Scandal Best Quotes

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

If someone can handle you at your worst, they'll stick around for your best.

The best friends are those you can argue with but love anyway.

The best way to know someone was to look at their library.

Child, you do not know me. You have created a mythical being in my likeness whom you have set up as a god. It is not I. Many times, infant, I have told you that I am no hero, but I think you have not believed me. I tell you now that I am no fit mate for you...My reputation is damaged beyond repair, child. I come from vicious stock, and I have brought no honor to the name I bear. To no women have I been faithful; behind me lies scandal upon sordid scandal...You have seen perhaps the best of me; you have not seen the worst' 'Ah, Monseigneur, you need not have told me this! I know--I have always known, and still I love you. I do not want a boy. I only want Monseigneur.

Whoever wants to hide a big scandal is best to stage a small one

You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book--if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise, to have set loose in them the consciousness that's otherwise conditioned and hemmed in by all that isn't fiction. This is something that every child, smitten by books, understands immediately, though it's not at all a childish idea about the importance of reading.

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman’s wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.

Women were something best bought, he’d found. Pay them, f*ck them, and send them away in the morning. That way avoided tears, recriminations, and feminine disappointment. Oh, and small things like being slapped across the face. Mick rubbed his jaw. But Silence wasn’t one of his whores, as Harry had pointed out. Mick couldn’t send her away. And he couldn’t let her starve herself—he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her, including herself.

Letting go is the best revenge. It frees your heart for much more satisfying pursuits.

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

It's not the moment the world splits in two, it's all the days after, trying to live a cleaved life and pretend you never knew it whole and don't feel the space of that missing piece that can never be repaired or replaced. Even the best facsimiles fall short.

Does anyone ever get the best of you?” “Yes,” she returned, “but only when I choose to give it to them.

If something frightens you,” he said, “that means it’s the best place to start.

This isn't a good idea." "I know. It's a terrible idea. But right now, it feels like the best bad idea I've ever had. I have to be inside you.

An ideal scandal is the one that reveals to us what our leaders really think of us; the fools they take us to be and the ease with which they get away with things.

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. and he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again. And the Bureau of Labor statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the congressional research service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not screwed to over-sample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad; Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy, sometimes. And evolution is a thing. And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And you and election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism. Listen, last night was a good night for liberals and for democrats for very obvious reasons, but it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two-party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican Party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems. Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican Party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations, everyone!

The last time that I consciously wrote anything to 'save the honor of the Left', as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it no higher) of Clinton. I used leftist categories to measure him, in other words, and to show how idiotic was the belief that he was a liberal's champion. Again, more leftists than you might think were on my side or in my corner, and the book was published by Verso, which is the publishing arm of the New Left Review. However, if a near-majority of leftists and liberals choose to think that Clinton was the target of a witch-hunt and the victim of 'sexual McCarthyism', an Arkansan Alger Hiss in other words, you become weary of debating on their terms and leave them to make the best of it.

She was dangerous. I’d heard the rumors, that she had a history as a wild woman, that she’d been married to a gambler, maybe even been one herself, that her past was scandalous at best. But who was I to judge? My past was littered with scandal.

He had always thought that a Native American should have shot Robert Frost for the outrageous lie of the line “The land was ours before we were the land’s.” What a scandal that would be, America’s best-loved geezer falling in a battle over poetry.

Steris,” he whispered, “I’ve been considering how to proceed once we decide how to infiltrate. I’ve thought about bringing you in with us, and I just don’t see that it’s feasible. I think it would be best if you stayed and watched the horses.” “Very well.” “No, really. Those are armed soldiers. I can’t even fathom how I’d feel if I brought you in there and something happened. You need to stay out here.” “Very well.” “It isn’t subject to—” Wax hesitated. “Wait. You’re all right with this?” “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I barely have any sense of where to point a gun, and have hardly any capacity for sneaking—that’s really quite a scandalous talent if you think about it, Lord Waxillium. While I do believe that people tend to be safest when near you, riding into an enemy compound is stretching the issue. I’ll stay here.” Wax grinned in the darkness. “Steris, you’re a gem.” “What? Because I have a moderately healthy sense of self-preservation?” “Let’s just say that out in the Roughs, I was accustomed to people always wanting to try things beyond their capacity. And they always seemed determined to do it right when it was the most dangerous.” “Well, I shall endeavor to stay out of sight,” Steris said, “and not get captured.” “I doubt you need to worry about that all the way out here.” “Oh, I agree,” she said. “But that is the sort of statistical anomaly that plagues my life, so I’ll plan for it nonetheless.

As neoliberalism wages war on public goods and the very idea of a public, including citizenship beyond membership, it dramatically thins public life without killing politics. Struggles remain over power, hegemonic values, resources, and future trajectories. This persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere, is part of what makes contemporary politics peculiarly unappealing and toxic— full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, pandering to an uneducated and manipulable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media. Neoliberalism generates a condition of politics absent democratic institutions that would support a democratic public and all that such a public represents at its best: informed passion, respectful deliberation, aspirational sovereignty, sharp containment of powers that would overrule or undermine it.

We want to hear, we long to hear, “I screwed up. I will do my best to ensure that it will not happen again.” Most of us are not impressed when a leader offers the form of Kennedy’s admission without its essence, as in Ronald Reagan’s response to the Iran-Contra scandal, which may be summarized as “I didn’t do anything wrong myself, but it happened on my watch, so, well, I guess I’ll take responsibility.”3 That doesn’t cut it.

Beauty is scandalous sir! It takes away a man's reason and cedes him unreasonable fervor. For you see sir! A man profligate as me; has found in this destitution that a reasonable man is more likely to lead a content life. That's the best a man can be sir, content. Especially an eternally dejected man, such as myself. Who has lost his ability to be pleased.

In my experience, a woman who knows her way around a weapon is the very best kind.

Competitive capitalism is the best economic system in the world, but it is constantly being undermined by greedy monopolists.

the best way to enhance one’s beauty was to let it shine through on its own, rather than trying to compete with a bunch of shiny bobbles or overdone fripperies.

Can you ever really leave the place you come from? Isn’t it best to stay where you belong, rather than risk trying to insert yourself somewhere else and failing?

And I haven’t even told you the best part. “He’s British.

They see you at your worst and don’t run away.  If someone can handle you at your worst, they’ll stick around for your best.

TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN   The best definition for grace I know comes from Paul Zahl: Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable…. The cliché definition of grace is “unconditional love.” It is a true cliché, for it is a good description of the thing.… Let’s go a little further, though. Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualifications the receiver may personally hold…. Grace is one-way love.1 Grace doesn’t make demands. It just gives. And from our vantage point, it always gives to the wrong person. We see this over and over again in the Gospels: Jesus is always giving to the wrong people—prostitutes, tax collectors, half-breeds. The most extravagant sinners of Jesus’s day receive His most compassionate welcome. Grace is a divine vulgarity that stands caution on its head.

Miss Emily went on shaking her head. ‘It was never true. Even before the Morningdale scandal, even back when Hailsham was considered a shining beacon, an example of how we might move to a more humane and better way of doing things, even then, it wasn’t true. It’s best to be clear about this. A wishful rumour. That’s all it ever was. Oh dear, is that the men come for the cabinet?

After a long and happy life, I find myself at the pearly gates (a sight of great joy; the word for “pearl” in Greek is, by the way, margarita). Standing there is St. Peter. This truly is heaven, for finally my academic questions will receive answers. I immediately begin the questions that have been plaguing me for half a century: “Can you speak Greek? Where did you go when you wandered off in the middle of Acts? How was the incident between you and Paul in Antioch resolved? What happened to your wife?” Peter looks at me with some bemusement and states, “Look, lady, I’ve got a whole line of saved people to process. Pick up your harp and slippers here, and get the wings and halo at the next table. We’ll talk after dinner.” As I float off, I hear, behind me, a man trying to gain Peter’s attention. He has located a “red letter Bible,” which is a text in which the words of Jesus are printed in red letters. This is heaven, and all sorts of sacred art and Scriptures, from the Bhagavad Gita to the Qur’an, are easily available (missing, however, was the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version). The fellow has his Bible open to John 14, and he is frenetically pointing at v. 6: “Jesus says here, in red letters, that he is the way. I’ve seen this woman on television (actually, she’s thinner in person). She’s not Christian; she’s not baptized - she shouldn’t be here!” “Oy,” says Peter, “another one - wait here.” He returns a few minutes later with a man about five foot three with dark hair and eyes. I notice immediately that he has holes in his wrists, for when the empire executes an individual, the circumstances of that death cannot be forgotten. “What is it, my son?” he asks. The man, obviously nonplussed, sputters, “I don’t mean to be rude, but didn’t you say that no one comes to the Father except through you?” “Well,” responds Jesus, “John does have me saying this.” (Waiting in line, a few other biblical scholars who overhear this conversation sigh at Jesus’s phrasing; a number of them remain convinced that Jesus said no such thing. They’ll have to make the inquiry on their own time.) “But if you flip back to the Gospel of Matthew, which does come first in the canon, you’ll notice in chapter 25, at the judgment of the sheep and the goats, that I am not interested in those who say ‘Lord, Lord,’ but in those who do their best to live a righteous life: feeding the hungry, visiting people in prison . . . ” Becoming almost apoplectic, the man interrupts, “But, but, that’s works righteousness. You’re saying she’s earned her way into heaven?” “No,” replies Jesus, “I am not saying that at all. I am saying that I am the way, not you, not your church, not your reading of John’s Gospel, and not the claim of any individual Christian or any particular congregation. I am making the determination, and it is by my grace that anyone gets in, including you. Do you want to argue?” The last thing I recall seeing, before picking up my heavenly accessories, is Jesus handing the poor man a Kleenex to help get the log out of his eye.

Ruxandra pulled the blanket down just far enough to see the two girls shut the door behind them, stuff something under it to block any light, and throw a blanket over the shutters. A flint sparked one, twice, and a taper flared to life, lighting the faces of her friends. Adela was a short blonde whose breasts pushed against her nightdress and were the despair of the nuns’ attempts to instill modesty. Her parents had sent her to the convent in desperate hopes to keep her from scandal. And between her sweet, round face and her ability to lie shamelessly, she almost managed to make the nuns believe they were being successful. Valeria was slim and dark, a mischief-maker whose pranks had gotten her in trouble more than once. They were both her lovers. Adela called it practice for when they had husbands. Valeria called it wonderful. The nuns declared it a sin in no uncertain terms. And while Ruxandra did her best to obey the nuns in most matters, and to turn her thoughts to God and do his good work, she could not stop loving the girls. From the moment she’d first held Adela’s hand, she’d known that, whatever else their feelings were for each other, they were too sweet to be sinful.

Goodbye, Lizzy. I will see you again, of course—but you will not see me. Not really. You never have. It is too bad. This the part, I suppose, where the novel would wrap up with a tidy boring moral, so I will say this: Love your best friends. Forgive your worst friends. Remember, always, not to judge people too hastily, for everyone is living out a story of their own, and you only get to read the pages you appear on.

He traced the line of her collarbone, and the side of her throat. “Did I hurt you, Daisy?” he whispered. “Well, it was rather uncomfortable when you—” she stopped and blushed. “But I expected that. My friends told me it improves after the first time.” His fingertips wandered to the outline of her ear, and the blood-heated curve of her cheek. There was a smile in his voice as he said, “I’ll do my best to see that it does.

Whenever a Christian follows authority figures who don’t allow questions about themselves or their direction or teaching, get out and don’t look back. Whenever someone says he knows what’s best for your life, better than you do; whenever someone says that she speaks for God; whenever someone pretends to be anything other than a flawed human being who makes mistakes and sometimes gets it wrong—that person is sitting on a pedestal of his or her own making, and if you don’t destroy it, God will. So many freedom-destroying things we do are connected to an irresponsible decision to allow others to be to us what only God is supposed to be.

Now look: Droplets of oil were dotted across the front of her best dress, over the mound of her stomach. She was clumsy and fat-stomached and she didn't even have the sense to wear an apron while she was cooking. Also she had paid way too much for this dress, sixty-four dollars at Hecht's, which would scandalize Ira if he knew. How could she have been so greedy? She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Took a deep breath. Well. Anyhow.

New Rule: Now that liberals have taken back the word "liberal," they also have to take back the word "elite." By now you've heard the constant right-wing attacks on the "elite media," and the "liberal elite." Who may or may not be part of the "Washington elite." A subset of the "East Coast elite." Which is overly influenced by the "Hollywood elite." So basically, unless you're a shit-kicker from Kansas, you're with the terrorists. If you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being "elite," you'd be almost as wasted as Rush Limbaugh. I don't get it: In other fields--outside of government--elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I'd like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad--the elite aren't down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-Brains. Which is fine, except that whenever there's a Bush administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, "Where are they getting these screwups from?" Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I'm not kidding. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because she's smack in the middle of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She's thirty-three, and though she never even worked as a prosecutor, was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all ninety-three U.S. attorneys. How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College--you know, home of the "Fighting Christies"--and then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school. Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause "earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor," has a law school. And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years, and you have to read only one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix. Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist diploma mill work in the Bush administration? On hundred fifty. And you wonder why things are so messed up? We're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college founded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House? In two hundred years, we've gone from "we the people" to "up with people." From the best and brightest to dumb and dumber. And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school? The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by elites. It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling hired to keep her ass out of jail went to a real law school.

One which is the next best, and has the advantage of compelling the citizens to look to their characters:—Let there be a general rule that every one shall enter into voluntary contracts at his own risk, and there will be less of this scandalous money-making, and the evils of which we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the State. Yes, they will be greatly lessened. At present the governors, induced by the motives which I have named, treat their subjects badly; while they and their adherents, especially the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of luxury and idleness both of body and mind; they do nothing, and are incapable of resisting either pleasure or pain. Very true. They themselves care only for making money, and are as indifferent as the pauper to the cultivation of virtue. Yes,

Marabelle was made of stern stuff. It mattered not that she’d never laid eyes upon the man she was about to call husband or that his reputation as a rake and rogue had preceded him. No, she was going to make the best of it, as anyone worth their salt did, and that was certain.

There is a special pleasure in the irony of a moralist brought down for the very moral failings he has condemned. It’s the pleasure of a well-told joke. Some jokes are funny as one-liners, but most require three verses: three guys, say, who walk into a bar one at a time, or a priest, a minister, and a rabbi in a lifeboat. The first two set the pattern, and the third violates it. With hypocrisy, the hypocrite’s preaching is the setup, the hypocritical action is the punch line. Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feelings of moral superiority while asking nothing in return. With contempt you don’t need to right the wrong (as with anger) or flee the scene (as with fear or disgust). And best of all, contempt is made to share. Stories about the moral failings of others are among the most common kinds of gossip,3 they are a staple of talk radio, and they offer a ready way for people to show that they share a common moral orientation. Tell an acquaintance a cynical story that ends with both of you smirking and shaking your heads and voila, you’ve got a bond.

Jesus treats patriarchy the way he treats much else of the law and custom of his time: ambiguously, suggestively, and sometimes subversively, but never immediately revolutionarily outside the central matter of his own mission and person...The main scandal of Jesus' career is properly JESUS - not Jesus and feminism, or Jesus and the abolition of slavery, or Jesus and Jewish emancipation, or Jesus and anything else. Those other causes are good, and they are implicit in Jesus' ministry. But they are incipient at best, and Jesus' accommodation to these various social distinctions needs to be acknowledged and then accounted for in one's paradigm regarding gender.

He didn’t want to run the other way when he saw Miss Bennet, as vexing as she was. He wanted to best her, to leave her speechless; he wanted to hear her confess that she was wrong and he was right, about anything at all. And most worrisome of all, he wanted to kiss her senseless when she did so. Maybe even before. He must be cracked in the head.

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman’s wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.

I consider, that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it

Not that St. Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart and conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,–too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg's were not all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at St. Ogg's that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment of each other.

George S. Kaufman was not Miss Astor’s last love. George had been supplanted in her affections by one of his best friends, whose name would surely have been disclosed had the hearing gone on. The scoop appeared on August 12 in the Daily Mirror, announcing that the best friend, an unnamed dashing broker and bachelor, maintained a seven-room penthouse on Park Avenue, complete with butler and maid. Kaufman had introduced Mary to “Mr. Big” in December, according to the Mirror.

Perhaps the best way to understand the book of Revelation is that it is a prophetic critique of civil religion. By civil religion I mean the religion of state where the state is the actual object of worship. Civil religion is religious patriotism. Christians are called to practice responsible citizenship but to renounce religious patriotism. In the practice of civil religion, the truth that the state is what is actually being deified and worshiped is usually carefully concealed. Instead of directly worshiping the state as God, worship of the state is expressed through sacred symbols, myths, and personifications of the state treated with religious reverence. The tendency to deify the state is particularly pronounced in empires—rich and powerful nations that believe they have a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history according to their agenda. God’s contention with empire is one of the major themes of the Bible. From Egypt and Assyria to Babylonia and Rome, the prophets constantly critique empire as a direct challenge to the sovereignty of God. This prophetic tradition of empire critique reaches its apex in the book of Revelation. John the Revelator tells us that Rome’s claim of a divine right to rule the nations and of a manifest destiny to shape history is the very thing that God has given to his Son, Jesus Christ. Thus the drama of Revelation is cast as an epic conflict between the Lamb (Jesus) and the Beast (Rome).

FURIOUS FAVOR I wonder if David would be allowed in our churches today. In most cases, when a church member has an affair, he is shunned at best or mistreated at worst—even if he repents. But David doesn’t just have an affair. He lusts, covets, fornicates, lies, and gets another man hammered. Then he tries to keep his dirty little secrets by murdering the husband of the woman he “loves.” I doubt I’ve met anyone as sinful as David. Have you? He breaks half of the Ten Commandments in a single episode. And he doesn’t repent until he’s caught. But when Nathan shoves his prophetic finger into David’s chest and rebukes him, David falls to his knees and admits his guilt. And right then, at that moment, God rips open the heavens to reach down and touch David’s soul with stubborn delight. God eagerly forgives David for his sin, and all of it is buried at the bottom of the sea, never to be remembered again. There is no hiccup in God’s furious favor toward David. So why do repentant sinners still bear the stigma of “adulterer,” “divorced,” or “addict” in our churches today? It’s one thing if they don’t repent. But quite often we shun repentant sinners, like Jeffrey Dahmer, whose crimes we just can’t forget. “He’s the former addict.” “That’s the divorced mom.” “Here comes the guy who slept with the church secretary.” For some reason we love to define people by the sin in their lives—even past sin in their lives—rather than by the grace that forgave it. It’s no wonder that David pens the last sentence in Psalm 23: “Surely goodness and mercy shall [hunt me down] all the days of my life” (Ps. 23:6).

Nothing is worse than vice which is learned, aped, or borrowed; thus a rational extenuation of vice is unjustified: at best, one must single out its fecundity for those who know how to transfigure it, who can deviate its deviation. To practice it in criminal and vulgar ways is to exploit its scandalous materiality and ignore the immaterial frisson which constitutes its excellence. To attain certain heights, intimacy cannot dispense with the anxieties of vice. No man of vice can be condemned unless he ceases to look upon vice as a pretext and turns it into a goal.

It’s just that you’re trying to use my attraction to you to set me on edge.” She smiled at him. “It won’t work. I’ve been attracted to you since the moment I laid eyes on you, and it hasn’t made me stupid once.” “Did you expect me to deny it?” Free shrugged as complacently as she could. “You should read more of my newspaper. I published an excellent essay by Josephine Butler on this very subject. Men use sexuality as a tool to shut up women. We are not allowed to speak on matters that touch on sexual intercourse—even if they concern our own bodies and our own freedom—for fear of being labeled indelicate. Any time a man wishes to scare a woman into submission, he need only add the question of sexual attraction, leaving the virtuous woman with no choice but to blush and fall silent. You should know, Mr. Clark, that I don’t intend to fall silent. I have already been labeled indelicate; there is nothing you can add to that chorus.” "I've found that the best way to deal with the tactic is to speak of sexual attraction in terms of clear, unquestionable facts. The same men who try to make me feel uneasy by hinting at an attraction can never live up to their own innuendos.

You said yourself she’s trouble. I’m doing you a favor, really—should you ever encounter her, you have my permission to run the other way.” Tristan just grunted and snapped his fingers at the boy to fetch his clothes. Trouble, yes; but even more dangerous than Bennet suspected. Because Tristan didn’t want to run the other way when he saw Miss Bennet, as vexing as she was. He wanted to best her, to leave her speechless; he wanted to hear her confess that she was wrong and he was right, about anything at all. And most worrisome of all, he wanted to kiss her senseless when she did so. Maybe even before. He must be cracked in the head.

We stood in the wings together, side by side. Reed's mouth was still agape. "It makes sense when you think about it," I mused. "You get two people together who have you-know-what, and sparks are going to fly." Reed's cue was about to start. He pointed at me and said, "Tonight. There's a party. And we're going to talk." "Yes" "Because this is crazy." "Totally." "Okay. Well." He tugged a strand of my hair. "Good luck out there." "You're not supposed to say that." "Fine. How about..." He squinted at me. "Here's looking at you kid." The smile melted off my face. "What did you say?" "It's a line. From a movie." He shrugged and burst onto the stage with a hee-haw. It was a line. From Casablanca. The same line KARL had said to me when I was Elsa. The same like Karl didn't recognize when I said it to him as Floressa. Which meant... nothing. Right? Lots of people know that line. Just because Reed said it, and Reed was a sub, it didn't mean he was... he was... "You're on," the stage manager whispered. I stumbled onto the stage. The lights were too bright. The theater was packed. Reed gave me a quick, crooked smile, and I knew. My crush on Karl was less complicated than I thought, because it wasn't Karl I'd been with that day in the garden. Now my crush on Reed... ? THAT was a scandal all on its own.

Our inner lives must be lent a structure and our best thoughts reinforced to counter the continuous pull of distraction and disintegration. Religions have been wise enough to establish elaborate calendars and schedules. How free secular society leaves us by contrast. Secular life is not, of course, unacquainted with calendars and schedules. We know them well in relation to work, and accept the virtues of reminders of lunch meetings, cash-flow projections and tax deadlines. But it expects that we will spontaneously find our way to the ideas that matter to us and gives us weekends off for consumption and recreation. It privileges discovery, presenting us with an incessant stream of new information – and therefore it prompts us to forget everything. We are enticed to go to the cinema to see a newly released film, which ends up moving us to an exquisite pitch of sensitivity, sorrow and excitement. We leave the theatre vowing to reconsider our entire existence in light of the values shown on screen, and to purge ourselves of our decadence and haste. And yet by the following evening, after a day of meetings and aggravations, our cinematic experience is well on its way towards obliteration. We honour the power of culture but rarely admit with what scandalous ease we forget its individual monuments. We somehow feel, however, that it would be a violation of our spontaneity to be presented with rotas for rereading Walt Whitman.

Cities have characters, pathologies that can make or destroy or infect you, states of mind that run through daily life as surely as a fault line. Chandler’s “mysterious something” was a mood of disenchantment, an intense spiritual malaise that identified itself with Los Angeles at a particular time, what we call noir. On the one hand noir is a narrow film genre, born in Hollywood in the late 1930s when European visual style, the twisted perspectives and stark chiaroscuros of German Expressionism, met an American literary idiom. This fruitful comingling gave birth to movies like Double Indemnity, directed by Vienna-born Billy Wilder and scripted by Raymond Chandler from a James M. Cain novella. The themes — murderous sex and the cool, intricate amorality of money — rose directly from the psychic mulch of Southern California. But L.A. is a city of big dreams and cruelly inevitable disappointments where noir is more than just a slice of cinema history; it’s a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths came to be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times, an alienation that assails the sense like the harsh glitter of mica in the sidewalk on a pitiless Santa Ana day. Noir — in this sense a perspective on history and often a substitute for it — was born when the Roaring Twenties blew themselves out and hard times rushed in; it crystallized real-life events and the writhing collapse of the national economy before finding its interpreters in writers like Raymond Chandler.

Aunt Maxie giggled. ‘What can he be thinking about so hard?’ ‘Best not to know,’ his mother said. She tsked. ‘One day that boy’ll go too far.’ ‘Something serious. Look at him. He can’t even hear us talking about him. What can it be?’ ‘Complex numbers,’ Garvie said, without taking his eyes off the table. ‘Oh.’ With a suspicious glance at her son, Garvie’s mother asked Aunt Maxie about the new locl convenience store, and they settled into a conversation about the scandalous rising prices of food. Garvie carried on thinking. a + bi, where i has the property i squared = -1. The product of a real number and an imaginary number. You don’t compute complex numbers, you rotate them. You move them into an imaginary dimension and the answer is an unexpected jolt from the blue. ‘Garvie? Garvie?’ He looked up at his aunt. ‘Alex is lying,’ he said.

There was a fascinating duality about Matthew that Daisy had never encountered in another man. At some moments he was the aggressive, sharp-eyed, buttoned-up businessman who rattled off facts and figures with ease. At other times he was a gentle, understanding lover who shed his cynicism like an old coat and engaged her in playful debates about which ancient culture had the best mythology, or what Thomas Jefferson's favorite vegetable had been. (Although Daisy was convinced it was green peas, Matthew had made an excellent case for tomatoes.) They had long conversations about subjects like history and progressive politics. For a man from a conservative Brahmin background, he had a surprising awareness of reform issues. Usually in their relentless climb up the social ladder, enterprising men forgot about those who had been left on the bottom rungs. Daisy thought it spoke well of Matthew's character that he had a genuine concern for those less fortunate than himself.

My sisters don’t be afraid of the words “old maid,” for it is in your power to make this a term of honor, not reproach. It is not necessary to be a sour, spiteful spinster, with nothing to do but brew tear, talk scandal and tend a pocket handkerchief. No, the world is full of work, needing all the heads, hearts, and hands we can bring to do it. Never was there so splendid an opportunity for women to enjoy their liberty and prove that they deserve it by using it wisely. If love comes as it should come, accept it in God’s name and be worthy of His best blessing. If it never comes, then in God’s name, reject the shadow of it, for that can never satisfy a hungry heart. Do not be ashamed to own the truth—do not be daunted by the fear of ridicule and loneliness, nor saddened by the loss of a woman’s tenderest ties. Be true to yourself; cherish whatever talent you possess, and in using it faithfully for the good of others, you will most assuredly find happiness for yourself, and make of life no failure, but a beautiful success.

My sisters don’t be afraid of the words “old maid,” for it is in your power to make this a term of honor, not reproach. It is not necessary to be a sour, spiteful spinster, with nothing to do but brew tear, talk scandal and tend a pocket handkerchief. No, the world is full of work, needing all the heads, hearts, and hands we can bring to do it. Never was there so splendid an opportunity for women to enjoy their liberty and prove that they deserve it by using it wisely. 4 minutes ago Heidi M If love comes as it should come, accept it in God’s name and be worthy of His best blessing. If it never comes, then in God’s name, reject the shadow of it, for that can never satisfy a hungry heart. 4 minutes ago Do not be ashamed to own the truth—do not be daunted by the fear of ridicule and loneliness, nor saddened by the loss of a woman’s tenderest ties. Be true to yourself; cherish whatever talent you possess, and in using it faithfully for the good of others, you will most assuredly find happiness for yourself, and make of life no failure, but a beautiful success.

What’s insane about this—other than the fact we’ve never talked about it, not even once—is that I’m not nervous in any way. Just excited. We already feel like a married couple, and I say that in the best, non-boring way possible. He is stability and love. Security and confidence. I’m his tide, and he’s my anchor. Or maybe the sand itself. “Edie Van Der Zee, I want to dip my toes in the waves you make every single day for the rest of my miserable life. I want to fuck you—just you, only you, no one else—and a lot. Every. Single. Day. I want to live with you. I want to parade that fucked-up thing we have that keeps people raising eyebrows and thinking I’m a cradle-snatching douchebag, because fuck ’em, they’ll never have what we have. Will you marry me? I don’t ask for a lot. Not for kids, not for dinner, not for anything to be done in the house. I don’t ask you for anything other than what you’re willing to give me.” Luna peeks from the door, smiling. I turn my body to her, smiling. I expect her to sign me something. Something like “aw, gross,” or “Daddy is being silly again”. But she doesn’t. Instead, she arches one eyebrow, opens her lips, and lets the words fall out, awarding her father with the best present he could ever have. “Say yes.

As soon as my father’s car turned into our driveway, I ran out and told him of the unpleasant future that awaited him, forever. He let out a hearty laugh. I started to cry. Once my father saw my tears, he sat down with me and said, “Firoozeh, when the Prophet Muhammad forbade ham, it was because people did not know how to cook it properly and many people became sick as a result of eating it. The Prophet, who was a kind and gentle man, wanted to protect people from harm, so he did what made sense at the time. But now, people know how to prepare ham safely, so if the Prophet were alive today, he would change that rule.” He continued, “It’s not what we eat or don’t eat that makes us good people; it’s how we treat one another. As you grow older, you’ll find that people of every religion think they’re the best, but that’s not true. There are good and bad people in every religion. Just because someone is Muslim, Jewish, or Christian doesn’t mean a thing. You have to look and see what’s in their hearts. That’s the only thing that matters, and that’s the only detail God cares about.” I was six years old and I knew that I had just been made privy to something very big and important, something far larger than the jewels in the Shah’s crown, something larger than my little life in Abadan. My father’s words felt scandalous, yet utterly and completely true. In the midst of my thoughtfulness, I heard my father continue, “And when you’re older, Firoozeh, I’ll have you try something really delicious: grilled lobster.

What would the ton do without us to feed them scandal broth?” Grey returned her grin. “The lot of them would starve.” They chuckled and as the humor faded, Grey tilted his head to look at her. “You look beautiful tonight.” She flushed, pleasure lighting the dark depths of her eyes. “You don’t have to say such things.” “I know I don’t, but you are my fiancée and it’s perfectly acceptable for me to voice my thoughts aloud. It’s rather refreshing after keeping them to myself for so long.” That got her attention. One of her fine, high brows twitched. “How long?” He grinned. “Since you were old enough for me to think such thoughts without being lecherous.” They stood no more than six inches apart. Close enough that he could see how amazingly flawless her skin was-not a freckle in sight. Close enough that she could see every twist and knot in his scar-and yet she barely glanced at it. Her gaze was riveted on his. She didn’t care that he was disfigured-at least not on the outside. Not on the inside either, so it seemed. “I’ve never been a good man,” he confessed-a little more hoarse than he liked-“but I promise to be a faithful husband.” It was the best he could offer, because as much as he would like to be the man she wanted, it wasn’t going to happen. Her smooth brow puckered. “I haven’t actually consented, you know.” “Rose, we have to marry.” “No.” She raised sparkling eyes to his. “I want you to ask me to marry you-not demand it. I don’t care if it has to be done. I want to feel like I have a choice.” “If you did have a choice, what would it be?” He was on dangerous ground with her, inching into territory better left unexplored for both their sakes. Rose smiled, and everything was right with the world. “Ask me and find out.” His hands came up, seemingly of their own volition, to cup her face. She was so delicate, yet so strong. Her entire world had been turned upside down, and yet she faced him with a teasing glint in her eyes and a soft flush of color in her cheeks. “Rose Danvers, will you do me the extreme honor of becoming my wife?” Were those tears dampening her eyes? And was it joy or sorrow that put them there? “I will.” He knew that they had to marry regardless, but hearing her say those two little words was like someone kicking his heart through his ribs. It hurt, but there was such unfathomable joy that came with it-such terrible happiness that Grey had no idea what to do with it. He’d never felt anything like it before. Holding her face, he lowered his head and hungrily claimed her mouth with his own. Her lips parted for his tongue as her fingers bit into his arms. A trickle of warm wetness brushed against his thumb. She was crying. A sharp gasp came from the open door. “What the devil is going on here?” The kiss and its magic were broken. Rose stepped back, and Grey dropped his hands, but he wasn’t willing to let her go just yet. He placed one arm behind her back, holding her close so that they faced her mother together. Camilla did not look happy. In fact, she looked like any mother would to walk into a room and find her daughter being molested. “Mama,” Rose begun. “It’s not what you think.” “It is exactly what you think,” Grey countered, drawing his friend’s stormy and narrow gaze. “I have asked Rose for her hand in marriage and she has accepted. I regret that you had to find out this way, but I was too overcome with joy to contain my feelings.” He could feel Rose gaping at him. He didn’t look at her, not because the words were a lie, but because they were all too damnably true.

If he had any sense of honor at all, the man would have stayed dead." "Unfortunately, it appears he was merely unconscious," Daniel murmured. He was becoming quite certain George was dead. This might greaty simplify matters, or at least it would if Richard was willing to uphold the marriage to Christiana...and really, Daniel was beginning to think that would be the most honorable thing to do here. While he didn't think much of their looking to marry a man with money to solve their problems, it did seem a shame to cast the scandal of George's actions on these three women when none of it was their fault at all. Unconscious," Suzette spat the word with disdain. "He must have been, and he had obviously been drinking." She tsked with exasperation and stomped her foot, muttering, "Why could the beast not have been dead? I should have smothered him in his bed to be sure he was and stayed that way." Daniel stared at her with amazement. His first thought was that, really, aside froom her fortune hunting and homicidal tendencies, the woman was quite fascinating in her complete and utter lack of artifice. His next thought was that the ton would eat her alive. Artifice and subterfuge were necessary tools to survive society and she was obviously completely lacking in both. Suzette suddenly heaved a put upon breath and muttered, "I suppose I had best be sure I find a husband tonight. Otherwise, surely Dicky will find some way to throw a spanner in my plans." Daniel's eyebrows flew up at her words and then she peered at him with interest. "You're a handsome enough fellow," she commented thoughtfully. Daniel blinked, and then muttered, "Oh...er...thank you. I think." "You don't seem a dullard either," she added, tilting her head to inspect him consideringly. "Erm," he said weakly. "And you aren't old. That's another plus." Daniel was puzzling over that when she asked abruptly, "Are you rich?

Grey wasn’t quite drunk, but he was far from sober when Rose entered his study later that evening. His heart stuttered at the sight of her, but his head…his head couldn’t take any more. “I’ve been drinking,” he warned her, just in case his sprawled posture and missing cravat wasn’t enough indication. “And I refuse to dance this ridiculous dance with you any more tonight.” “May I have a drink with you?” He glanced up. She stood beside the sofa where he half sat, half lay. She looked like someone who’d just lost her best friend or puppy or something equally as tragic. He sat up. “Of course.” Never mind that it wasn’t proper. Who the hell cared? They were well past proper. He was simply trying to hold on to sane. She poured herself a substantial glass of sherry and took a seat on the chair nearest him. He sat quietly, nursing the remainder of whiskey in his glass while she took several sips from her own. “Do you remember my come-out ball?” she asked after a few minutes. “Of course.” And he did. “I remember telling you that you looked lovely in pink.” She smiled. “You danced the first dance with me so I wouldn’t have to dance with Papa.” “You were afraid the other girls would laugh at you if you danced with your father.” “They didn’t laugh at me for dancing with you.” “No.” He chuckled at took a drink. “I wager they didn’t.” Rose sighed. “They thought you were so scandalous, you know. All night I had girls coming up to me wanting to know about you. I felt very important.” He saluted her with his glass. “Glad to be of service.” “I think I fell a little bit in love with you that night.” Grey choked on a mouthful of whiskey. Coughing, he cursed himself for being stupid enough to relax his guard with her. “Rose…” She held up her hand. “I’m not telling you this to make you uncomfortable, Grey. I wanted to tell you that you were a knight to me that evening-a knight on a big white horse. I didn’t know much about your reputation, all I knew was that you made me feel grown-up.

Ironically,” she commented, “this will be the first time I’ve ever done anything to please my father.” With a sympathetic murmur, Matthew gathered Daisy close against him. He knew her father as well as anyone, having become well acquainted with the man’s tempers, his self-absorption, his impossible standards. And yet he understood what it had required for Bowman to build a great fortune from scratch, the sacrifices he’d had to make. Bowman had discarded everything that would have gotten in the way of achieving his goals. Including closeness with his wife and children. For the first time it occurred to Matthew that Bowman and his family would benefit from someone acting as a mediator, to ease their communications with each other. If such a thing were in his power, he would find a way to do it. “You,” he whispered in Daisy’s hair, “are the best thing he’s ever done. Someday he’ll realize that.” He felt her smile against his skin. “I doubt it. But it’s nice of you to say so. You don’t have to be concerned on that account, you know. I reconciled myself to the way he was a long time ago.” Once again Matthew was taken unaware by the extent of the feelings she inspired in him, his own limitless desire to fill her with happiness. “Whatever you need,” he whispered, “Whatever you want, I’ll get it for you. Just tell me.” Daisy stretched comfortably, a pleasant shiver running through her limbs. She touched his lips with her fingers, tracing the smoothness. “I want to know what your five-dollar wish was for.” “Is that all?” He smiled beneath her exploring fingertips. “I wished you would find someone who wanted you as much as I did. But I knew it wouldn’t come true.” The candlelight slid over Daisy’s delicate features as she raised her head to look at him. “Why not?” “Because I knew no one could ever want you as much as I do.” Daisy levered herself farther over him until her hair tumbled in a dark curtain around them both. “What was your wish?” Matthew asked, combing his fingers through the fall of shimmering hair. “That I could find the right man to marry.” Her tender smile stopped his heart. “And then you appeared.

Revolt of solitary instincts against social bonds is the key to the philosophy, the politics, and the sentiments, not only of what is commonly called the romantic movement, but of its progeny down to the present day. Philosophy, under the influence of German idealism, became solipsistic, and self-development was proclaimed as the fundamental principle of ethics. As regards sentiment, there has to be a distasteful compromise between the search for isolation and the necessities of passion and economics. D. H. Lawrence's story, 'The Man Who Loved Islands', has a hero who disdained such compromise to a gradually increasing extent and at last died of hunger and cold, but in the enjoyment of complete isolation; but this degree of consistency has not been achieved by the writers who praise solitude. The comforts of civilized life are not obtainable by a hermit, and a man who wishes to write books or produce works of art must submit to the ministrations of others if he is to survive while he does his work. In order to continue to feel solitary, he must be able to prevent those who serve him from impinging upon his ego, which is best accomplished if they are slaves. Passionate love, however, is a more difficult matter. So long as passionate lovers are regarded as in revolt against social trammels, they are admired; but in real life the love-relation itself quickly becomes a social trammel, and the partner in love comes to be hated, all the more vehemently if the love is strong enough to make the bond difficult to break. Hence love comes to be conceived as a battle, in which each is attempting to destroy the other by breaking through the protecting walls of his or her ego. This point of view has become familiar through the writings of Strindberg, and, still more, of D. H. Lawrence. Not only passionate love, but every friendly relation to others, is only possible, to this way of feeling, in so far as the others can be regarded as a projection of one's own Self. This is feasible if the others are blood-relations, and the more nearly they are related the more easily it is possible. Hence an emphasis on race, leading, as in the case of the Ptolemys, to endogamy. How this affected Byron, we know; Wagner suggests a similar sentiment in the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde. Nietzsche, though not scandalously, preferred his sister to all other women: 'How strongly I feel,' he writes to her, 'in all that you say and do, that we belong to the same stock. You understand more of me than others do, because we come of the same parentage. This fits in very well with my "philosophy".

Everyone knew there had never been a cowardly Confederate soldier and they found this statement peculiarly irritating. He always referred to the soldiers as “our brave boys” or “our heroes in gray” and did it in such a way as to convey the utmost in insult. When daring young ladies, hoping for a flirtation, thanked him for being one of the heroes who fought for them, he bowed and declared that such was not the case, for he would do the same thing for Yankee women if the same amount of money were involved. Since Scarlett’s first meeting with him in Atlanta on the night of the bazaar, he had talked with her in this manner, but now there was a thinly veiled note of mockery in his conversations with everyone. When praised for his services to the Confederacy, he unfailingly replied that blockading was a business with him. If he could make as much money out of government contracts, he would say, picking out with his eyes those who had government contracts, then he would certainly abandon the hazards of blockading and take to selling shoddy cloth, sanded sugar, spoiled flour and rotten leather to the Confederacy. Most of his remarks were unanswerable, which made them all the worse. There had already been minor scandals about those holding government contracts. Letters from men at the front complained constantly of shoes that wore out in a week, gunpowder that would not ignite, harness that snapped at any strain, meat that was rotten and flour that was full of weevils. Atlanta people tried to think that the men who sold such stuff to the government must be contract holders from Alabama or Virginia or Tennessee, and not Georgians. For did not the Georgia contract holders include men from the very best families? Were they not the first to contribute to hospital funds and to the aid of soldiers’ orphans? Were they not the first to cheer at “Dixie” and the most rampant seekers, in oratory at least, for Yankee blood? The full tide of fury against those profiteering on government contracts had not yet risen, and Rhett’s words were taken merely as evidence of his own bad breeding. He not only affronted the town with insinuations of venality on the part of men in high places and slurs on the courage of the men in the field, but he took pleasure in tricking the dignified citizenry into embarrassing situations. He could no more resist pricking the conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist putting a pin into a balloon. He neatly deflated the pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted, and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they never were quite certain what had happened until they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly ridiculous.

I'm investigating Lady Celia's potential suitors." "Oh," she said in a small voice. He glanced at her, surprised to find her looking stricken. "What's wrong?" "I didn't know she had suitors." "Of course she has suitors." Not any he could approve of, but he wasn't about to mention that to his aunt. "I'm sure you read about her grandmother's ultimatum in those reports you transcribed. She has to marry, and soon, too." "I know. But I was rather hoping...I mean, with you there so often and her being an unconventional sort..." When he cast her a quizzical look, she went on more forcefully, "There's no reason you couldn't offer for her." He nearly choked on his bread. "Are you out of your mind?" "She needs a husband. You need a wife. Why not her?" "Because marquess's daughters don't marry bastards, for one thing." The coarse word made her flinch. "You're still from a perfectly respectable family, no matter the circumstances of your birth." She eyed him with a sudden gleam in her eye. "And I notice you didn't say you weren't interested." Hell. He stopped up from gravy with his bread. "I'm not interested." "I'm not saying you have to be in love with her. That would perhaps be asking too much at this point, but if you courted her, in time-" "I would fall in love? With Lady Celia? That isn't possible." "Why not?" Because what he felt for Celia Sharpe was lust, pure and simple. He didn't even know if he wanted to fall in love. It was all fine and well for the Sharpes, who could love where they pleased, but for people like him and his mother, love was an impossible luxury...or a tragedy in the making. That's why he couldn't let his desire for Lady Celia overcome his reason. His hunger for her might be more powerful than he cared to admit, but he'd controlled it until now, and he would get the best of it in time. He had to. She was determined to marry someone else. His aunt was watching him with a hooded gaze. "I hear she's somewhat pretty." Hell and blazes, she wouldn't let this go. "You hear? From whom?" "Your clerk. He saw her when the family came in to the office one time. He's told me about all the Sharpes, how they depend on you and admire you." He snorted. "I see my clerk has been doing it up brown." "So she's not pretty?" "She's the most beautiful woman I've ever-" At her raised eyebrow, he scowled. "Too beautiful for the likes of me. And of far too high a consequence." "Her grandmother is a brewer. Her family has been covered in scandal for years. And they're grateful to you for all you've done so far. They might be grateful enough to countenance your suit." "You don't know the Sharpes." "Oh, so they're too high and mighty? Treat you like a servant?" "No," he bit out. "But..." "By my calculations, there's two months left before she has to marry. If she's had no offers, she might be getting desperate enough to-" "Settle for a bastard?" "Ignore the difference in your stations." She seized his arm. "Don't you see, my boy? Here's your chance. You're on the verge of becoming Chief Magistrate. That would hold some weight with her.

You're the lucky one. Otherwise you'd know there's a pleasure to be had from boredom. The best kind of pleasure: it means you've got nothing to worry about.

stressing the necessity of personal holiness should not undermine in any way our confidence in justification by faith alone. The best theologians and the best theological statements have always emphasized the scandalous nature of gospel grace and the indispensable need for personal holiness. Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit. God declares us just solely on account of the righteousness of Christ credited (imputed) to us (2 Cor. 5:21). Our innocence in God’s sight is in no way grounded in works of love or acts of charity. Whereas a Catholic might answer the question “What must I do to be saved?” by saying, “Repent, believe, and live in charity,”7 the apostle Paul answers the same exact question with, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). Getting right with God is entirely and only dependent upon faith.8

The best any of us can do in life is to try to build a strong foundation on which to stand,” she said. “And then meet life as it comes, as courageously and honestly as possible. If we fall, well it is fate. It is destiny!

What happened to the troubled young reporter who almost brought this magazine down The last time I talked to Stephen Glass, he was pleading with me on the phone to protect him from Charles Lane. Chuck, as we called him, was the editor of The New Republic and Steve was my colleague and very good friend, maybe something like a little brother, though we are only two years apart in age. Steve had a way of inspiring loyalty, not jealousy, in his fellow young writers, which was remarkable given how spectacularly successful he’d been in such a short time. While the rest of us were still scratching our way out of the intern pit, he was becoming a franchise, turning out bizarre and amazing stories week after week for The New Republic, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone— each one a home run. I didn’t know when he called me that he’d made up nearly all of the bizarre and amazing stories, that he was the perpetrator of probably the most elaborate fraud in journalistic history, that he would soon become famous on a whole new scale. I didn’t even know he had a dark side. It was the spring of 1998 and he was still just my hapless friend Steve, who padded into my office ten times a day in white socks and was more interested in alphabetizing beer than drinking it. When he called, I was in New York and I said I would come back to D.C. right away. I probably said something about Chuck like: “Fuck him. He can’t fire you. He can’t possibly think you would do that.” I was wrong, and Chuck, ever-resistant to Steve’s charms, was as right as he’d been in his life. The story was front-page news all over the world. The staff (me included) spent several weeks re-reporting all of Steve’s articles. It turned out that Steve had been making up characters, scenes, events, whole stories from first word to last. He made up some funny stuff—a convention of Monica Lewinsky memorabilia—and also some really awful stuff: racist cab drivers, sexist Republicans, desperate poor people calling in to a psychic hotline, career-damaging quotes about politicians. In fact, we eventually figured out that very few of his stories were completely true. Not only that, but he went to extreme lengths to hide his fabrications, filling notebooks with fake interview notes and creating fake business cards and fake voicemails. (Remember, this was before most people used Google. Plus, Steve had been the head of The New Republic ’s fact-checking department.) Once we knew what he’d done, I tried to call Steve, but he never called back. He just went missing, like the kids on the milk cartons. It was weird. People often ask me if I felt “betrayed,” but really I was deeply unsettled, like I’d woken up in the wrong room. I wondered whether Steve had lied to me about personal things, too. I wondered how, even after he’d been caught, he could bring himself to recruit me to defend him, knowing I’d be risking my job to do so. I wondered how I could spend more time with a person during the week than I spent with my husband and not suspect a thing. (And I didn’t. It came as a total surprise). And I wondered what else I didn’t know about people. Could my brother be a drug addict? Did my best friend actually hate me? Jon Chait, now a political writer for New York and back then the smart young wonk in our trio, was in Paris when the scandal broke. Overnight, Steve went from “being one of my best friends to someone I read about in The International Herald Tribune, ” Chait recalled. The transition was so abrupt that, for months, Jon dreamed that he’d run into him or that Steve wanted to talk to him. Then, after a while, the dreams stopped. The Monica Lewinsky scandal petered out, George W. Bush became president, we all got cell phones, laptops, spouses, children. Over the years, Steve Glass got mixed up in our minds with the fictionalized Stephen Glass from his own 2003 roman à clef, The Fabulist, or Steve Glass as played by Hayden Christiansen in the 2003

It’s best to end these affairs before the passion fades.” She felt her face drain of blood. These

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed." It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God's children starving while actually seated at the Father's table. The truth of Wesley's words is established before our eyes: "Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this.

The best use of our energies is not to try harder to be like Jesus, but to stay more closely connected to Him—the branch embedded in the Vine. That means we pay better attention to what He says and does and how others react to Him, simply to get to know Him more deeply. And in knowing Him we see Him better, and in seeing Him better we trust in Him more deeply, and in trusting Him more deeply we align ourselves with Him, and in aligning ourselves with Him we live our lives in a magnetic atmosphere of faith. And that faith, like Peter’s, “will not fail.

Forced by the Starr investigation, the president was to give testimony on the Paula Jones case any day now. Somehow Matt Drudge and his website received a leak. In response the president had signed a subpoenaed affidavit, legally sworn testimony denying any sexual relations with Paula Jones, the low-level Arkansas state employee who had accused him of sexual harassment, and more so, any relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He said they didn’t have any contact with each other, hadn’t even been alone in the same room together. He swore to it and said others could corroborate. Monica Lewinsky signed another affidavit. Ken Starr had been following the Clintons like a bloodhound. But at each turn of each scandal (Whitewater, Vince Foster’s suicide, Travelgate, Filegate, the affairs, the bribes, Troopergate, and more) it all came down to deny-deny-deny and the Clintons’ word against everyone else’s. Only this time, Clinton arrogantly denied his affair with Monica on a legal affidavit, sworn testimony. The shit was hitting the fan. Ken Starr now needed to prove Clinton was a liar—a perjurer. He needed evidence. Since they subpoenaed our logbook, I knew I was on Starr’s list. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t drive anymore. My partner asked me what was wrong. I can remember the feeling, my heart racing, my mind whirling, racked with pain, doubt, remorse, and regret. Oh my God, Starr, the Clintons, the Service, the FBI, the Justice Department, my friends, my family—no, not my friends and family—but everyone is going to implicate me, my integrity, my professionalism, my ethics, my foundation, my character. What about Genny and my unborn child? I didn’t sign up for this! We never signed up for this! Why did the Clintons have to do this to us? Haven’t I treated them well, done my best? They just couldn’t do the right thing! They couldn’t stop themselves!

The two best experiences are the heady days when the boat is bought — and the day it's sold. Everything between is expenditure.

In the locker room had been posted a phrase uttered by Theodore Roosevelt, saying, “Don’t flinch, don’t foul, but hit the line hard.” Though intended for football, it was a motto that Nixon adopted as his own. He was far from the best player on the field, but he showed up to play every day and always gave it his full effort.

One really has to ask oneself how Socrates managed to maneuver himself into such conjugal misery, and this question can be posed in several variations. If Xantippe really was from the start the kind of woman the legend says she was, we would show very little understanding for our great philosopher because then it was his own carelessness that led him to choose precisely her and no other woman. Or is he supposed to have thought, ironic as he was, that a surly woman is just what a thinker needs? If, from the beginning, he recognized her "true nature" and put up with it, then this indicates deplorable marital behavior on his part because he thus unreasonably expected a women to spend her whole life with a man who obviously at best endured her but did not appreciate her. Conversely, if Xantippe had become as she is described only during her marriage to Socrates, then the philosopher would really come into a questionable light because then indisputably he himself must have caused his wife's vexation without having interested himself in it. No matter how the story is turned, Xantippe's moods fall back on Socrates. This is a genuine philosophical problem: How did the thinker and questioner manage not to solve the puzzle of Xantippe's bad temper? This great midwife of truth was obviously unable to let his wife's rage express itself or to help her find a language in which she would have been able to express the grounds and justifications for her behavior. The failure of a philosopher often consists not in false answers but in neglecting to pose the right questions —and in denying some experiences the right to become "problems." His experiences with Xantippe must have been of this kind—a misery that is not given the dignity of obtruding into the male problem-monopoly. Philosphers fail when they endure as a naturally given evil that for which they are to blame; indeed, their capacity for "wisely" enduring it is itself an intellectual scandal, a misuse of wisdom in favor of blindness. With Socrates, it seems, this misuse immediately avenged itself. When a thinker cannot refrain from equating humanity with masculinity, reality will strike back in the philosopher's marital hell. The stories about this thus have, I think, also a kynical meaning. They reveal the real reason for philosophicalclerical celibacy in our civilization. A definite dominating kind of idealism, philosophy, and grand theory becomes possible only when a certain "other kind" of experience is systematically avoided

I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in what way I can reward you. This ring--" He slipped an emerald snake ring from his finger and held it out upon the palm of his hand. "Your Majesty has something which I should value even more highly," said Holmes. "You have but to name it." "This photograph!" The King stared at him in amazement. "Irene's photograph!" he cried. "Certainly, if you wish it." "I thank your Majesty. Then there is no more to be done in the matter. I have the honour to wish you a very good-morning." He bowed, and, turning away without observing the hand which the King had stretched out to him, he set off in my company for his chambers. And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.

Correlations made by big data are likely to reinforce negative bias. Because big data often relies on historical data or at least the status quo, it can easily reproduce discrimination against disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities. The propensity models used in many algorithms can bake in a bias against someone who lived in the zip code of a low-income neighborhood at any point in his or her life. If an algorithm used by human resources companies queries your social graph and positively weighs candidates with the most existing connections to a workforce, it makes it more difficult to break in in the first place. In effect, these algorithms can hide bias behind a curtain of code. Big data is, by its nature, soulless and uncreative. It nudges us this way and that for reasons we are not meant to understand. It strips us of our privacy and puts our mistakes, secrets, and scandals on public display. It reinforces stereotypes and historical bias. And it is largely unregulated because we need it for economic growth and because efforts to try to regulate it have tended not to work; the technologies are too far-reaching and are not built to recognize the national boundaries of our world’s 196 sovereign nation-states. Yet would it be best to try to shut down these technologies entirely if we could? No. Big data simultaneously helps solve global challenges while creating an entirely new set of challenges. It’s our best chance at feeding 9 billion people, and it will help solve the problem of linguistic division that is so old its explanation dates back to the Old Testament and the Tower of Babel. Big data technologies will enable us to discover cancerous cells at 1 percent the size of what can be detected using today’s technologies, saving tens of millions of lives. The best approach to big data might be one put forward by the Obama campaign’s chief technology officer, Michael Slaby, who said, “There’s going to be a constant mix between your qualitative experience and your quantitative experience. And at times, they’re going to be at odds with each other, and at times they’re going to be in line. And I think it’s all about the blend. It’s kind of like you have a mixing board, and you have to turn one up sometimes, and turn down the other. And you never want to be just one or the other, because if it’s just one, then you lose some of the soul.” Slaby has made an impressive career out of developing big data tools, but even he recognizes that these tools work best when governed by human judgment. The choices we make about how we manage data will be as important as the decisions about managing land during the agricultural age and managing industry during the industrial age. We have a short window of time—just a few years, I think—before a set of norms set in that will be nearly impossible to reverse. Let’s hope humans accept the responsibility for making these decisions and don’t leave it to the machines.

I hope you do not think me too forward, but I noticed that you’ve danced with Don Villar twice in a row.” His normally ruddy face turned crimson. “People are already talking…and unless an engagement is to be announced—” “One will be.” She cut off his words and whispered, “Tonight.” She winked. “Please do not spoil the surprise.” His eyes widened and he tripped slightly on the next step. “Brilliant! That gives me great relief for your sake. And, I confess, a measure of dismay on my account.” His smile dimmed as his lips formed a rueful frown. “I had hoped to court you one day. I suppose I waited too long to work up the courage.” “Oh, Patrick.” She placed a hand on his sleeve. “I had no idea…” He shook his head. “Nor did I give you reason to. I have always been a bumbling fool at this sort of thing. Either way, I suppose it is for the best. I will always value our friendship, no matter what. And to the devil with what others say. I believe you would have made a damned fine physician. Mr. Wakley told me that you treated Villar’s arm, and I do not know a sawbones who could have performed such a miracle.” His

I read a poem today that reminded me of you.” He gave her another sideways glance, as if confessing something naughty. “Would you like to hear it?” Her knees quivered beneath her skirts. Perhaps he did feel something for her. Perhaps he is now going to declare himself! “Yes, I would.” “Your chaperone is watching us from the parapets. It would be better for me to recite it more privately.” With gentle force, he guided her behind a tall hedge. Lydia’s belly fluttered as Deveril took both her hands. His hair gleamed like an angel’s wing. Would he tell her he couldn’t let her go, that they didn’t have to go to London? That instead they could remain here…together? “She walks in beauty, like the night,” he whispered. “Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.” Vincent’s eyes were like a turbulent sea in a moonlit storm. He gazed at her as though she was something precious. Lydia sighed as his long fingers removed a pin from her hair. “One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress,” Her breath caught as he twirled a lock of her hair. “Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.” His hand crept up to caress her cheek, his intent gaze never wavering. “And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow,” His lips curved in a sensual smile as he concluded. “But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!” For an eternity, they stared as if peering into each other’s souls. His fingers slid past her cheek and threaded once more through her hair, sending the remaining pins scattering into the grass. “Lydia,” he whispered. Then his lips were on hers, warm, silken, teasing.

I read a poem today that reminded me of you.” He gave her another sideways glance, as if confessing something naughty. “Would you like to hear it?” Her knees quivered beneath her skirts. Perhaps he did feel something for her. Perhaps he is now going to declare himself! “Yes, I would.” “Your chaperone is watching us from the parapets. It would be better for me to recite it more privately.” With gentle force, he guided her behind a tall hedge. Lydia’s belly fluttered as Deveril took both her hands. His hair gleamed like an angel’s wing. Would he tell her he couldn’t let her go, that they didn’t have to go to London? That instead they could remain here…together? “She walks in beauty, like the night,” he whispered. “Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.” Vincent’s eyes were like a turbulent sea in a moonlit storm. He gazed at her as though she was something precious. Lydia sighed as his long fingers removed a pin from her hair. “One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress,” Her breath caught as he twirled a lock of her hair. “Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.” His hand crept up to caress her cheek, his intent gaze never wavering. “And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow,” His lips curved in a sensual smile as he concluded. “But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!” For an eternity, they stared as if peering into each other’s souls. His fingers slid past her cheek and threaded once more through her hair, sending the remaining pins scattering into the grass. “Lydia,” he whispered. Then his lips were on hers, warm, silken, teasing. Her limbs melted. Intoxicating heat unfurled low in her body. Lydia reached up to pull him closer, to demand more. Vincent pulled back before she could grasp him. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “And that is your most important lesson in courtship, Lydia. Never allow a man to get you off alone, especially if he desires to recite poetry, and particularly Lord Byron’s verses.” A strangled gasp caught in her throat at his duplicity. It had all been part of the game! “You…you…” He held up a hand. “Now slap me with your fan in retaliation for taking such liberties.” Reeling in outrage, she fumbled in the pockets of her cloak for the ineffectual weapon. Vincent shrugged, undaunted at her ire. “That is why you should keep your fan at the ready.” Seizing the bundle of cloth-covered sticks, she smacked him soundly on the arm, much harder than Miss Hobson had instructed. “You are lucky I did not have my gun,” she hissed. How could he? To

Why does she have to be so mercenary? I feel like a horse or a painting up for auction.” Liza sighed. “Lady Margaret just cares for your future. She merely wants the best for you.” Angelica snorted. “What future? She wants to sentence me to life in a cage more gilt than this one.” She leaped from the stool and paced the room like an angry feline. “That’s all marriage is for a woman. Hell, it’s all that life is for a woman. A prison! Well, I shall stand for this horrid slave-trade no longer! I shall—” “You shall what?” Liza inquired, immune to the unladylike outburst. “Never mind.

Westcliff turned to the black-haired man beside him. “Hunt, I would like to introduce Matthew Swift—the American I mentioned to you earlier. Swift, this is Mr. Simon Hunt.” They shook hands firmly. Hunt was five to ten years older than Matthew and looked as if he could be mean as hell in a fight. A bold, confident man who reputedly loved to skewer pretensions and upper-class affectations. “I’ve heard of your accomplishments with Consolidated Locomotive Works,” Matthew told Hunt. “There is a great deal of interest in New York regarding your merging of British craftsmanship with American manufacturing methods.” Hunt smiled sardonically. “Much as I would like to take all the credit, modesty compels me to reveal that Westcliff had something to do with it. He and his brother-in-law are my business partners.” “Obviously the combination is highly successful,” Matthew replied. Hunt turned to Westcliff. “He has a talent for flattery,” he remarked. “Can we hire him?” Westcliff’s mouth twitched with amusement. “I’m afraid my father-in-law would object. Mr. Swift’s talents are needed to built a factory and start a company office in Bristol.” Matthew decided to nudge the conversation in a different direction. “I’ve read of the recent movement in Parliament for nationalization of the British railroad industry,” he said to Westcliff. “I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter, my lord.” “Good God, don’t get him started on that,” Hunt said. The subject caused a scowl to appear on Westcliff’s brow. “The last thing the public needs is for government to take control of the industry. God save us from yet more interference from politicians. The government would run the railroads as inefficiently as they do everything else. And the monopoly would stifle the industry’s ability to compete, resulting in higher taxes, not to mention—” “Not to mention,” Hunt interrupted slyly, “the fact that Westcliff and I don’t want the government cutting into our future profits.” Westcliff gave him a stern glance. “I happen to have the public’s best interest in mind.” “How fortunate,” Hunt commented, “that in this case what is best for the public also happens to be best for you.” Matthew bit back a smile. Rolling his eyes, Westcliff told Matthew, “As you can see, Mr. Hunt overlooks no opportunity to mock me.” “I mock everyone,” Hunt said. “You just happen to be the most readily available target.

Blast,” Daisy complained. “Blast, blast…Lillian, I had just gotten to the best part!” “As we speak there are at least a half-dozen eligible men who are lawn-bowling outside,” her sister said crisply. “And playing games with them is far more productive than reading by yourself.” “I don’t know anything about bowls.” “Good. Ask them to teach you. If there’s one thing every man loves to do, it’s telling a woman how to do something.

At the conclusion of the vows, despite Mercedes’s previous stern admonitions that the groom was not to kiss the bride, as the custom was never followed by people in the best society…Matthew tugged Daisy up to him and crushed a hard kiss on her lips in full view of everyone. There was a gasp or two, and a ripple of friendly laughter through the crowd. Daisy glanced up into her husband’s sparkling eyes. “You’re being scandalous, Mr. Swift,” she whispered. “This is nothing,” Matthew replied in an undertone, his expression soft with love. “I’m saving my worst behavior for tonight.

In the end, Francie goes off to college, and I do not know if I must make of this a triumph. Is it a given, then, that all her dreams will come true? I can never go to college, I know. They censor the word out of our textbooks. Education, they say, leads to nothing good. This is because education—and college—is the first step out of Williamsburg, the first on the path to promiscuity that Zeidy always promised me was an endless loop of missteps that distanced a Jew so far from God as to put the soul into a spiritual coma. Yes, education could kill my soul, I know that, but where did Francie go, I wonder, after college, and did she ever come back? Can you ever really leave the place you come from? Isn’t it best to stay where you belong, rather than risk trying to insert yourself somewhere else and failing?

After Zeidy’s heavy footfalls fade down the stairs, and I watch from my second-floor bedroom window as my grandparents get into the taxi, I slide the book out from under the mattress and place it reverently on my desk. The pages are made of waxy, translucent paper, and they are each packed with text: the original words of the Talmud as well as the English translation, and the rabbinical discourse that fills up the bottom half of each page. I like the discussions best, records of the conversations the ancient rabbis held about each holy phrase in the Talmud. On the sixty-fifth page the rabbis are arguing about King David and his ill-gotten wife Bathsheba, a mysterious biblical tale about which I’ve always been curious. From the fragments mentioned, it appears that Bathsheba was already married when David laid his eyes upon her, but he was so attracted to her that he deliberately sent her husband, Uriah, to the front lines so that he would be killed in war, leaving Bathsheba free to remarry. Afterward, when David had finally taken poor Bathsheba as his lawful wife, he looked into her eyes and saw in the mirror of her pupils the face of his own sin and was repulsed. After that, David refused to see Bathsheba again, and she lived the rest of her life in the king’s harem, ignored and forgotten. I now see why I’m not allowed to read the Talmud. My teachers have always told me, “David had no sins. David was a saint. It is forbidden to cast aspersions on God’s beloved son and anointed leader.” Is this the same illustrious ancestor the Talmud is referring to? Not only did David cavort with his many wives, but he had unmarried female companions as well, I discover. They are called concubines. I whisper aloud this new word, con-cu-bine, and it doesn’t sound illicit, the way it should, it only makes me think of a tall, stately tree. The concubine tree. I picture beautiful women dangling from its branches. Con-cu-bine. Bathsheba wasn’t a concubine because David honored her by taking her as his wife, but the Talmud says she was the only woman David chose who wasn’t a virgin. I think of the beautiful woman on the olive oil bottle, the extra-virgin. The rabbis say that God only intended virgins for David and that his holiness would have been defiled had he stayed with Bathsheba, who had already been married. King David is the yardstick, they say, against whom we are all measured in heaven. Really, how bad can my small stash of English books be, next to concubines? I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.

You raise your child the best you can. You release the child into the world, like launching a toy sailboat in a pond. Except the world is not a placid pond. More often, it is a raging sea, and life a perfect storm of the unexpected crashing head-on into the unbearable. There is no way to prepare the child for such a world because your own personal crises, traumas and failures are just that, your own. Your child, as you will belatedly learn, is not you.

In reply to the question: 'Why were so many murders, scandals, and outrages committed?' he replied in ardent haste that it was to promote 'the systematic destruction of society and all its principles; to demoralize everyone and make hodge-podge of everything, and then, when society was on the point of collapse- sick, depressed, cynical, and sceptical, but still with a perpetual desire for some kind of guiding principle and for self-preservation- suddenly to gain control of it, raising the banner of rebellion and relying on a whole network of groups of five, which meanwhile were actively recruiting new members, discovering weak spots in the system to be attacked, and determining the best ways to proceed- Lyamshim's confession to authorities

In short, Latin American and Caribbean writers have to admit, hands on hearts, that reality is a better writer than we are. Our destiny, maybe our glory, is to try to imitate it with humility, and as best we can.

I have decided to enter the arena, sacrifice my well being, and bravely do what is best for our country. I have decided to enter politics.” Peter looked around the room, expecting cheers and receiving instead a series of blank expressions, including from Cynthia. Jazmine cleared her throat, and was first to break the silence. “I think everyone is as astounded as I am. You see, Peter, we don’t really understand why you say that this will directly affect us.” “Isn’t it obvious?” “Actually, no. Would you care to explain?” asked a baffled Victoria. Peter never ceased to astound her, and it never was in a good way. “Very well. You see, it is quite simple. Since you are my girlfriend’s family, and since maybe someday Cynthia will become more than just my girlfriend, I need to know right now if there are any family secrets, scandals, or other information that I should be aware of right away so as to determine the best way to prevent the scandal from emerging. Any secret children? Secret lovers? Secret murder? Any link with a dictatorship?

ALL TOOLS OF LIFE............I FOUND IN GOOD BOOKS. PARADISE TOO, HAS A SMALL LIBRARY BY THE LAKE. I see many nowadays, on TV shows..a library behind. A book is not furniture but is antique for the scholar. The class of books you read- showcase your brain Not to Glorify books- but sure they have value All that craziness about books..scares some. Be an intelligent reader. Not a book worm or addict. A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.”– Walter Mosley “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.”– Walt Disney “No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”– Mary Wortley Montagu Books are the best pets. Easy to manage too. .You can never pay and thank enough for a book. Books are good at multiple love affairs..they are the most reliable friends. 'The bricks of a book are small, they are called words '- Dr. Kamal Murdia "The Reader I believe, Robs an Author." - Dr. Kamal Murdia If 'his' words don't create a beautiful scandal, he is useless as an author - Dr. Kamal Murdia The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Forgive me, Lady Rose,” Moira apologized, “but I feel you have been a victim in all this. My son took grievous advantage of you.” Rose sat down, resting her gloved hands in her lap. “Lady Ashton, your son helped me learn to walk again. We became very close, and I do love him very much. Whether he is the earl or not.” Moira’s face tightened, and she turned back to Iris. “Your daughter deserves so much more than this. I am so sorry for the scandal. Mrs. Everett was responsible for locking them in together, so I’ve learned. But nonetheless, I must caution both of you. Iain let you believe he was someone he was not. He has no inheritance to offer, nothing at all. It would be best if you walked away before making a terrible mistake.” “Love is never a mistake,” Lady Penford said softly. “And I support whatever decision my daughters want. Just as you should support your son.” “I cannot think of him as my son,” Lady Ashton insisted. “He never should have been born.” The hatred in her voice startled Rose, and she reached out for her mother’s hand. But Lady Penford faced the matron with serenity. “Every child is a blessing. And if I had a man like Iain Donovan as my son, I would count myself fortunate indeed.

Don’t you know when to give up?” she snapped. Caleb came up behind her, turned her into his arms, and held her close. “When was the last time you gave up on something you wanted, Lily?” “I never give up. It’s cowardly.” He smiled, his hands resting lightly on the sides of her waist. “Persistence is an admirable quality. Perhaps you’ve noticed that I have it, too.” Lily was desperate for a barrier to throw between them; she was beginning to have thoughts of lying on Mrs. Tibbet’s tablecloth in total surrender. “I couldn’t love a man who keeps a mistress,” she threw out. He withdrew slightly. “What?” “Sandra told me. She said the woman lives in Tylerville.” Caleb looked taken aback, but only for a moment. “She does,” he answered. “But when we parted company, she was talking about going back to San Francisco. She has a prospective husband there.” Lily’s eyes widened. “You parted company?” “Of course,” Caleb replied. “Did you think I was going to go on visiting Bianca while I was seeing you?” “You weren’t faithful to Sandra,” Lily pointed out. “I also wasn’t sleeping with her.” Lily lowered her eyes. “I don’t understand.” Caleb lifted her chin. “Sandra is my little sister’s best friend,” he said gently. “She’s family to the Tibbets. I married her because she was in trouble. Is it getting any clearer?” “You’re really a very honorable man,” Lily allowed with a sigh. Caleb arched an eyebrow. “That’s bad?” “It makes it much harder to resist you.” “Resisting me will prove impossible, Lily.” “You are the most presumptuous—” He turned his head to glance back at the table. “You’d just fit between the biscuits and the butter dish,” he commented idly. Lily resisted an urge to smash his instep with her foot. He’d gotten his way. She was going to agree to let him drive her back to Tylerville. And the reason was simple: If they stayed here, she might end up doing something scandalous. If they were in a moving buggy, there would be less chance of that.

He reached out to cup her elbow. Best to move slowly, to communicate that she could refuse him. The choice was hers. Her luminous eyes remained fixed on his. Her lips parted as he trailed his hand from the point of her elbow to her wrist. God. Her bare skin, that small, vulnerable patch exposed between cuff and glove, was indescribably soft. His thumb rubbed her pulse once, twice. A small noise came from her, the loosening of her breath, a sound as meaningful as the shushing of silk as a dress fell to the floor. This was how it began: how a woman came undone.