's Word - Walk in the Truth)
… to rule at my side with grace and justice, to honor the laws of the Earthen Union as laid out by our forefathers, to be an advocate for peace and fairness among all peoples.” Did anyone believe a word of this rubbish? “From this day forward, she will be my sun at dawn and my moon at night, and I vow to love and cherish her for all our days.” Who wrote these vows anyway? He’d never heard anything so ridiculous in his life.
Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
Commala-come-come There’s a young man with a gun. Young man lost his honey When she took it on the run. Commala-come-one! She took it on the run! Left her baby lonely But he baby ain’t done. Commala-come-coo The wind’ll blow ya through. Ya gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya Cause there’s nothin else to do. Commala-come-two! Nothin else to do! Gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya Cause there’s nothin else to do. Commala-come-key Can you tell me what ya see? Is it ghosts or just the mirror That makes ya wanna flee? Commala-come-three! I beg ya, tell me! Is it ghosts or just your darker self That makes ya wanna flee? Commala-come-ko Whatcha doin at my do’? If ya doan tell me now, my friend I’ll lay ya on de flo’. Commala-come-fo’! I can lay ya low! The things I’ve do to such as you You never wanna know. Commala-gin-jive Ain’t it grand to be alive? To look out on Discordia When the Demon Moon arrives. Commala-come-five! Even when the shadows rise! To see the world and walk the world Makes ya glad to be alive. Commala-mox-nix! You’re in a nasty fix! To take a hand in traitor’s glove Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks! Commala-come-six! Nothing there but thorns and sticks! When your find your hand in traitor’s glove You’re in a nasty fix. Commala-loaf-leaven! They go to hell or up to heaven! The the guns are shot and the fires hot, You got to poke em in the oven. Commala-come-seven! Salt and yow’ for leaven! Heat em up and knock em down And poke em in the oven. Commala-ka-kate You’re in the hands of fate. No matter if it’s real or not, The hour groweth late. Commala-come-eight! The hour groweth late! No matter what shade ya cast You’re in the hands of fate. Commala-me-mine You have to walk the line. When you finally get the thing you need It makes you feel so fine. Commala-come-nine! It makes ya feel fine! But if you’d have the thing you need You have to walk the line. Commala-come-ken It’s the other one again. You may know her name and face But that don’t make her your friend. Commala-come-ten! She is not your friend! If you let her get too close She’ll cut you up again! Commala-come-call We hail the one who made us all, Who made the men and made the maids, Who made the great and small. Commala-come-call! He made us great and small! And yet how great the hand of fate That rules us one and all. Commala-come-ki, There’s a time to live and one to die. With your back against the final wall Ya gotta let the bullets fly. Commala-come-ki! Let the bullets fly! Don’t ‘ee mourn for me, my lads When it comes my day to die. Commala-come-kass! The child has come at last! Sing your song, O sing it well, The child has come to pass. Commala-come-kass, The worst has come to pass. The Tower trembles on its ground; The child has come at last. Commala-come-come, The battle’s now begun! And all the foes of men and rose Rise with the setting sun.
Stephen King (Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6))
I kept staring at the moon. I'm not sure if its light was good or evil. I thought it might not be either. The moon just shines with the light of chaos. Mysteriously. Brightly. That must not be either good or evil. Just as the rules of this world are not all good.
Fuminori Nakamura (The Kingdom)
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter - for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
Stanisław Lem
The only reasons I can think of for you listening to Dumbledore- and don't give me that following orders bullshit Remus, I know you too well, you're as much of a rule follower as I am- so either you really, honestly, don't trust Sirius or... or you're punishing him. Because you and I both know that the easiest way to hurt Sirius Black is to leave him.
MesserMoon (Choices)
Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove I will return to thy alcove, And glide upon the night to thee, Treading the shadows silently. And I will give to thee, my own, Kisses as icy as the moon, And the caresses of a snake Cold gliding in the thorny brake. And when returns the livid morn Thou shalt find all my place forlorn And chilly, till the falling night. Others would rule by tenderness Over thy life and youthfulness, But I would conquer thee by fright!
Charles Baudelaire (Les fleurs du mal)
You're a big boy, No. You'll figure something out. Just make sure it includes the groveling." -Abby It come to all of us. Especially those of us foolish enough to fall in love with women who have minds of their own. If you will recall, your own sister had a few things she had to forgive me for before we could move on with our relationship." -Rule There's a big difference between a little kidnapping and what he did." -Abby "You did not call it a 'little' anything at the time, sweet. You were furious with me. Believe me, the groveling does do wonders." -Rule
Christine Warren (Howl at the Moon (The Others, #12))
It is easier to teach saints than to learn from sinners. It is easier to teach young students than to guide old fools. It is easier to chastise saints than to caution sinners. It is easier to shine in the dark than to glow in the light. It is easier to multiply enemies than to accumulate friends. It is easier to embrace your angel than to face your demons. It is easier to fight an army of opinions than a single truth. It is easier to rise with enemies than to fall with friends. It is easier to fall into sin than to rise into virtue. It is easier to rise from defeat than to rise from ignorance. It is easier to survive a blow from a friend than a kiss from an enemy. It is easier to conquer a thousand devils than a single angel. It is easier to rise from love than to soar from hate. It is easier to move mountains by faith than hills by your hands. It is easier for stars to shine than for truth to glow. It is easier to resist pain than to defy pleasure. It is easier to appease the strong than to wrestle the mighty. It is easier to tame the mind than to bridle the soul. It is easier to fight an army than to grapple with your conscience. It is easier to embrace the future than to understand the past. It is easier for the sun to shine than for the moon to glow. It is easier for small seeds to rise than for big trees to grow. It is easier to heal a wounded heart than a broken soul. It is easier to rule the mind than to conquer the soul. It is easier to conquer your enemies than to master your fears.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I cried only once during the twenty-one-hour flight. I was looking out the window at the moon and thinking of the last long trip I took across the sky, and of the person who went with me and didn't come back. For a while, it was as poisonous and wrenching as it had been since the day it happened, as intolerable: a crime against nature. Then the grief went back to sleep in my body. And it was again nature herself. Nature. Mother Nature. She is free to do whatever she chooses.
Ariel Levy (The Rules Do Not Apply)
Kayne Malkin was a riddle, an intoxicating game of the highest stakes. The losses were devastating, the rewards core-shattering. The rules were unknown, ever-changing, and always favored the house. And yet, you played. All you wanted was to keep playing, forever and ever, on the merry-go-round.
L.C. Moon (A Bedtime Story (Beauty Meets the Beast) (Fairy Tales From the Underworld, Part I))
It isn't only political power that grows out of the barrel of a gun. So does a whole definition of reality. A set. And the action that has to happen on that particular set and on none other." "Don't be so bloody patronizing," I objected.... "That's just Marx: the ideology of the ruling class becomes the ideology of the whole society." "Not the ideology. The Reality." He lowered his handkerchief. "This was a public park until they changed the definition. Now, the guns have changed the Reality. It isn't a public park. There's more than one kind of magic." "Just like the Enclosure Acts," I said hollowly. "One day the land belonged to the people. The next day it belonged to the landlords." "And like the Narcotics Acts," he added. "A hundred thousand harmless junkies became criminals overnight, by Act of Congress, in nineteen twenty-seven. Ten years later, in thirty-seven, all the pot-heads in the country became criminals overnight, by Act of Congress. And they really were criminals, when the papers were signed. The guns prove it. Walk away from those guns, waving a joint, and refuse to halt when they tell you. Their Imagination will become your Reality in a second.
Robert Anton Wilson (The Eye in the Pyramid (Illuminatus, #1))
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws – always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: ‘Please pass this so that I won’t be able to do something I know I should stop.’ Nyet, tovarisschee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them ‘for their own good’ – not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
Before I go to StarClan, there is something I must do.” His voice was stronger now. “Firestar, Onewhisker, listen. Mudclaw is a brave warrior, but he is not the right cat to lead WindClan. In these last moons we have learned that the future of our Clans lies in friendship. I want no rivalry between WindClan and ThunderClan after I am gone. We must have no enemies. But this will not happen if Mudclaw rules the Clan.
Erin Hunter (Starlight (Warriors: The New Prophecy, #4))
The Empty Boat He who rules men lives in confusion; He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow. Yao therefore desired Neither to influence others Nor to be influenced by them. The way to get clear of confusion And free of sorrow Is to live with Tao In the land of the great Void. If a man is crossing a river And an empty boat collides with his own skiff, Even though he be a bad-tempered man He will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, He will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, And yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty. He would not be shouting, and not angry. If you can empty your own boat Crossing the river of the world, No one will oppose you, No one will seek to harm you. The straight tree is the first to be cut down, The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry. If you wish to improve your wisdom And shame the ignorant, To cultivate your character And outshine others; A light will shine around you As if you had swallowed the sun and the moon: You will not avoid calamity. A wise man has said: "He who is content with himself Has done a worthless work. Achievement is the beginning of failure. Fame is beginning of disgrace." Who can free himself from achievement And from fame, descend and be lost Amid the masses of men? He will flow like Tao, unseen, He will go about like Life itself With no name and no home. Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool. His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation. Since he judges no one No one judges him. Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty.
Thomas Merton (The Way of Chuang Tzu (Shambhala Library))
I glanced over his shoulder to get a look at his latest drawing. A wolf and a coyote stood side by side beneath a dual sky, sun and moon shining at the same time. "They're brothers," Rafael said. He laid his charcoal on the grass. "Wolf is wise and judicious. Coyote's a trickster. They're the two faces of God. Everything in the world is dual-natured. Even God isn't all good or all bad." He told me about how the sun used to be married to the moon before they quarreled and parted ways, leaving the sun to rule the world at day and the moon at night. He told me how the Wolf had sewn us all out of seeds and put us in a cloth bag to keep us safe, but the Coyote had clawed the bag open and everyone had spilled out, landing and taking root in different parts of the world. He told me about the girl with Two Faces, one half of her face devastatingly beautiful, the other half impossibly ugly, and the man who lover her anyway. He told me about the days when death lacked permanence and ten different generations lived together beneath the same stars. He talked, as he always talked, without any real purpose, clearing his head of the cluttering thoughts that had gathered and built up until he could pour them into me.
Rose Christo (Gives Light (Gives Light, #1))
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws – always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: ‘Please pass this so that I won’t be able to do something I know I should stop.’ Nyet, tovarisschee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them ‘for their own good’ – not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it. Listening
Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
Under the sad end-of-days spell of the smoky dusk and the waning year, of the moon and its ostentatious superiority to the trashy, petty claptrap of his sublunar existence, why does he even hesitate? The Kamizakis are your enemies whether you do or not, so you might as well do it. Yes, yes, if you can still do something, you must do it - that is the golden rule of sublunar existence, whether you are a worm cut in two or a man with a prostate like a billiard ball. If you can still do something, then you must do it! Anything living can figure that out.
Philip Roth (Sabbath's Theater)
In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the Method of approximating series & the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of Tangents of Gregory & Slusius, & in November had the direct method of fluxions & the next year in January had the Theory of Colours & in May following I had entrance into ye inverse method of fluxions. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to ye orb of the Moon & (having found out how to estimate the force with wch [a] globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere) from Kepler's rule of the periodic times of the Planets being in sesquialterate proportion of their distances from the center of their Orbs, I deduced that the forces wch keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about wch they revolve: & thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, & found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665-1666. For in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded Mathematicks & Philosophy more then than at any time since.
Isaac Newton
Science is possible only where situations repeat themselves, or where you have some control over them, and where do you have more repetition and control than in the army? A cube would not be a cube if it were not just as rectangular at nine o'clock as at seven. The same kind of rules work for keeping the planets in orbit as in ballistics. We'd have no way of understanding or judging anything if things flitted past us only once. Anything that has to be valid and have a name must be repeatable, it must be represented by many specimens, and if you had never seen the moon before, you'd think it was a flashlight.Incidentally, the reason God is such an embarrassment to science is that he was seen only once, at the Creation, before there were any trained observers around.
Robert Musil (The Man Without Qualities: Volume I)
In antiquity, Hekate was loved and revered as the goddess of the dark moon. People looked to her as a guardian against unseen dangers and spiritual foes. All was well until Persephone, the goddess of spring, was kidnapped by Hades and ordered to live in the underworld for three months each year. Persephone was afraid to make the journey down to the land of the dead alone, so year after year Hekate lovingly guided her through the dark passageway and back. Over time Hekate became known as Persephone's attendant. But because Persephone was also the queen of the lower world, who ruled over the dead with her husband, Hades, Hekate's role as a guardian goddess soon became twisted and distorted until she was known as the evil witch goddess who stalked the night, looking for innocent people to bewitch and carry off to the underworld. Today few know the great goddess Hekate. Those who do are blessed with her compassion for a soul lost in the realm of evil. Some are given a key.
Lynne Ewing (Into the Cold Fire (Daughters of the Moon, #2))
A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded — such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him. ‘What you have told us,’ says he, ‘is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. ‘In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains. ‘They said to each other, “It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her.” They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: “Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations.” They did so, and to their surprise found plants they had never seen before, but which from that ancient time have been constantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground they found maize; where her left had touched it they found kidney-beans; and where her backside had sat on it they found tobacco.’ The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said: ‘What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood.’ The Indian, offended, replied: ‘My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?
Benjamin Franklin (Remarks Concerning the Savages)
How crazy it would be if the moon did spin and the earth stood still and the sun went dim! How absolutely ludicrous if snakes could walk and kids could fly and mimes did talk! How silly it would be if the nights were tan and the mornings green and the sun cyan! How totally ridiculous if horses chirped and spiders sang and ladies burped! How shocking it would be if the dragons ruled and the knights were daft but the fish were schooled! How utterly preposterous if rain were dry and snowflakes warm and real men cried! I love to just imagine all the lows as heights, and the salty, sweet, and our lefts as rights. Perhaps it is incredible and off the hook, but it all makes sense in a storybook! 
Richelle E. Goodrich (Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year)
Ninja beats pirate. Pirate beats ghost. Ghost beats zombie. Zombie beats most. Werewolf beats vampire. Vamp beats Imp. Imp beats fiend. Fiend beats wimp. Wizard beats cyrborg. Cyborg surely beats troll. Troll beats goblin. Goblin eats a hermit’s soul. Hermit beats child. Child beats wagon. Wagon beats moon snake. Moon snake beats dragon. Dragon beats hydra. Hydra beats sailor. Sailor beats teacher. Teacher beats tailor. Tailor beats sun worm. Sun worm beats clown. Clown beats robo-squid. Robo-squid beats town. Town fights jackals. Town will win. Town fights mummies. Town won’t fight again. Zookeeper beats hell hound. Hell hound beats giant. Giant beats accountant. Accountant beats client. Client beats frog. Frog beats himself. Knight beats Big Foot. Big Foot beats elf. Elf beats pixie. Pixie beats specter. Specter beats sea hag. Sea hag beats Hector. Hector beats serpent. Serpent beats rat. Rat beats Grandma. Grandma beats cat. Lava beats demon. Demon beats warlock. Warlock beats dinosaur. Dino beats Spock. Spock beats Lando. Lando beats Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon beats Jar-Jar. Jar-Jar beats none. Rock beats scissors. Scissors beat paper. Paper beats insect. Insect beats vapor. Wood Woman beats Tree Man. Tree Man beats the dark. The dark kills spider-fish. Spider-fish beats shark. You beat me. I beat a dentist. The dentist beats the barber. The barber is menaced. These are the rules, and never forget. Now hand over your money and place your bet.
Dan Bergstein
I want to wash your hair with a shampoo that smells like fruit - mango, or strawberries. I want to walk on a beach with you, dragging a big stick behind us, making a message in the sand that we try to believe an airplane will really see. I want to kiss saltwater from your lips. I want us to listen to music with our eyes closed; I want to read musty books while lying next to you - books about fascinating things like mummies and eccentric artists and old shipwrecks in the Pacific. I want to have picnics on our bed and crawl into cotton sheets that smell like summer because we left the windows open when we were gone. I want to wake in the night with you and marvel at the stars and try to find the moon through the trees. I want all the sweet things in life. But only by your side.
Deb Caletti (The Six Rules of Maybe)
The often heard lament, “I have so little time,” gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance. Everyone has exactly the same amount of time, the same twenty—four hours in which many a weary voice has uttered the gospel truth: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Mt 6:34, KJV). But most of us, most of the time, take for granted what is closest to us and is most universal. The daily round of sunrise and sunset, for example, that marks the coming and passing of each day, is no longer a symbol of human hopes, or of God’s majesty, but a grind, something we must grit our teeth to endure. Our busy schedules, and even urban architecture, which all too often deprives us of a sense of the sky, has diminished our capacity to marvel with the psalmist in the passage of time as an expression of God’s love for us and for all creation: It was God who made the great lights, whose love endures forever; the sun to rule in the day, whose love endures forever; the moon and stars in the night, whose love endures forever. (Ps 136: 7—9, GR) When
Kathleen Norris (The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work")
The moon fled eastward like a frightened dove, while the stars changed their places in the heavens, like a disbanding army. 'Where are we?' asked Gil Gil. 'In France,' responded the Angel of Death. 'We have now traversed a large portion of the two bellicose nations which waged so sanguinary a war with each other at the beginning of the present century. We have seen the theater of the War of Succession. Conquered and conquerors both lie sleeping at this instant. My apprentice, Sleep, rules over the heroes who did not perish then, in battle, or afterward of sickness or of old age. I do not understand why it is that below on earth all men are not friends? The identity of your misfortunes and your weaknesses, the need you have of each other, the shortness of your life, the spectacle of the grandeur of other worlds, and the comparison between them and your littleness, all this should combine to unite you in brotherhood, like the passengers of a vessel threatened with shipwreck. There, there is neither love, nor hate, nor ambition, no one is debtor or creditor, no one is great or little, no one is handsome or ugly, no one is happy or unfortunate. The same danger surrounds all and my presence makes all equal. Well, then, what is the earth, seen from this height, but a ship which is foundering, a city delivered up to an epidemic or a conflagration?' 'What are those ignes fatui which I can see shining in certain places on the terrestrial globe, ever since the moon veiled her light?' asked the young man. 'They are cemeteries. We are now above Paris. Side by side with every city, every town, every village of the living there is always a city, a town, or a village of the dead, as the shadow is always beside the body. Geography, then, is of two kinds, although mortals only speak of the kind which is agreeable to them. A map of all the cemeteries which there are on the earth would be sufficient indication of the political geography of your world. You would miscalculate, however, in regard to the population; the dead cities are much more densely populated than the living; in the latter there are hardly three generations at one time, while, in the former, hundreds of generations are often crowded together. As for the lights you see shining, they are phosphorescent gleams from dead bodies, or rather they are the expiring gleams of thousands of vanished lives; they are the twilight glow of love, ambition, anger, genius, mercy; they are, in short, the last glow of a dying light, of the individuality which is disappearing, of the being yielding back his elements to mother earth. They are - and now it is that I have found the true word - the foam made by the river when it mingles its waters with those of the ocean.' The Angel of Death paused. ("The Friend of Death")
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (Ghostly By Gaslight)
Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness—so say the oldest legends. When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of outer space, then through galaxies, and finally, before it falls here, to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties, while it darkens and fades. First Pluto draws the frame for this cosmic experiment and reveals its basic principles—life is a fleeting incident, followed by death, which will one day let the spark escape from the trap; there’s no other way out. Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterward, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works. As it continues to fall, the spark crosses Neptune’s belt and is lost in its foggy vapors. As consolation Neptune gives it all sorts of illusions, a sleepy memory of its exodus, dreams about flying, fantasy, narcotics and books. Uranus equips it with the capacity for rebellion; from now on that will be proof of the memory of where the spark is from. As the spark passes the rings of Saturn, it becomes clear that waiting for it at the bottom is a prison. A labor camp, a hospital, rules and forms, a sickly body, fatal illness, the death of a loved one. But Jupiter gives it consolation, dignity and optimism, a splendid gift: things-will-work-out. Mars adds strength and aggression, which are sure to be of use. As it flies past the Sun, it is blinded, and all that it has left of its former, far-reaching consciousness is a small, stunted Self, separated from the rest, and so it will remain. I imagine it like this: a small torso, a crippled being with its wings torn off, a Fly tormented by cruel children; who knows how it will survive in the Gloom. Praise the Goddesses, now Venus stands in the way of its Fall. From her the spark gains the gift of love, the purest sympathy, the only thing that can save it and other sparks; thanks to the gifts of Venus they will be able to unite and support each other. Just before the Fall it catches on a small, strange planet that resembles a hypnotized Rabbit, and doesn’t turn on its own axis, but moves rapidly, staring at the Sun. This is Mercury, who gives it language, the capacity to communicate. As it passes the Moon, it gains something as intangible as the soul. Only then does it fall to Earth, and is immediately clothed in a body. Human, animal or vegetable. That’s the way it is. —
Olga Tokarczuk (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead)
What has become of critique when someone as eminent as Stanley Fish, the “enemy of promises” as Lindsay Waters calls him, believes he defends science studies, my field, by comparing the laws of physics to the rules of baseball? What has become of critique when there is a whole industry denying that the Apollo program landed on the moon? What has become of critique when DARPA uses for its Total Information Awareness project the Baconian slogan Scientia est potentia? Didn’t I read that somewhere in Michel Foucault? Has knowledge-slash-power been co-opted of late by the National Security Agency? Has Discipline and Punish become the bedtime reading of Mr. Ridge?
Bruno Latour
Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood without feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or something I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And now I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me. You too meet with a like imagination, doubtless, somewhere, wherever your ruling stars will have it, Saturn driving you to the woods, or the Moon, it may be, to the edges of the sea. I will not of a certainty believe that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers imagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among green leaves. I say to myself, when I am well out of that thicket of argument, that they are surely there, the divine people, for only we who have neither simplicity nor wisdom have denied them, and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.
W.B. Yeats (The Celtic Twilight)
Homer's Hymn to the Moon Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818. Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody, Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy Sing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth, From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth, Far light is scattered—boundless glory springs; Where'er she spreads her many-beaming wings The lampless air glows round her golden crown. But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone Under the sea, her beams within abide, Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean's tide, Clothing her form in garments glittering far, And having yoked to her immortal car The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky A western Crescent, borne impetuously. Then is made full the circle of her light, And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then, A wonder and a sign to mortal men. The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power Mingled in love and sleep—to whom she bore Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are. Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity, Fair-haired and favourable! thus with thee My song beginning, by its music sweet Shall make immortal many a glorious feat Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley)
(This is from a tribute poem to Ronnie James Dio: Former lead vocalist of the band Rainbow, Black Sabbath. This is written with all the titles of the hit songs of DIO. The titles are all in upper case) You can “CATCH THE RAINBOW” – “A RAINBOW IN THE DARK” Through “ROCK & ROLL CHILDREN” “HOLY DIVER” will lurk “BEFORE THE FALL” of “ELECTRA” “ALL THE FOOLS SAILED AWAY” “JESUS,MARY AND THE HOLY GHOST”- “LORD OF THE LAST DAY” “MASTER OF THE MOON” you are When my “ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE” With our “BLACK”, “COLD FEET”, “MYSTERY” of “PAIN” you crave You’re “CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE”, “BETWEEN TWO HEARTS” When “HUNGRY FOR HEAVEN” “HUNTER OF THE HEART” hurts “FALLEN ANGELS” “FEED MY HEART” “FEVER DREAMS” “FEED MY HEAD” “I AM” “ANOTHER LIE” “AFTER ALL (THE DEAD)” Not “GUILTY” if you “HIDE IN THE RAINBOW’’ With your perfect “GUITAR SOLO” “DON’T TELL THE KIDS” to “DREAM EVIL” Don’t “GIVE HER THE GUN” to follow “DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS” Those “EVIL EYES” can see “LORD OF THE NIGHT” “MISTREATED”; “MY EYES” hate to fancy “SHAME ON THE NIGHT” “TURN UP THE NIGHT” Now it’s “TIME TO BURN” “TWISTED” “VOODOO” does “WALK ON WATER” And today its our turn “BLOOD FROM A STONE” “BORN ON THE SUN” I’m “BETTER IN THE DARK” “BREATHLESS” The “PRISONER OF PARADISE” you are! Forever you are deathless “SACRED HEART” “SHIVERS” Laying “NAKED IN THE RAIN” “THIS IS YOUR LIFE”- “ WILD ONE”! Your “GOLDEN RULES” we gain “IN DREAMS” “I SPEED AT NIGHT” I’m “LOSING MY INSANITY” “ANOTHER LIE”: “COMPUTER GOD” Your “HEAVEN AND HELL”- my vanity! By “KILLING THE DRAGON” “I COULD HAVE BEEN A DREAMER” I’m “THE LAST IN LINE” To “SCREAM” Like an “INVISIBLE” screamer Now that you are gone “THE END OF THE WORLD” is here “STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HEART” “PUSH” “JUST ANOTHER DAY” in fear “CHILDREN OF THE SEA” “ DYING IN AMERICA” Is it “DEATH BY LOVE”? “FACES IN THE WINDOW” looking for A “GYPSY” from above Dear “STARGAZER” from “STRANGE HIGHWAYS” Our love “HERE’S TO YOU” “WE ROCK” “ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD” The “OTHER WORLD” anew “ONE NIGHT IN THE CITY” with “NEON KNIGHTS” “THE EYES” “STAY OUT OF MY MIND” The “STARSTRUCK” “SUNSET SUPERMAN” Is what we long to find “THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING” Is the “INSTITUTIONAL MAN” “SHOOT SHOOT” to “TURN TO STONE” “WHEN A WOMAN CRIES” to plan To “STAND UP AND SHOUT” before “ THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL” Though “GOD HATES HEAVY METAL” “EAT YOUR HEART OUT” to reach the goal. From the poem- Holy Dio: the Diver (A tribute to Ronnie James Dio)
Munia Khan
Socrates tried to soothe us, true enough. He said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born. This is not absolutely comforting either. Anyway it was natural that theology and philosophy should take the deepest interest in this. They owe it to us not to be boring themselves. On this obligation they don’t always make good. However, Kierkegaard was not a bore. I planned to examine his contribution in my master essay. In his view the primacy of the ethical over the esthetic mode was necessary to restore the balance. But enough of that. In myself I could observe the following sources of tedium: 1) The lack of a personal connection with the external world. Earlier I noted that when I was riding through France in a train last spring I looked out of the window and thought that the veil of Maya was wearing thin. And why was this? I wasn’t seeing what was there but only what everyone sees under a common directive. By this is implied that our worldview has used up nature. The rule of this view is that I, a subject, see the phenomena, the world of objects. They, however, are not necessarily in themselves objects as modern rationality defines objects. For in spirit, says Steiner, a man can step out of himself and let things speak to him about themselves, to speak about what has meaning not for him alone but also for them. Thus the sun the moon the stars will speak to nonastronomers in spite of their ignorance of science. In fact it’s high time that this happened. Ignorance of science should not keep one imprisoned in the lowest and weariest sector of being, prohibited from entering into independent relations with the creation as a whole. The educated speak of the disenchanted (a boring) world. But it is not the world, it is my own head that is disenchanted. The world cannot be disenchanted. 2) For me the self-conscious ego is the seat of boredom. This increasing, swelling, domineering, painful self-consciousness is the only rival of the political and social powers that run my life (business, technological-bureaucratic powers, the state). You have a great organized movement of life, and you have the single self, independently conscious, proud of its detachment and its absolute immunity, its stability and its power to remain unaffected by anything whatsoever — by the sufferings of others or by society or by politics or by external chaos. In a way it doesn’t give a damn. It is asked to give a damn, and we often urge it to give a damn but the curse of noncaring lies upon this painfully free consciousness. It is free from attachment to beliefs and to other souls. Cosmologies, ethical systems? It can run through them by the dozens. For to be fully conscious of oneself as an individual is also to be separated from all else. This is Hamlet’s kingdom of infinite space in a nutshell, of “words, words, words,” of “Denmark’s a prison.
Saul Bellow (Humboldt's Gift)
The universe is but a tenement of all things visible. Darkness and day the passing guests of Time. Life slips away, a dream of little joy and mean content. Ah! wise the old philosophers who sought To lengthen their long sunsets among flowers, By stealing the young night's unsullied hours And the dim moments with sweet burdens fraught. And now Spring beckons me with verdant hand, And Nature's wealth of eloquence doth win Forth to the fragrant-bowered nectarine, Where my dear friends abide, a careless band. There meet my gentle, matchless brothers, there I come, the obscure poet, all unfit To wear the radiant jewelry of wit, And in their golden presence cloud the air. And while the thrill of meeting lingers, soon As the first courtly words, the feast is spread, While, couched on flowers 'mid wine-cups flashing red, We drink deep draughts unto The Lady Moon. Then as without the touch of verse divine There is no outlet for the pent-up soul, 'Twas ruled that he who quaffed no fancy's bowl Should drain the "Golden Valley" cups of wine
Li Bai
David Copperfield had a fever when he’d gone to bed, and Larch went to check on the boy. Dr. Larch was relieved to feel that young Copperfield’s fever had broken; the boy’s forehead was cool, and a slight sweat chilled the boy’s neck, which Larch carefully rubbed dry with a towel. There was not much moonlight; therefore, Larch felt unobserved. He bent over Copperfield and kissed him, much in the manner that he remembered kissing Homer Wells. Larch moved on to the next bed and kissed Smokey Fields, who tasted vaguely like hot dogs; yet the experience was soothing to Larch. How he wished he had kissed Homer more, when he’d had the chance! He went from bed to bed, kissing the boys; it occurred to him, he didn’t know all their names, but he kissed them anyway. He kissed all of them. When he left the room, Smokey Fields asked the darkness, ‘What was that all about?’ But no one else was awake, or else no one wanted to answer him. I wish he would kiss me like that, thought Nurse Edna, who had a very alert ear for unusual goings-on. ‘I think it’s nice,’ Mrs. Grogan said to Nurse Angela, when Nurse Angela told her about it. ‘I think it’s senile,’ Nurse Angela said. But Homer Wells, at Wally’s window, did not know that Dr. Larch’s kisses were out in the world, in search of him. He didn’t know, either – he could never have imagined it! – that Candy was also awake, and also worried. If he does stay, if he doesn’t go back to St. Cloud’s, she was thinking, what will I do? The sea tugged all around her. Both the darkness and the moon were failing.
John Irving (The Cider House Rules)
In roughly that same time period, while General George Armstrong Custer achieved world fame in failure and catastrophe, Mackenzie would become obscure in victory. But it was Mackenzie, not Custer, who would teach the rest of the army how to fight Indians. As he moved his men across the broken, stream-crossed country, past immense herds of buffalo and prairie-dog towns that stretched to the horizon, Colonel Mackenzie did not have a clear idea of what he was doing, where precisely he was going, or how to fight Plains Indians in their homelands. Neither did he have the faintest idea that he would be the one largely responsible for defeating the last of the hostile Indians. He was new to this sort of Indian fighting, and would make many mistakes in the coming weeks. He would learn from them. For now, Mackenzie was the instrument of retribution. He had been dispatched to kill Comanches in their Great Plains fastness because, six years after the end of the Civil War, the western frontier was an open and bleeding wound, a smoking ruin littered with corpses and charred chimneys, a place where anarchy and torture killings had replaced the rule of law, where Indians and especially Comanches raided at will. Victorious in war, unchallenged by foreign foes in North America for the first time in its history, the Union now found itself unable to deal with the handful of remaining Indian tribes that had not been destroyed, assimilated, or forced to retreat meekly onto reservations where they quickly learned the meaning of abject subjugation and starvation. The hostiles were all residents of the Great Plains; all were mounted, well armed, and driven now by a mixture of vengeance and political desperation. They were Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and Western Sioux. For Mackenzie on the southern plains, Comanches were the obvious target: No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.
S.C. Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History)
I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madrone trees on the horizon. The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon. It called to mind how I noticed the exact same thing when I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the stars around it to shame. I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or if the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head. Something moved on the grounds down beneath my window — cast a long spider of shadow out across the grass as it ran out of sight behind a hedge. When it ran back to where I could get a better look, I saw it was a dog, a young, gangly mongrel slipped off from home to find out about things went on after dark. He was sniffing digger squirrel holes, not with a notion to go digging after one but just to get an idea what they were up to at this hour. He’d run his muzzle down a hole, butt up in the air and tail going, then dash off to another. The moon glistened around him on the wet grass, and when he ran he left tracks like dabs of dark paint spattered across the blue shine of the lawn. Galloping from one particularly interesting hole to the next, he became so took with what was coming off — the moon up there, the night, the breeze full of smells so wild makes a young dog drunk — that he had to lie down on his back and roll. He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales. He sniffed all the holes over again one quick one, to get the smells down good, then suddenly froze still with one paw lifted and his head tilted, listening. I listened too, but I couldn’t hear anything except the popping of the window shade. I listened for a long time. Then, from a long way off, I heard a high, laughing gabble, faint and coming closer. Canada honkers going south for the winter. I remembered all the hunting and belly-crawling I’d ever done trying to kill a honker, and that I never got one. I tried to look where the dog was looking to see if I could find the flock, but it was too dark. The honking came closer and closer till it seemed like they must be flying right through the dorm, right over my head. Then they crossed the moon — a black, weaving necklace, drawn into a V by that lead goose. For an instant that lead goose was right in the center of that circle, bigger than the others, a black cross opening and closing, then he pulled his V out of sight into the sky once more. I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.
Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest :Text and Criticism)
28.  Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances. [As Wang Hsi sagely remarks: “There is but one root-principle underlying victory, but the tactics which lead up to it are infinite in number.” With this compare Col. Henderson: “The rules of strategy are few and simple. They may be learned in a week. They may be taught by familiar illustrations or a dozen diagrams. But such knowledge will no more teach a man to lead an army like Napoleon than a knowledge of grammar will teach him to write like Gibbon.”] 29.  Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. 30.  So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. [Like water, taking the line of least resistance.] 31.  Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. 32.  Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. 33.  He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain. 34.  The five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, earth) are not always equally predominant; [That is, as Wang Hsi says: “they predominate alternately.”] the four seasons make way for each other in turn. [Literally, “have no invariable seat.”] There are short days and long; the moon has its periods of waning and waxing. [Cf. V. ss. 6. The purport of the passage is simply to illustrate the want of fixity in war by the changes constantly taking place in Nature. The comparison is not very happy, however, because the regularity of the phenomena which Sun Tzu mentions is by no means paralleled in war.]
Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
What do you think of your kingdom?" "It's beautiful," I said. And very empty. Where is everyone? "It might even be dangerous to live in such luxury and repose." "This is no place of repose." Amar glanced outside where a sliver of moon glimmered behind clouds. “I am at the mercy of the moon to reveal the secrets of this kingdom. Until then, you must practice what it means to rule. I will test you, as this palace will, in its own way.” I straightened in my seat. “On what?” “Familiarity, you might say.” His voice was low. “All the usual aspects of ruling. I’ll test your fangs and claws and bloodlust.” He stopped to trace the inside of my wrist, and my pulse leapt to meet his touch. I scowled and grabbed my hand back. Treacherous blood. “I’ll test your eyes and ears and thoughts.” “Not geography, then?” I asked, half joking. “It’s useless here.” He shrugged. “You’ll see.” “History?” “Written by the victors,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in one-sided tales.” “Legends? Folktales?” This time, Amar grinned. “Perhaps. Do you have a favorite tale?” My throat tightened and I thought of Gauri standing outside my door and demanding a story. “Many…And you?” “All of them. Except for tragedies. I cannot abide those.” In the harem, all the wives preferred tragedies. They wanted stories of star-crossed lovers. They wanted betrayal and declarations of love that ended with the speaker dying at their feet. “You don’t find them romantic?” “No,” he said, an edge to his voice. “There is no romance in real grief. Only longing and fury.” He rose to his feet. “Tomorrow, you can tour the palace fully. It’s yours now.
Roshani Chokshi (The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen, #1))
The family were wild," she said suddenly. "They tried to marry me off. And then when I'd begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth living I found something"—her eyes went skyward exultantly—"I found something!" Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush. “Courage—just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestation of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage—the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more—I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people's opinions—just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way—Did you bring up the cigarettes?" He handed one over and held a match for her silently. "Still," Ardita continued, "the men kept gathering—old men and young men, my mental and physical inferiors, most of them, but all intensely desiring to have me—to own this rather magnificent proud tradition I'd built up round me. Do you see?" "Sort of. You never were beaten and you never apologized." "Never!" She sprang to the edge, poised or a moment like a crucified figure against the sky; then describing a dark parabola plunked without a slash between two silver ripples twenty feet below. Her voice floated up to him again. "And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life—not only over-riding people and circumstances but over-riding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things." She was climbing up now, and at her last words her head, with the damp yellow hair slicked symmetrically back, appeared on his level. "All very well," objected Carlyle. "You can call it courage, but your courage is really built, after all, on a pride of birth. You were bred to that defiant attitude. On my gray days even courage is one of the things that's gray and lifeless." She was sitting near the edge, hugging her knees and gazing abstractedly at the white moon; he was farther back, crammed like a grotesque god into a niche in the rock. "I don't want to sound like Pollyanna," she began, "but you haven't grasped me yet. My courage is faith—faith in the eternal resilience of me—that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide—not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often—and the female hell is deadlier than the male." "But supposing," suggested Carlyle, "that before joy and hope and all that came back the curtain was drawn on you for good?" Ardita rose, and going to the wall climbed with some difficulty to the next ledge, another ten or fifteen feet above. "Why," she called back, "then I'd have won!
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Offshore Pirate)