Sad Era Quotes

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.

It's sad if people think that's (homemaking) a dull existance, [but] you can't just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It's the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be gay and cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don't want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn't it?

...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams?

A flower bloomed already wilting. Beginning its life with an early ending.

I am not unique in my elegiac sadness at watching reading die, in the era that celebrates Stephen King and J.K. Rowling rather than Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll.

Eventually, I’ll grow sick and perish. Die on the floor, a young girl—who even when in the presence of company, still feels the loneliness that looms over her heart.

The sense that everything is going wrong has existed in every era, and rightly so since men have found no greater pleasure than in inventing new ways to make each other miserable.

A nation forgetting its own laughter is in a sad state of affairs

I'm knee-deep in my peak "Hallmark Sad Man Cinderwhatever" era.

—Eras la única persona en el mundo que podía hacerme daño. Y lo hiciste. —Jack... yo no...

The sad fact...is that in this era of science and unbelief we have lost the sense of our own significance. We have become cruel, to ourselves and others, because we believe that ultimately we have no value.

Everything said about Gen Xers--both positive and negative--was completely true. Twenty-somethings in the nineties rejected the traditional working-class American lifestyle because (a) they were smart enough to realize those values were unsatisfying, and (b) they were totally fucking lazy. Twenty-somethings in the nineties embraced a record like Nirvana's Nevermind because (a) it was a sociocultural affront to the vapidity of the Reagan-era paradigm, and (b) it fucking rocked. Twenty-somethings in the nineties were by and large depressed about the future, mostly because (a) they knew there was very little to look forward to, and (b) they were obsessed with staring into the eyes of their own self-absorbed sadness. There are no myths about Generation X. It's all true.

We are living in an era of woke capitalism in which companies pretend to care about social justice to sell products to people who pretend to hate capitalism.

My tailor - a tailor who maintains the devoted manners of a bygone era and who speaks to me in the third person - finally couldn't prevent himself from suggesting a less morose wardrobe for me. "For however elegant, black is sad." And so it's the colour that suits me, for I am also sad.

I grew up in a beautiful era, now sadly in the past. In it there was great readiness for change, and a talent for creating revolutionary visions. Nowadays no one still has the courage to think up anything new. All they ever talk about, round the clock, is how things already are, they just keep rolling out the same old ideas. Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism — it ages. Just like the cells of the body, its tiniest components — the senses, succumb to apoptosis. Apoptosis is natural death, brought about by the tiredness and exhaustion of matter. In Greek this word means ‘the dropping of petals.’ The world has dropped its petals.

The original Hippies were cool because it was who they were. But the ‘movement’ grew in numbers because it became the 'in thing’ to do. And sad as it is, most of them were plastic Hippies. The original Beatniks did what they did not because they were ‘hip’ but because it was who they were as a person. These were Carefree Scamps, but the plastic Hippies weren’t carefree at all And besides that, they smelled like an Oxfam shop

C'era una volta un uomo invisibile, che s'era stufato di non essere visto da nessuno. Non che fosse davvero invisibile. Il fatto era che la gente era abituato a non vederlo. E se nessuno ti vede, esisti davvero?

—(…) Te conté cosas que nunca le había contado a nadie. ¡Aunque a ti no te lo pareciera, me estaba abriendo!, ¡lo estaba intentando, Jen! Solo por til Eras la única persona en el mundo que podía hacerme daño. Y me lo hiciste.

...Ni siquiera lo había estado buscando, no a ti, y ahora eras lo que mi corazón deseaba.

No final das contas, era isso o que mais me doía, pois quando o amor se torna impossível, só nos resta uma alternativa. Amar em silêncio. Chorar em silêncio. Em segredo.

When Daisy left, it was like the Ferris wheel stopped turning and we all got off.

After the Age of Faith, “Surrender” Is No Longer Smart Absolutely, surrender and obedience were highly respected during the Age of Faith. Think about your oldest relatives, those born toward the end of that long, long era. Whatever faith they believed in, wasn’t their surrender considered the ultimate sign of goodness, spiritual goodness? …. Powered by bliss, and caring far more about their consciousness than about human life, what happened? They made one energy-related choice at a time, choices that turned out to be unwise, choices based in belief that noticing energies was equivalent to noticing God. Sadly, their consciousness lifestyles shifted away from Traditional Enlightenment… and into Extreme Spiritual Addiction.

The only sort of negative emotion I feel is slightly sad, but it isn’t a jealous sort of sad, it’s that end of era feeling; the sort of feeling you have when you’re leaving a job and you know so much that it’s for the best, but you’ll miss it. The familiarity. The routine of it.

The sad thing about history is that there are so many people out there from centuries, generations, even eras ago who are no longer in existence. They're names and stories aren't written down. They're now just mysterious figures of bone and dust deep in the ground that will never be known because no one bothered knowing them.

There are fewer things sadder than a poorly attended funeral.

this midnight my desire will see, shadowed among the embers, furled in flame, the splendor and the sadness of the world

We shall meet, but as strangers. It is the end of an era. A whole part of my life is torn away.

Sadly, the ascent of a black man to the presidency of the United States did not, despite all the talk of hope and a post-racial society, signal progress. Instead, it has led to a situation, not so unlike the era of Jim Crow, where a sense of physical vulnerability is shared across classes in the black community.86

Narcissistic and toxic relationships leave you feeling depleted in a variety of ways: feeling like you aren’t good enough, chronically second-guessing yourself, often apologizing, and/or feeling as though you are losing your mind, helpless, hopeless, sad, depressed, anxious, unsettled, no longer getting pleasure out of your life, ashamed, guilty, and exhausted.

The sad truth is that Trump owes his victory to a very dark turn in American conservatism. Unlike right wing ideologues of old, who at least tried to portray themselves as stabilizing and constructive, the right in the era of Trump is a movement of annihilation. They are bigoted, sexist, and mean, and often don;t even try to dress these destructive impulses up in the garb of tradition or religion. They delight in cruelty for its own sake. Building something positive has no real value in this new right wing. Pissing off perceived enemies, such as feminists and liberals, is the only real political goal worth fighting for. They are, in other words, a nation of trolls.

This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover, a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness, and the North American doubling cascade that (keep going) “this diamond lake is a photo lab” and if predicates really do propel the plot then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble or the appliance failures on Olive Street across these great instances, because “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians” because what does a mirror look like (when it´s not working) but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine. I´m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are, in the interval called slam clicker, Realm of Pacific, because the second language wouldn´t let me learn it because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship. I suppose a broken window is not symbolic unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does, and when the phone jangles what´s more radical, the snow or the tires, and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses in their purses. Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice because we are running out. Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced. Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley and the game of finding meaning in coincidence. Because there is a second mind in the margins of the used book because Judas Priest (source: Firestone Library) sang a song called Stained Class, because this world is 66% Then and 33% Now, and if you wake up thinking “feeling is a skill now” or “even this glass of water seems complicated now” and a phrase from a men´s magazine (like single-district cognac) rings and rings in your neck, then let the consequent misunderstandings (let the changer love the changed) wobble on heartbreakingly nu legs into this street-legal nonfiction, into this good world, this warm place that I love with all my heart, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

La conciencia de su propio cuerpo era inseparable del recuerdo de aquel abrazo.

Esperé a sabiendas de que esto era todo. Si ella se acercaba a él, la dejaría ir. Me daría por vencido. Si Pagan lo elegía una vez más, entonces la dejaría ir.

su voz era húmeda y pegajosa, porque siempre tenía demasiada saliva en la boca. Y las melodías que cantaba se le escurrían de la garganta como anguilas.

Era demasiado escrupuloso para no esforzarme por ser lo más desgraciado posible.

Sofoco el grito que intentaba dejar salir. Era indoloro. Indoloro. Pero alguien estaba en su cabeza. Dentro de ella. Una invasión. Una violación.

Era el nacimiento de una nueva era, una era en la que casi toda la humanidad pasaba la mayor parte de su tiempo libre dentro de un videojuego.

Me entran ganas de gritar a la mujer que era yo hace unos años: «¡Quedarte embarazada no significa que vayas a tener un hijo, idiota!».

Era una de aquellas sonrisas excepcionales que poseían la cualidad de ser eternamente reconfortantes por sí mismas, de las que uno se encuentra sólo cuatro o cinco veces en la vida.

Allí, en el interior de aquel universo bidimensional del juego, la vida era muy simple: 'Eres tu contra la maquina. Muévete con la mano izquierda, dispara con la derecha e intenta seguir vivo todo el tiempo que puedas'.

Now, deep into the Reagan years, you should still feel the sad spillover from that quaintly vanished era, and you could go with your best friend to this friendly sex toy store located in an anonymous office building, and stand together, silently shaking with laughter, both teenaged and fully grown all at once, knowing that you would never have to choose between those different states of maturity, because you contained them both inside yourselves.

Se preguntó si era su juventud y su inocencia lo que habían dado tanta intensidad a ese amor. Quizás eso explicara su pasión ciega e insaciable. Cuando en un espasmo mordía el hombro de Oki, ni siguiera advertía la sangre que manaba de la herida.

Era un genio della tristezza, e in essa si tuffava distinguendone i molti fili, apprezzandone le sfumature più sottili. Era un prisma attraverso cui la tristezza poteva suddividersi enl suo infinito sprettro. Brod, inventrice delle 613 Tristezze

habiendo algunos fanáticos en el valle de Shah-i-Kot, en la provincia de Paktia. Una vez más la información era inexacta: no eran un puñado, sino centenares. Al ser afganos los talibanes derrotados, tenían a donde ir: sus aldeas y pueblos natales. Allí podían escabullirse sin dejar rastro. Pero los miembros de Al Qaeda eran árabes, uzbekos y, los más feroces de todos, chechenos. No hablaban pastún y la gente del pueblo afgano los odiaba, de manera que solo podían rendirse o morir peleando. Casi todos eligieron esto último. El mando estadounidense reaccionó al chivatazo con un plan a pequeña escala, la operación Anaconda, que fue asignada a los SEAL de la Armada. Tres enormes Chinook repletos de efectivos despegaron rumbo al valle, que se suponía vacío de combatientes. El helicóptero que iba en cabeza se disponía a tomar tierra, con el morro levantado y la cola baja, la rampa abierta por detrás y a solo un par de metros del suelo, cuando los emboscados de Al Qaeda dieron el primer aviso. Un lanzagranadas hizo fuego. Estaba tan cerca que el proyectil atravesó el fuselaje del helicóptero sin explotar. No había tenido tiempo de cargarse, así que lo único que hizo fue entrar por un costado y salir por el otro sin tocar a nadie, dejando un par de boquetes simétricos. Pero lo que sí hizo daño fue el incesante fuego de ametralladora desde el nido situado entre las rocas salpicadas de nieve. Tampoco hirió a nadie de a bordo, pero destrozó los controles del aparato al horadar la cubierta de vuelo. Gracias a la habilidad y la genialidad del piloto, pocos minutos después el moribundo Chinook ganaba altura y recorría cuatro kilómetros hasta encontrar un sitio más seguro donde proceder a un aterrizaje forzoso. Los otros dos helicópteros se retiraron también. Pero un SEAL, el suboficial Neil Roberts, que se había desenganchado de su cable de amarre, resbaló en un charquito de fluido hidráulico y cayó a tierra. Resultó ileso, pero inmediatamente fue rodeado por miembros de Al Qaeda. Los SEAL jamás abandonan a uno de los suyos, esté vivo o muerto. Poco después de aterrizar regresaron en busca de Roberts, al tiempo que pedían refuerzos por radio. Había empezado la batalla de Shah-i-Kot. Duró cuatro días, y se saldó con la muerte del suboficial Neil Roberts y otros seis estadounidenses. Había tres unidades lo bastante cerca como para acudir a la llamada: un pelotón de SBS británicos por un lado y la unidad de la SAD por el otro; pero el grupo más numeroso era un batallón del 75 Regimiento de Rangers. Hacía un frío endemoniado, estaban a muchos grados bajo cero. La nieve, empujada por el viento incesante, se clavaba en los ojos. Nadie entendía cómo los árabes habían podido sobrevivir en aquellas montañas; pero el caso era que allí estaban, y dispuestos a morir hasta el último hombre. Ellos no hacían prisioneros ni esperaban serlo tampoco. Según testigos presenciales, salieron de hendiduras en las rocas, de grutas invisibles y nidos de ametralladoras ocultos. Cualquier veterano puede confirmar que toda batalla degenera rápidamente en un caos, y en Shah-i-Kot eso sucedió más rápido que nunca. Las unidades se separaron de su contingente, los soldados de sus unidades. Kit Carson se encontró de repente a solas en medio de la ventisca. Vio a otro estadounidense (pudo identificarlo por lo que llevaba en la cabeza: casco, no turbante) también solo, a unos cuarenta metros. Un hombre vestido con túnica surgió del suelo y disparó contra el soldado con su lanzagranadas. Esa vez la granada sí estalló; no dio en el blanco sino que explotó a los pies del soldado.

When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone. My rapture was widely shared. Like many of my countrymen, I went out to buy the best liquors for a celebration with my family and friends, only to find the shops out of stock there was so much spontaneous rejoicing. There were official celebrations as well exactly the same kinds of rallies as during the Cultural Revolution, which infuriated me. I was particularly angered by the fact that in my department, the political supervisors and the student officials were now arranging the whole show, with unperturbed self-righteousness. The new leadership was headed by Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, whose only qualification, I believed, was his mediocrity. One of his first acts was to announce the construction of a huge mausoleum for Mao on Tiananmen Square. I was outraged: hundreds of thousands of people were still homeless after the earthquake in Tangshan, living in temporary shacks on the pavements. With her experience, my mother had immediately seen that a new era was beginning. On the day after Mao's death she had reported for work at her depas'uuent. She had been at home for five years, and now she wanted to put her energy to use again. She was given a job as the number seven deputy director in her department, of which she had been the director before the Cultural Revolution. But she did not mind. To me in my impatient mood, things seemed to go on as before. In January 1977, my university course came to an end. We were given neither examinations nor degrees. Although Mao and the Gang of Four were gone, Mao's rule that we had to return to where we had come from still applied. For me, this meant the machinery factory. The idea that a university education should make a difference to one's job had been condemned by Mao as 'training spiritual aristocrats.

After a bit I was hurting bad, and then the rain started, all icy. I could viddy no lewdies in sight, nor no lights of houses. Where was I to go, who had no home and not much cutter in my carmans? I cried for myself boo hoo hoo. Then I got up and started walking.

In viaggio verso Bologna ho pensato a chi diceva di sentire il tempo come un enorme dolore. E ho visto, seduti accanto a me, donne e uomini di malaffari che andavano a guadagnarsi il pane vendendo un po’ di se stessi. Su tutta la carrozza non c’era un posto libero. Eppure il treno sembrava deserto.

Sadly not. Back in the snail-mail era, people usually only wrote letters when they had something important to relate. Rather than writing the first thing that came into their heads, they considered carefully what they wanted to say and how to phrase it. They expected to receive a similarly considered answer. Most people wrote and received no more than a handful of letters a month and seldom felt compelled to reply immediately. Today I receive dozens of emails each day, all from people who expect a prompt reply. We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated. Here and there

The good reporters of that era, those who were well educated and who were enlightened themselves and worked for enlightened organizations, liked the Kennedys and were for the same things the Kennedys were for. In addition, the particular nature of the President’s personal style, his ease and confidence with reporters, his considerable skill in utilizing television, and the terrible manner in which he was killed had created a remarkable myth about him. The fact that a number of men in his Cabinet were skillful writers themselves and that in the profound sadness after his murder they wrote their own eloquent (and on occasion self-serving) versions of his presidency had strengthened that myth.

Ottoman provinces were re-formed and cobbled together into states. The region was carved up with little regard to ethnic, religious, or territorial concerns. The flawed and cavalier treaties of World War I explain to a large degree why the Middle East remains unstable and angry today. Every Muslim schoolchild is taught this arc of history and resents it: Islam’s golden era of the Arab caliphate, the Crusades, the Mongol devastation, the rise of the Ottomans, World War I, the carving up of the Middle East by Europe, and the poverty, weakness, and wars in the Muslim world of the last century. This is the basic and sad narrative taught at every mosque, and it has the benefit of being broadly accurate.

Era una di quelle sere in cui la tristezza può impossessarsi delle persone più allegre senza che ciò provochi alcuna sorpresa; quando negli emotivi l'amore si trasforma in angoscia, la fiducia in desiderio e la speranza precipita nell'apprensione; quando il ricordo non suscita alcun rimpianto per le occasioni che ci sono sfuggite e l'attesa non induce all'azione.

Taking pictures is not only about the background, the colorful scenery or the beautiful era but its all about the person who is hidden in that picture with deep feelings of happiness or sorrows. Don't only rely on physical outlook inspite of it go deep down in every single pixel because a picture can show you a lot about the hidden life story of that particular personality.

This is where the music starts to slow. Because, let’s face it, the fact remains that in two decades since his arrival Wenger has had a greater, more visible – albeit rather tenuous – influence on Germany’s world champions than he has on the current England team. Despite being the only long-serving Premier League-era manager with any real sway or heft in the wider world – coach of five of France’s world champions in 1998 – he will leave no real mark on English football development or theory. Rather than cherished, brain selectively picked, Wenger is instead quietly mocked these days, cast as a cobwebbed crank, some doomed, sad stone knight still tending the hearth, a little creaky and mad, friends only with the flies and the beetles and the spiders.

Un pò difficile capire come stavano le cose quando c'era di mezzo Elinor. In realtà non rivelava mai molto di ciò che pensava o sentiva. E questo gli piaceva in lei. Perché detestava le persone che vuotavano il sacco, e rivelavano subito le proprie opinioni o manifestavano i propri sentimenti...le persone che davano praticamente per scontato che l'interlocutore desiderasse sapere com'era articolato il loro meccanismo interiore. Il riserbo era sempre stato più interessante.

Toltosi il berretto, la salutò profondamente come una principessa e se n'andò col cuore oppresso; doveva lasciarla perire. Rimase a lungo turbato, non aveva voglia di parlare con nessuno. Per quanto poco si assomigliassero, quella fiera e povera israelita gli ricordava in certo modo Lidia, la figlia del cavaliere. Amare donne come quelle era fonte di dolore. Ma per qualche tempo gli parve di non aver mai amato altre che queste due, la povera, inquieta Lidia e l'ombrosa, amara israelita.

Asia so degraded, so corrupted by the colonial era and by its own crowdedness that it can only choose between depravity and the puritan orgy of communIsm. The women of Thailand are so beautiful that they have become the hostesses of the Western world, sought after and desired everywhere for their grace, which is that of a submissive and affectionate femininity of nubile slaves - now dressed by Dior - an astounding sexual come-on in a gaze which looks you straight in the eye and a potential acquiescence to your every whim. In short, the fulfilment of Western man's dreams. Thai women seem spontaneously to embody the sexuality of the Arabian Nights, like the Nubian slaves in ancient Rome. Thai men, on the other hand, seem sad and forlorn; their physiques are not in tune with world chic, while their women's are privileged to be the currently fashionable form of ethnic beauty. What is left for these men but to assist in the universal promotion of their women for high-class prostitution?

—¿Todo fue una ilusión? —preguntó. El dolor atenazó su pecho y la dejó sin aire. —¿Kai? —¿Todo estaba en mi cabeza? ¿Era un truco lunar? Su estómago se retorció. —No —sacudía la cabeza, desesperada. ¿Cómo explicarle que no tenía ese poder antes? ¿Que no lo habría usado contra él? —Jamás te mentiría... Las palabras se desvanecieron. Todo lo que él sabía de ella había sido una mentira. —Lo siento mucho —terminó. Kai apartó la vista, buscando algún consuelo en el jardín resplandeciente. —Me duele más mirarte a ti que a ella.

So, who are they really, these hundred thousand white supremacists? They're every white guy who believed that this land was his land, made for you and me. They're every down-on-his-luck guy who just wanted to live a decent life but got stepped on, every character in a Bruce Springsteen or Merle Haggard song, every cop, soldier, auto mechanic, steelworker, and construction worker in America's small towns who can't make ends meet and wonders why everyone else is getting a break except him. But instead of becoming Tom Joad, a left-leaning populist, they take a hard right turn, ultimately supporting the very people who have dispossessed them. They're America's Everymen, whose pain at downward mobility and whose anger at what they see as an indifferent government have become twisted by a hate that tells them they are better than others, disfigured by a resentment so deep that there are no more bridges to be built, no more ladders of upward mobility to be climbed, a howl of pain mangled into the scream of a warrior. Their rage is as sad as it is frightening, as impotent as it is shrill.

Hypothetically, then, you may be picking up in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disassociation from itself, maybe, Love-o.’ ‘I don’t know disassociation.’ ‘Well, love, but you know the idiom “not yourself” — “He’s not himself today,” for example,’ crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. ‘There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.’ ‘Engulf means obliterate.’ ‘I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all. This interpretation is “existential,” Mario, which means vague and slightly flaky. But I think it may hold true in certain cases. My own father told stories of his own father, whose potato farm had been in St. Pamphile and very much larger than my father’s. My grandfather had had a marvelous harvest one season, and he wanted to invest money. This was in the early 1920s, when there was a great deal of money to be made on upstart companies and new American products. He apparently narrowed the field to two choices — Delaware-brand Punch, or an obscure sweet fizzy coffee substitute that sold out of pharmacy soda fountains and was rumored to contain smidgeons of cocaine, which was the subject of much controversy in those days. My father’s father chose Delaware Punch, which apparently tasted like rancid cranberry juice, and the manufacturer of which folded. And then his next two potato harvests were decimated by blight, resulting in the forced sale of his farm. Coca-Cola is now Coca-Cola. My father said his father showed very little emotion or anger or sadness about this, though. That he somehow couldn’t. My father said his father was frozen, and could feel emotion only when he was drunk. He would apparently get drunk four times a year, weep about his life, throw my father through the living room window, and disappear for several days, roaming the countryside of L’Islet Province, drunk and enraged.’ She’s not been looking at Mario this whole time, though Mario’s been looking at her. She smiled. ‘My father, of course, could himself tell this story only when he was drunk. He never threw anyone through any windows. He simply sat in his chair, drinking ale and reading the newspaper, for hours, until he fell out of the chair. And then one day he fell out of the chair and didn’t get up again, and that was how your maternal grandfather passed away. I’d never have gotten to go to University had he not died when I was a girl. He believed education was a waste for girls. It was a function of his era; it wasn’t his fault. His inheritance to Charles and me paid for university.’ She’s been smiling pleasantly this whole time, emptying the butt from the ashtray into the wastebasket, wiping the bowl’s inside with a Kleenex, straightening straight piles of folders on her desk.

The stress of farming had far-reaching consequences. It was the foundation of large-scale political and social systems. Sadly, the diligent peasants almost never achieved the future economic security they so craved through their hard work in the present. Everywhere, rulers and elites sprang up, living off the peasants’ surplus food and leaving them with only a bare subsistence. These forfeited food surpluses fuelled politics, wars, art and philosophy. They built palaces, forts, monuments and temples. Until the late modern era, more than 90 percent of humans were peasants who rose each morning to till the land by the sweat of their brows. The extra they produced fed the tiny minority of elites – kings, government officials, soldiers, priests, artists and thinkers – who fill the history books.

Because of the tragic way that Chris Cornell’s life ended, there’s a propensity to view his story as a tragedy. That would be a mistake. Chris Cornell lived his life to the fullest. He overcame seemingly insurmountable challenges time and time again in the pursuit of a dream too enormous to fathom. He used the tools at his disposal—his one-of-a-kind voice, his guitar, and his imagination—to craft era-defining music that many turned to time and again in moments of sadness, anger, joy, anguish, fear, doubt, and love. He lifted the hearts and minds of countless people from all walks of life on nearly every continent on the planet with his unique and unparalleled artistry. He did what he loved, and along the way created a musical legacy that will endure for generations. Chris Cornell kept his promise.

I gave it up and walked down to the Sphynx. After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing—nothing but distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time—over lines of century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years. It was the type of an attribute of man—of a faculty of his heart and brain. It was MEMORY—RETROSPECTION—wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces that have vanished—albeit only a trifling score of years gone by—will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was born—before Tradition had being—things that were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of—and passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.

O amor da minha vida partiu e não posso simplesmente telefonar-lhe e dizer-lhe que tenho muita pena e fazer com que ela volte. Ela foi-se para sempre. Portanto, sim, Monique, isso é algo de que me arrependo. Lamento cada segundo que não passei com ela. Arrependo-me de cada coisa estúpida que fiz que lhe causou um pingo de dor. Deveria tê-la perseguido pela rua no dia em que ela me deixou. Deveria ter-lhe implorado que ficasse. Deveria ter pedido desculpa e enviado rosas, e deveria ter ido para cima das letras do letreiro de Hollywood e gritar: Estou apaixonada pela Celia St. James! e deixá-los crucificar-me por isso. Isso era o que eu deveria ter feito. E agora que não a tenho e tenho mais dinheiro do que alguma vez poderia gastar nesta vida, e que o meu nome está cimentado na história de Hollywood, e que sei como tudo é oco, martirizo-me por cada segundo que escolhi isso em vez de amá-la com todo o orgulho.

Then the pulse. Then a pause. Then twilight in a box. Dusk underfoot. Then generations. — Then the same war by a different name. Wine splashing in the bucket. The erection, the era. Then exit Reason. Then sadness without reason. Then the removal of the ceiling by hand. — Then pages & pages of numbers. Then the page with the faint green stain. Then the page on which Prince Theodore, gravely wounded, is thrown onto a wagon. Then the page on which Masha weds somebody else. Then the page that turns to the story of somebody else. Then the page scribbled in dactyls. Then the page which begins Exit Angel. Then the page wrapped around a dead fish. Then the page where the serfs reach the ocean. Then a nap. Then the peg. Then the page with the curious helmet. Then the page on which millet is ground. Then the death of Ursula. Then the stone page they raised over her head. Then the page made of grass which goes on. — Exit Beauty. — Then the page someone folded to mark her place. Then the page on which nothing happens. The page after this page. Then the transcript. Knocking within. Interpretation, then harvest. — Exit Want. Then a love story. Then a trip to the ruins. Then & only then the violet agenda. Then hope without reason. Then the construction of an underground passage between us. Srikanth Reddy, "Burial Practice" from Facts for Visitors. Copyright © 2004 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of The University of California Press. Source: Facts for Visitors (University of California Press, 2004)

Sadly, many narcissists are prone to isms—racism, sexism, nationalism, classism. Because they maintain a stance that people are out to get them,

Sadly, some people coming from this situation will find that they have numbed themselves and cut off their emotional worlds, and are now unable to connect to others as adults, often feeling distant and disconnected.

Sadly, the narcissistic parent falls well under that threshold, and the “not good enough” parent yields a child who retains the “not good enough” sense of self for decades.

That beautiful faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay—all that seemed slowly and sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation evaporated; the mean calculation remained. One could still calculate in clear statistical tables, how many men lived, how many men died. One must not ask how they lived; for that is politics. One must not ask how they died; for that is religion. And religion and politics were ruled out of all the Later Victorian debating clubs; even including the debating club at Westminster. What third thing they were discussing, which was neither religion nor politics, I do not know. I have tried the experiment of reading solidly through a vast number of their records and reviews and discussions; and still I do not know. The only third thing I can think of to balance religion and politics is art; and no one well acquainted with the debates at St. Stephen's will imagine that the art of extreme eloquence was the cause of the confusion. None will maintain that our political masters are removed from us by an infinite artistic superiority in the choice of words. The politicians know nothing of politics, which is their own affair: they know nothing of religion, which is certainly not their affair: it may legitimately be said that they have to do with nothing; they have reached that low and last level where a man knows as little about his own claim, as he does about his enemies'. In any case there can be no doubt about the effect of this particular situation on the problem of ethics and science. The duty of dragging truth out by the tail or the hind leg or any other corner one can possibly get hold of, a perfectly sound duty in itself, had somehow come into collision with the older and larger duty of knowing something about the organism and ends of a creature; or, in the everyday phrase, being able to make head or tail of it. This paradox pursued and tormented the Victorians. They could not or would not see that humanity repels or welcomes the railway-train, simply according to what people come by it. They could not see that one welcomes or smashes the telephone, according to what words one hears in it. They really seem to have felt that the train could be a substitute for its own passengers; or the telephone a substitute for its own voice.

He firmly believed that the tiniest ladybird possessed the spiritual power of the gods. In his eyes, nothing was without a soul, neither fluttering leaves nor beckoning water nor driving wind. Surrounded now by nature, he experienced the tremulous loneliness of autumn nearly gone, the sad wistfulness that must be felt by grasses and insects and water. He sobbed so hard his shoulders shook—sweet tears, not bitter ones. If some being other than a human—a star perhaps, or the spirit of the plain—had asked him why he was weeping, he wouldn’t have been able to say. If the inquiring spirit had persisted, soothing and coaxing him, he might finally have said, “I often cry when I’m out in the open. I always have the feeling the house in Hōtengahara is somewhere near.” Crying was refreshment for his soul. After he had cried to his heart’s content, heaven and earth would comfort him. When the tears were dry, his spirit would come forth from the clouds clean and fresh.

Close my eyes, watch the universe and above the ground, I'm watching all peoples running to build their lifestyle. Fuck! So we don't need only food on our table. So are craving for lifestyle. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! We're good in caves man, I think i born in wrong era.

When I close my eyes, watch the universe from above the ground, I'm watching all peoples running to build their lifestyle. Fuck! So we don't need only food on our table. So we are craving for lifestyle. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! We're good in caves man, I think i born in wrong era.

A veces volvía a ser piedra negra y entonces yo no sabía qué pasaba del otro lado, qué era de ella en esos intervalos anónimos, qué extraños sucesos acontecían; y hasta pensaba que en esos momentos su rostro cambiaba y que una mueca de burla lo deformaba y que quizá había risas cruzadas con otro y que toda la historia de los pasadizos era una ridícula invención o creencia mía y que en todo caso había un solo túnel, oscuro y solitario: el mío, el túnel en que había transcurrido mi infancia, mi juventud, toda mi vida. Y en uno de esos trozos transparentes del muro de piedra yo había visto a esta muchacha y había creído ingenuamente que venía por otro túnel paralelo al mío, cuando en realidad pertenecía al ancho mundo, al mundo sin límites de los que no viven en túneles; y quizá se había acercado por curiosidad a una de mis extrañas ventanas y había entrevisto el espectáculo de mi insalvable soledad.

Avevo camminato tra i cadaveri dove non c'era posto per appoggiare i piedi mentre piangevo l'anima, disperata. Continuavo a camminare barcollando, senza neanche asciugare le lacrime che fluivano lungo il mio viso e il mio cuore si era fatto duro quanto caldo era il sole che seccava quel pianto.

I live for fairytales,” she rambled on. “Sometimes, I feel like I was born in the wrong era. I want there to be grand gestures and actual dates. Happy-ever-afters. Kind of sad knowing we’ll never experience what our parents and grandparents had.

At least he looks damn good. He’s kind of like a combination of Constantine-era Keanu with Mad Max–era Tom Hardy. Hot and kind of sad.

After Watergate, Congress considered legislation to make the Justice Department completely independent to be able to address the worst abuses of the Nixon era, but instead it passed a reform bill called the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which sadly expired in 1999 after both parties had been embarrassed by independent counsel investigations (Iran-Contra/Clinton-Lewinsky) and both wanted to avoid future scrutiny.

Sadly, the ascent of a black man to the presidency of the United States did not, despite all the talk of hope and a post-racial society, signal progress. Instead, it has led to a situation, not so unlike the era of Jim Crow, where a sense of physical vulnerability is shared across classes in the black community.

On the Birthday of Murtaza Bhutto My nephew drives on a route that crosses alongside 70 Clifton every day since I am in Karachi. It reminds me that I was then a working journalist. I visited the last 70 Clifton in 1977, the resident of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, later, Benazir Bhutto, and then Murtaza Bhutto and Fatima Bhutto during the driving towards Karachi Press Club; I asked my nephew to stop near 70 Clifton so that we can click a few pics of it. Today is Murtaza Bhutto's Birthday, and he became the victim of armed evil and murder. I stood outside 70 Clifton, remembering inside the conversations, discussions, and delightful atmosphere in the Bhutto era. I felt sadness and pain, imagining that time when pleasure, joy, and mob walked around it, but today it was dead-quiet and displayed sadness on its walls; the Birthday existed; however, the figure held that day was not there, and his daughter far away from Pakistan in exile-life, though the justice has failed, not the God.

As árvores nas margens, cobertas de neve, as raparigas de boina de lã e de mãos medidas no regalo, a música que de tão fogosa aquecia o ambiente, tudo isso pertence aos momentos bué construíram a mesma minha vida, pois que mais é uma vida do que o reportório de momentos? É injusta a Natureza, que priva parte das crianças de um mundo de Inverno branco, de rios gelados em que se dança, para o substituir por chuvas monótonas, por humidade que, agressiva e hostil, nos penetra no corpo. (...) Apetecia-me chorar, não por causa da dor que passou depressa, mas por me sentir o invadida por uma tristeza singular. Era como se alguma coisa de muito belo tivesse desaparecido da minha existência ou como se alguém querido se tivesse despedido para sempre.

Con el correr del tiempo, el recuerdo de aquel abrazo se fue purificando dentro de Otoko; fue dejando de ser algo físico para convertirse en algo espiritual. Ahora ella ya no era pura y sin duda Oki tampoco lo era. Y sin embargo, su antiguo abrazo, tal como lo veía ahora, parecía puro. Aquel recuerdo —en el que ella intervenía y no intervenía, que parecía real e irreal— era una visión sagrada, una visión sublimada del abrazo de antaño.

Let’s say it straight out: Hillary Clinton lied about the reason for the Benghazi attack. She lied about it to the nation as a whole and she lied right to the faces of the grieving family members of those who died there—and then lied about her lying. And she keeps telling Americans one huge, disgusting lie after another. As I wrap up writing this book, Hillary has claimed that we “didn’t lose a single person” in Libya. Really? Try telling that to the families of the four men we lost on September 11, 2012. Not too long before Mrs. Clinton committed that amazing, bizarre falsehood, the late Sean Smith’s mother, Pat, broke down on national television, exclaiming, “Hillary is a liar! I know what she told me.” Pat went on to say that she wanted to “see Hillary in jail” for her misdeeds at Benghazi. “She’s been lying. She’s turned the whole country into a bunch of liars.” Two decades ago the late New York Times columnist William Safire wrote: “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady—a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation—is a congenital liar.” The lies change. The liar doesn’t. I don’t know where the future will lead, but I know enough of history and I know my own personal experiences. I trust in the Constitution. I know who I am, what I do, and whom I’m doing it for. My God, my family, and my country are my riches. I’m not looking for a fight, but I don’t run from one, either: I walk softly and carry my standard-issue stick. I’m proud of my legacy, but it’s not over, not yet. No matter what, I never stop hearing Genny in my ear: “Just do the right thing.” That’s why I told you my story. Me, I’m not important. But what I learned about the Clintons firsthand—the hard way—is very important. It’s 2016, but with Hillary Clinton again running for president, it feels uncomfortably like the 1990s again—as if America were trapped in some great, cruel time machine hurtling us back to the land of Monica and Mogadishu and a thousand other Clinton-era nightmares. Fool me once, as the saying goes—your fault. Fool me twice… The bottom line: My job in the 1990s was to lay down my life for the presidency. My obligation today is to raise my voice, to help safeguard the presidency from Bill and Hillary Clinton—to remind readers like you of what happened back then. We all remember—or should remember—what a Clinton White House was like. If we board that time machine for a return trip—it’s our fault.

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it. Let’s take another familiar example from our own time. Over the last few decades, we have invented countless time-saving devices that are supposed to make life more relaxed – washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, telephones, mobile phones, computers, email. Previously it took a lot of work to write a letter, address and stamp an envelope, and take it to the mailbox. It took days or weeks, maybe even months, to get a reply. Nowadays I can dash off an email, send it halfway around the globe, and (if my addressee is online) receive a reply a minute later. I’ve saved all that trouble and time, but do I live a more relaxed life? Sadly not. Back in the snail-mail era, people usually only wrote letters when they had something important to relate. Rather than writing the first thing that came into their heads, they considered carefully what they wanted to say and how to phrase it. They expected to receive a similarly considered answer. Most people wrote and received no more than a handful of letters a month and seldom felt compelled to reply immediately. Today I receive dozens of emails each day, all from people who expect a prompt reply. We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated. Here

In effect, the eurozone’s central bank, whose Maastricht-era charter bans it from lending to member-state governments or to insolvent banks, was lending indirectly to the government of each deficit nation the money insolvent banks required to pretend they were not insolvent. The banks thus pretended to be solvent, the deficit states pretended they had the money to guarantee that the banks were solvent, and the ECB stood by pretending that these sad pairs of insolvent banks and insolvent states were perfectly solvent and, thus, eligible, under the ECB’s charter, for ECB liquidity.

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it. Let’s take another familiar example from our own time. Over the last few decades, we have invented countless time-saving devices that are supposed to make life more relaxed –washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, telephones, mobile phones, computers, email. Previously it took a lot of work to write a letter, address and stamp an envelope, and take it to the mailbox. It took days or weeks, maybe even months, to get a reply. Nowadays I can dash off an email, send it halfway around the globe, and (if my addressee is online) receive a reply a minute later. I’ve saved all that trouble and time, but do I live a more relaxed life? Sadly not. Back in the snail-mail era, people usually only wrote letters when they had something important to relate. Rather than writing the first thing that came into their heads, they considered carefully what they wanted to say and how to phrase it. They expected to receive a similarly considered answer. Most people wrote and received no more than a handful of letters a month and seldom felt compelled to reply immediately. Today I receive dozens of emails each day, all from people who expect a prompt reply. We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated.

I lived inscrutable hours, a succession of disconnected moments, in my night-time walk to the lonely shore of the sea. All the thoughts that have made men live and all their emotions that have died passed through my mind, like a dark summary of history, in my meditation that went to the seashore. I suffered in me, with me, the aspirations of all eras, and every disquietude of every age walked with me to the murmuring shore of the sea. What men wanted and didn’t achieve, what they killed in order to achieve, and all that souls have secretly been – all of this filled the feeling soul with which I walked to the seashore. What lovers found strange in those they love, what the wife never revealed to her husband, what the mother imagines about the son she didn’t have, what only had form in a smile or opportunity, in a time that wasn’t the right time or in an emotion that was missing – all of this went to the seashore with me and with me returned, and the waves grandly churned their music that made me live it all in a sleep. We are who we’re not, and life is quick and sad. The sound of the waves at night is a sound of the night, and how many have heard it in their own soul, like the perpetual hope that dissolves in the darkness with a faint plash of distant foam! What tears were shed by those who achieved, what tears lost by those who succeeded! And all of this, in my walk to the seashore, was a secret told me by the night and the abyss. How many we are! How many of us fool ourselves! What seas crash in us, in the night when we exist, along the beaches that we feel ourselves to be, inundated by emotion! All that was lost, all that should have been sought, all that was obtained and fulfilled by mistake, all that we loved and lost and then, after losing it and loving it for having lost it, realized we never loved; all that we believed we were thinking when we were feeling; all the memories we took for emotions; and the entire ocean, noisy and cool, rolling in from the depths of the vast night to ripple over the beach, during my nocturnal walk to the seashore …

The street was a sad state in daylight. Electric signs and red lights resisted the brightness of life, stripped of their luster in the colorless day. But in darkness and mist, they pulsed with vibrancy. The streets thrived in a cloak of obscurity, and men took comfort in anonymity. At night they were a motley bunch, a throng of shadowed faces and hungry eyes, milling about brothels and dance halls like rats roaming a sewer.

WHATAWAY TO GO With no GM support, it’s sad to see Rex era end like this 1202 words It’s ending ugly for Rex Ryan and that’s a shame. He’s always been extremely entertaining and proved he could win before his general manager decided to start playing fantasy football ( Mike Tannenbaum) or sabotage him by giving him no cornerbacks even though he opened this season with $22 million in cap room ( John Idzik).

1923 constitution. The committee, which comprised five Christians, one Jew and six Muslims, instituted Article 1 (that Islam is the religion of the state) unanimously. And interestingly the five Christian committee members were the ones who rejected a clause, suggested by a Muslim, to have a minimum number of parliamentary seats and ministerial posts reserved for Christians. ‘It would be a shame for Egyptian Christians to be appointed, not elected,’ commented one of the Christian committee members. That was the era when a Christian politician such as Makram Ebeid Pasha, the legendary general secretary of Al-Wafd, was elected for six consecutive terms to the parliament in a constituency with virtually no Christians. Sadly, those were different times.46 In another incident following its 2005 electoral success,

Estas incertidumbres y zonas de sombra, contrario a lo que se podía suponer, acrecentaban nuestra voluntad de estar juntos. Era como si supiéramos que el fin ya convivía con nosotros y había que luchar por retardarlo.

STANICA U PUSTINJI Tako malo Grka u Lenjingradu je sada, da smo porušili grčku crkvu kako bismo na praznom mestu sazidali koncertnu salu. U takvoj arhitekturi ima nečeg beznadežnog. Uostalom, koncertna dvorana sa hiljadu i više mesta nije baš tako beznadežna: to je hram, i to hram umetnosti. Ko je kriv što vokalna umetnost okuplja više ljudi no što mogu znamenja vere? Šteta je jedino što sada nećemo izdaleka videti uobičajenu kupolu, već rugobno ravnu crtu. Al što se rugobe proporcija tiče, čovek ne zavisi od njih, već češće od proporcija rugobnosti. Odlično se sećam kako su je rušili. Bilo je proleće, a ja sam išao u goste jednoj tatarskoj porodici koja je stanovala u blizini – kroz prozor pogledavši, grčku sam crkvu video. Sve je počelo od tatarskih razgovora, a posle su se upleli zvuci, koji su se prvo stapali s govorom, a zatim ga ubrzo zaglušili. U crkvenu baštu ušao je buldožer sa tegom za vrh obešenim i zidovi su počeli brzo da se predaju. Smešno bi bilo ne predati se kad si zid a pred tobom stoji rušilac. Osim toga, buldožer ju je mogao smatrati neživim predmetom i, u izvesnom smislu, sebi sličnim. A u neživom svetu nije uobičajeno vraćanje udaraca. Onda su doterali kamione, i dizalice. Zatim sam kasno uveče sedeo na ruševinama apside, u rupama oltara zjapila je noć. Tako sam kroz te rupe na oltaru gledao zahuktale tramvaje i niz mutnjikavih fenjera. I tako sam kroz prizmu crkve video ono što se u crkvi uopšte ne može sresti. Jednom će, kad nas nestane, tačnije – posle nas, na našem mestu naći isto tako nešto na šta će se užasnuti svako ko nas je znao. Al neće biti mnogo onih koji su nas znali. Tako, po navici, psi dižu šapu na starom mestu; ograda je davno srušena, al njima se, verovatno, ona u snu pričinja. Njihovi snovi javu potiru. Il zemlja možda miris onaj čuva. Šta li će im kuća nakazna! Za njih je tu baštica, lepo vam kažem – baštica. A ono što je očigledno za ljude, potpuno je svejedno psima. To se zove „pseća vernost“, i ako se već dogodilo da govorim ozbiljno o štafeti pokolenja, onda verujem samo u tu štafetu; tačnije, u one koji osećaju miris. Tako je malo Grka sada u Lenjingradu, i, uopšte, nema ih mnogo van Grčke. Ili ih je, barem, premalo da bi se sačuvala zdanja vere. Od njih niko ne traži da veruju da mi gradimo. Jedna je, verovatno, stvar krstiti naciju, dok je nositi krst već sasvim nešto drugo. Oni su imali samo jednu dužnost. Nisu umeli da je izvrše. „Ti, sejaču, ralo svoje čuvaj, a vreme za klasanje mi ćemo odraditi.“ Oni svoje ralo nisu sačuvali. Noćas gledam kroz prozor i mislim o tome gde smo došli. I od čega smo dalje: od pravoslavlja ili od helenizma? Šta nam je blisko? I šta je pred nama? Ne očekuje li nas druga sad era? I ako je tako, šta nam je zajednička dužnost? I šta treba da joj prinesemo na žrtvu?

When the world one loves is seen to be dying, the viewer dies a little with it. A great American painter, Reginald Marsh, exemplifies this truism. Every day until his death at the age of 56, he sketched and painted the most earthy, sweaty and lusty examples of humanity he could lay his eyes upon. His productive voyeurism led him through the entire spectrum of cheap cafes, carnivals, amusement parks, skid rows, exclusive clubs, opera openings, coming-out parties and everything in-between. His super-realistic canvases were jammed with the kind of people he loved to watch in the environments he loved to haunt. As his closing years approached, Reginald Marsh grew depressed at the changing scene. New styles were emerging and it now became more difficult to immerse himself in the vistas from which he had so long drawn, both in his paintings and life itself. His canvases of lumpy women and pot-bellied men were too unappealing for the “think thin” era of the 1950s, and his floozies violated the then-current Grace Kelly/Ivory Soap look. His disdain for modern masters (“Matisse draws like a three-year-old, “Picasso ... a false front”) became exemplified as he summed up modern art as “high and pure and sterile — no sex, no drink, no muscles.” Marsh’s “out of date” feeling reached its zenith when he was asked to take part in an art symposium. The first speaker, who was a then-popular New York painter, enthusiastically championed current trends. Then followed a professor who advocated new and dynamic experimentation in visual appeal. At last it was Reginald Marsh’s turn to speak. He stood on the platform for a moment, as if trying to collect his thoughts. A sad look of resignation appeared in his eyes as he gazed down at the audience. The talented watcher of his innermost secret lusts and life-giving scintillations declared softly, “I am not a man of this century,” and sat down. He died shortly thereafter.

He stopped, gazing at the girl who stood before it. The man guessed the child to be ten years old. She had dark brown hair to her neck with ends that showed curls, ivory skin and large eyes of sapphire blue. Thin and barefooted, with soot on her face she wore an old, tattered white dress. As the child turned to look at him, the man thought she must be an orphan beggar and he was unable to tear his face away from her eyes. Those bright blue eyes filled with an incomprehensible sadness. What pain did she carry?

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it. Let’s take another familiar example from our own time. Over the last few decades, we have invented countless time-saving devices that are supposed to make life more relaxed – washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, telephones, mobile phones, computers, email. Previously it took a lot of work to write a letter, address and stamp an envelope, and take it to the mailbox. It took days or weeks, maybe even months, to get a reply. Nowadays I can dash off an email, send it halfway around the globe, and (if my addressee is online) receive a reply a minute later. I’ve saved all that trouble and time, but do I live a more relaxed life? Sadly not. Back in the snail-mail era, people usually only wrote letters when they had something important to relate. Rather than writing the first thing that came into their heads, they considered carefully what they wanted to say and how to phrase it. They expected to receive a similarly considered answer. Most people wrote and received no more than a handful of letters a month and seldom felt compelled to reply immediately. Today I receive dozens of emails each day, all from people who expect a prompt reply. We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated.

Tim Graham Tim Graham has specialized in photographing the Royal Family for more than thirty years and is foremost in his chosen field. Recognition of his work over the years has led to invitations for private sessions with almost all the members of the British Royal Family, including, of course, Diana, Princess of Wales, and her children. Her “magic” was a combination of style and compassion. She instinctively knew what was right for every occasion. One of my favorite photographs is a shot I took in Angola in 1997 that shows her with a young land-mine victim who had lost a leg. This image of the Princess was chosen by the Red Cross to appear on a poster to publicize the tragic reality of land mines. It’s an important part of her legacy. It is difficult to capture such a remarkable person in just one photo, but I like this one a lot because it sums up her warmth and concern. Diana had one of those faces that would be very hard to photograph badly. Over the years, there were times when she was fed up or sad, and those emotions I captured, too. They were relevant at the time. I felt horrified by the news of her death and that she could die in such a terrible, simply tragic way. I couldn’t conceive of how her sons would be able to cope with such a loss. I was asked just before the funeral to photograph Prince Charles taking William and Harry out in public for the first time so they could meet the crowds gathered at Kensington Palace and see the floral tributes. It was the saddest of occasions. I had by then received an invitation to the funeral and was touched to have been the only press photographer asked. After much deliberation, I decided to turn down the chance to be a guest in Westminster Abbey. Having photographed Diana for seventeen years, from the day she appeared as Prince Charles’s intended, right through her public and, on occasion by invitation, her private life, I felt that I had to take the final picture. It was the end of an era. From my press position at the door of the abbey, I watched everyone arrive for the service, including my wife, who had also been invited. During my career, I have witnessed so many historic events from the other side of a camera that I felt compelled to take that last photograph of the Princess’s story. Life has moved on, and the public have found other subjects to fascinate them--not least the now grownup sons of this international icon--but everyone knows Diana was unique.

The Inquisition eventually came to an end by the late seventeenth century, closing a sad period in European history, an era during which it is estimated some five hundred thousand people were executed throughout Europe. But in England and the colonies, contrary to common belief, not one accused witch was burned at the stake.

Many nations have suffered dark histories that left sad legacies. Many of those same nations are ruled by leaders who mistreat the people now. But no nation has suffered so much in the recent past. No other people lived through an era when their own leaders killed one-quarter of the population—only to find that when the offending government fell, uncaring, avaricious leaders replaced it. No other nation’s population is so riven with PTSD and other traumatic mental illnesses that are being passed to a second generation and potentially to a third—darkening the nation’s personality. All of that offers the Cambodian people a toxic mix of abuse unmatched anywhere in the world. But given their history, given the subservient state Cambodians have accepted without complaint for more than a millennium, they don’t seem to care. Once, just once, they dared to hope. The world’s major nations gave them the chance to choose their leader for the first time in history. Almost every Cambodian embraced it; 90 percent of them voted. But then their leaders betrayed them, and the world deserted them. Now, once again, most expect nothing more than they have. They carry no ambitions. They hold no dreams. All they want is to be left alone.

Era mais uma carta que acabava no lixo, e não no correio. A tristeza é preguenta, ela havia escrito. Não queria pregá-la na mãe. Mesmo porque sua tristeza passava logo. Sempre passava. Ainda que deixasse seu lastro. Um sedimento no fundo de sua alma, partículas de um peso. Peso que não chegava a contaminar seu jeito leve de ser, mas tornava seu olhar mais grave e a fazia perceber o que não percebia antes, a amplitude dos problemas do mundo. Talvez fosse esse o peso do amadurecimento.

On the Birthday of Murtaza Bhutto My nephew drives on a route that crosses alongside 70 Clifton every day since I am in Karachi. It reminds me that when I was a working journalist. I visited the last 70 Clifton in 1977, the resident of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Later, Benazir Bhutto and then Murtaza Bhutto and Fatima Bhutto, during the driving towards Karachi Press Club, I asked my nephew to stop near 70 Clifton, so that we can click a few pics of it. Today is Murtaza Bhutto's Birthday, who became the victim of armed-evil and murdered. I stood outside 70 Clifton, remembering inside the conversations, discussions, and delightful atmosphere, in the Bhutto era. I felt sadness and pain, imagining that time when pleasure, joy, and mob walked around it, but today it was dead-quiet and displayed sadness on its walls, the Birthday existed; however, the figure held that day was not there, and his daughter far away from Pakistan, in exile-life, though, the justice has failed but not the God.

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data - i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion. Of generalized interactivity abolishing particularized action. Of the interface which abolishes challenge, passion, and rivalry between peoples, ideas and individuals which was always the source of the finest energies. It is difficult to find a remedy for our own sadness, because we are ourselves implicated in it. It is difficult to find a remedy for other people's sadness because we are prisoners of it.

El caso es que toda mi existencia era, al final, un montón de hilos de los que había tirado en algún momento, pero que siempre había terminado por cortar antes de que pudiesen hacerse lo suficientemente largos como para ser resistentes. (...) No tenía mucho más. Curiosamente, me di cuenta de que todos los había cortado por mi cuenta, como si una parte de mí huyese de la compañía, de la amistad, del amor, de todo lo bueno. Quizá buscaba la tristeza, la soledad, la desdicha. Quizá las perseguía.