Scope Of The Day Quotes

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When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. a
William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
Ronald Reagan
What is talkativeness? It is the result of doing away with the vital distinction between talking and keeping silent. Only some one who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk--and act essentially. Silence is the essence of inwardness, of the inner life. Mere gossip anticipates real talk, and to express what is still in thought weakens action by forestalling it. But some one who can really talk, because he knows how to remain silent, will not talk about a variety of things but about one thing only, and he will know when to talk and when to remain silent. Where mere scope is concerned, talkativeness wins the day, it jabbers on incessantly about everything and nothing...In a passionate age great events (for they correspond to each other) give people something to talk about. And when the event is over, and silence follows, there is still something to remember and to think about while one remains silent. But talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness.
Søren Kierkegaard (The Present Age)
Perceptions which are at present insensible may grow some day: nothing is useless, and eternity provides great scope for change.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding)
As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know that is happening we are fort, fifty, sixty... Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. My picture of my father on that evening in 1976 is, in other words, twofold: on the one hand I see him as I saw him at that time, through the eyes of an eight-year-old: unpredictable and frightening; on the other hand, I see him as a peer through whose life time is blowing and unremittingly sweeping large chunks of meaning along with it.
Karl Ove Knausgård (Min kamp 1 (Min kamp, #1))
Earth was such a little, vulnerable thing in the grand scope of the universe.
L.R. Lam (Goldilocks)
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
William Shakespeare
Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.
H.L. Mencken
Saint Bartleby's School for Young Gentlemen Annual Report Student: Artemis Fowl II Year: First Fees: Paid Tutor: Dr Po Language Arts As far as I can tell, Artemis has made absolutely no progress since the beginning of the year. This is because his abilities are beyond the scope of my experience. He memorizes and understands Shakespeare after a single reading. He finds mistakes in every exercise I administer, and has taken to chuckling gently when I attempt to explain some of the more complex texts. Next year I intend to grant his request and give him a library pass during my class. Mathematics Artemis is an infuriating boy. One day he answers all my questions correctly, and the next every answer is wrong. He calls this an example of the chaos theory, and says that he is only trying to prepare me for the real world. He says the notion of infinity is ridiculous. Frankly, I am not trained to deal with a boy like Artemis. Most of my pupils have trouble counting without the aid of their fingers. I am sorry to say, there is nothing I can teach Artemis about mathematics, but someone should teach him some manners. Social Studies Artemis distrusts all history texts, because he says history was written by the victors. He prefers living history, where survivors of certain events can actually be interviewed. Obviously this makes studying the Middle Ages somewhat difficult. Artemis has asked for permission to build a time machine next year during double periods so that the entire class may view Medieval Ireland for ourselves. I have granted his wish and would not be at all surprised if he succeeded in his goal. Science Artemis does not see himself as a student, rather as a foil for the theories of science. He insists that the periodic table is a few elements short and that the theory of relativity is all very well on paper but would not hold up in the real world, because space will disintegrate before lime. I made the mistake of arguing once, and young Artemis reduced me to near tears in seconds. Artemis has asked for permission to conduct failure analysis tests on the school next term. I must grant his request, as I fear there is nothing he can learn from me. Social & Personal Development Artemis is quite perceptive and extremely intellectual. He can answer the questions on any psychological profile perfectly, but this is only because he knows the perfect answer. I fear that Artemis feels that the other boys are too childish. He refuses to socialize, preferring to work on his various projects during free periods. The more he works alone, the more isolated he becomes, and if he does not change his habits soon, he may isolate himself completely from anyone wishing to be his friend, and, ultimately, his family. Must try harder.
Eoin Colfer
It was a sunny day, and Einstein merrily played with the telescope’s dials and instruments. Elsa came along as well, and it was explained to her that the equipment was used to determine the scope and shape of the universe. She reportedly replied, “Well, my husband does that on the back of an old envelope.
Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
His heart is a desert island.... The whole scope, the whole energy of his mind surround and protect him; his depths isolate him and guard him against the truth. He flatters himself that he is entirely alone there.... Patience, dear lady. Perhaps, one day, he will discover some footprint on the sand.... What holy and happy terror, what salutary fright, once he recognizes in that pure sign of grace that his island is mysteriously inhabited!...
Paul Valéry (An Anthology)
But Tuesday teaches me that part of living well in ordinary time is letting this day be good. Letting this day be a gift. Letting this day be filled with plenty. And if it all goes wrong and my work turns to dust? This is my kind reminder that outcomes are beyond the scope of my job description.
Emily P. Freeman (Simply Tuesday: Small-Moment Living in a Fast-Moving World)
Not only did we fail to imagine what the web would become, we still don’t see it today. We are oblivious to the miracle it has blossomed into. Twenty years after its birth the immense scope of the web is hard to fathom. The total number of web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request, exceeds 60 trillion. That’s almost 10,000 pages per person alive. And this entire cornucopia has been created in less than 8,000 days.
Kevin Kelly (The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future)
Like a battalion of marines at roll call, her neck hairs marshaled to five-alarm status. She stumbled back to her desk, jerked open the botton drawer, retrieved a pair of Nighthawk binoculars, fixed the scopes on him, and fiddled with the focus. Gotcha. Hair the colour of coal. Chocolate brown eyes. A five-o'clock shadow ringing his craggy jawline. Handsome as the day was long... He sauntered towards her, oozing charisma from every pore. Charlee forgot to breathe. And then he committed the gravest sin of all, knocking her world helter-skelter. The scoundrel smiled.
Lori Wilde
Time had lost its multidimensional scope. There was only the present for Robert Neville; a present based on dayto-day survival, marked by neither heights of joy nor depths of despair. I am predominantly vegetable, he often thought to himself. That was the way he wanted it
Richard Matheson (I Am Legend)
I. My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the workings of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. II. What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare. III. If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed, neither pride Now hope rekindling at the end descried, So much as gladness that some end might be. IV. For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out through years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope. V. As when a sick man very near to death Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bit the other go, draw breath Freelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saith And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;') VI. When some discuss if near the other graves be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves And still the man hears all, and only craves He may not shame such tender love and stay. VII. Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among 'The Band' to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now - should I be fit? VIII. So, quiet as despair I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. IX. For mark! No sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round; Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on, naught else remained to do. X. So on I went. I think I never saw Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind with none to awe, You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove. XI. No! penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. 'See Or shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly, It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this place Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.
Robert Browning
We talk about “awe and wonder,” but those are two different words. I am in awe of the universe: its scope, its complexity, its depth, its meticulous precision. But my primary feeling is wonder. Awe has connotations of reverence: “this fills me with awe and I am not worthy.” Wonder has connotations of curiosity: “this fills me with wonder and I am going to figure it out.” I will take wonder over awe every day.
Sean Carroll (The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself)
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
Clarence Darrow (The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow (Modern Library Classics))
Here the earth, as if to prove its immensity, empties itself. Gertrude Stein said: 'In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.' The uncluttered stretches of the American West and the deserted miles of roads force a lone traveler to pay attention to them by leaving him isolated in them. This squander of land substitutes a sense of self with a sense of place by giving him days of himself until, tiring of his own small compass, he looks for relief to the bigness outside -- a grandness that demands attention not just for its scope, but for its age, its diversity, its continual change. The isolating immensity reveals what lies covered in places noisier, busier, more filled up. For me, what I saw revealed was this (only this): a man nearly desperate because his significance had come to lie within his own narrow ambit.
William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways)
You have a limited amount of time to get things done during the course of a given day. It follows that you should limit the scope of your to-do list to accommodate this constraint. If you only have four hours at your disposal, make sure the items on your to-do list can be completed within that time frame. Otherwise, you’ll set yourself up for failure.
Damon Zahariades (To-Do List Formula: A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work!)
Let not my love be called idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone, Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
William Shakespeare
My favorite words in the world are these: “what” and “if” in conjunction. They question curiosities in simple form and function. “What” is a query of broadest scope. “If" is wonder that fuels all hope. Together they lasso the mind like rope, and spur the wildest deductions!
Richelle E. Goodrich (Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year)
Conjugal love, like romantic love, wants to be heroic; but it does not limit arbitrarily the scope of this heroism. In its desire to relate itself existentially to heroism, it will find it also in the modest deeds of everyday life, and will transform the tiresome routine of daily duties into golden threads binding oneself closer and closer to the beloved. There is in conjugal love a note of truth which is lacking in romantic love. It is a love that has been tested in the furnace of everyday trials and difficulties and had come out victoriously [...] To be kind and loveable for a moment is no great feat. But to be loving day after day in the most varied and trying circumstances can be achieved only by a man who truly loves.
Alice von Hildebrand
O thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhile And teach me how to curse mine enemies! QUEEN MARGARET. Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is. Bett'ring thy loss makes the bad-causer worse; Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. QUEEN ELIZABETH. My words are dull; O, quicken them with thine! QUEEN MARGARET. Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine. DUCHESS. Why should calamity be fun of words? QUEEN ELIZABETH. Windy attorneys to their client woes, Airy succeeders of intestate joys, Poor breathing orators of miseries, Let them have scope; though what they will impart Help nothing else, yet do they case the heart. DUCHESS. If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me, And in the breath of bitter words let's smother My damned son that thy two sweet sons smother'd. The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims.
William Shakespeare (Richard III)
GRAY-EYED COLE SAT in his bedroom window, looking out over the road, a scoped Ruger 10/22 in his hands. Squirrel rifle. Below him, a quilt hung on the wire clothesline, airing out. Before the end of the day, the quilt would smell like early-summer fields, with a little gravel dust mixed in. A wonderful smell, a smell like home.
John Sandford (Extreme Prey (Lucas Davenport, #26))
What’s 30 or 60 or 90 days in the scope of your life?’ Experimenting with a potentially healthier approach can’t hurt, and it might just change your life!
Mark Sisson (Primal Endurance: Escape chronic cardio and carbohydrate dependency and become a fat burning beast!)
Kathrine had seldom had that useful thing, a 'day off'. 'But in a way, being tied physically gives you lots of scope mentally. You're always free to think.
Agatha Christie (The Mystery of the Blue Train (Hercule Poirot, #6))
One day Turtle had savaged an innocent bowl of batter into something that almost (but not quite) resembled muffins. Her mother, who had a great deal to bear on other fronts which do not enter the scope of this story, except to say that Turtle had three older brothers, each more reprehensible than the last, opened the back door and told Turtle to take herself and her regrettable muffins to her grandmother, and if she had to stay the night, so much the better, as there was going to be a great deal of screaming presently, and Turtle was a bit young to be hearing all the words that Turtle’s mother planned to be using. 
T. Kingfisher (Toad Words and Other Stories)
For two goddamn years, I’d worked alongside this woman and I never thought I would see the day when she had the audacity to turn in a two weeks’ notice. She was now my highest paid employee by far and her recent benefits were so over the top and beyond the scope of what any Fortune 500 CEO offered, that George made me submit to a quarterly psychiatric exam to make sure I knew “what the hell she was being offered access to.
Whitney G. (Two Weeks Notice)
Even then, even on that day, I knew the word friend was inadequate in its meaning and scope to explain how I felt, or what she was to me, but I had no language to explain it to myself. No context. It was another thing that was unmentionable.
Kelly Barnhill (When Women Were Dragons)
Or on retiring to Prunesquallors' he might take down one of the Doctor's many books and read, for these days a passion to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a full pack of cards to play from. He imagined himself occasions when the conversation of one from who he foresaw advancement might turn to astronomy, metaphysics, history, chemistry, or literature, and he realized that to be able to drop into the argument a lucid and exact thought, an opinion based on what might *appear* to be a life-time study, would instantaneously gain more for him than waiting until the conversation turned upon what lay within his scope of experience.
Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1))
The most common mistake you'll make is forgetting to keep your own scorecard. Very little at work reinforces your ability to do this, so you will have to be vigilant. When evaluators give you an assessment, they are just guessing at who you are; they certainly are not the ones who know your potential. They can rate you and influence you, but they don't get to define you. That's your most honorable assignment: to define, every day through the way you deliver your work, the scope and nature of your inherent abilities.
Charlotte Beers (I'd Rather Be in Charge: A Legendary Business Leader's Roadmap for Achieving Pride, Power, and Joy at Work)
The towns-people had one comprehensive explanation of all these singularities. Owen Warland had gone mad! How universally efficacious--how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured sensibility of narrowness and dulness--is this easy method of accounting for whatever lies beyond the world's most ordinary scope! From St. Paul's days down to our poor little Artist of the Beautiful, the same talisman had been applied to the elucidation of all mysteries in the words or deeds of men who spoke or acted too wisely or too well.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Artist of the Beautiful)
Demon's Roost is a paean to pleasure, a twenty-four-hour-a-day bacchanalia that makes Las Vegas look like a kindergarten playground. It's an adults-only amusement park which contains such a dazzling scope and variety of decadence and perversity that it might give Caligula himself pause.
Tim Waggoner (The Nekropolis Archives)
If you study Islam with understanding, you’ll realize its scope—how open it is. It is not a faith subscribing to narrow-mindedness and meanness; there’s no place for these in Islam. It begins with I and moves on to we—from the individual to the community. Islam does not expect you to sit on a prayer mat all day, a cap on your head and a rosary in your hands, doing nothing but praying and preaching. In fact, it asks you to make your life an example of fair dealing, devotion, honesty and diligence. It asks for sincerity and steadfastness. A good Muslim convinces others not by his words but his deeds.
Umera Ahmed (Pir-E-Kamil: The Perfect Mentor)
There may be wrong actions in the sense of actions contrary to the rules of human communication. But the way you feel towards other people: loving, hating, et cetera, et cetera; there aren’t any wrong feelings. And so, to try and force one’s feelings to be other than what they are is absurd. And furthermore: dishonest. But you see: the idea that there are no wrong feelings is an immensely threatening one to people who are afraid to feel. This is one of the peculiar problems of our culture: we are terrified of our feelings. We think that if we give them any scope and if we don’t immediately beat them down, they will lead us down into all kinds of chaotic and destructive actions. But if, for a change, we would allow our feelings and look upon their comings and goings as something as beautiful and necessary as changes in the weather, the going of night and day and the four seasons, we would be at peace with ourselves.
Alan W. Watts
Rather than go on suffering, he had learned to stultify himself to introspection. Time had lost its multidimensional scope. There was only the present for Robert Neville; a present based on day-to-day survival marked by neither heights of joy nor depths of despair. I am predominantly vegetable, he often thought to himself. That was the way he wanted it.
Richard Matheson (I Am Legend)
In scoping out the party crowd, does one face catch your eye? The Tierra del Fuegans have an expression, mamihlapinatapei, which is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's mist succinct word. It refers to the act of 'looking into each other's eyes, each hoping that the other will initiate what both want to do but neither chooses to commence.
Jennifer Ackerman (Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body)
In big companies, there's always going to be more politics and less scope for individual decisions. But seeing what startups are really like will at least show other organizations what to aim for. The time may soon be coming when instead of startups trying to seem more corporate, corporations will try to seem more like startups. That would be a good thing.
Jessica Livingston (Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days)
Whenever I talk to people who have had life-threatening experiences, whether from an illness, an accident, or some other challenge, without fail they talk about how they have come to appreciate each and every day more than ever before. They don’t take a minute for granted. They see every day as a gift from God. We have to realize that our lives could be gone in a moment. There are no guarantees that we will be here at this time next year. Learn to live each day to the fullest. Don’t complain. Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Be grateful for the opportunity to experience each day. Things may not be perfect. You may have some aches and pains. You may have some adversity. But in the big scope of things your life could be a whole lot worse. And really, you need to live every day like it could be your last.
Joel Osteen (I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your Life)
Another core difference that Michael S. W. Lee found between anti-consumers and consumers is a wider 'scope of concern,' or regard for issues bigger than themselves and their personal needs. Anti-consumers are more likely to engage with issues such as climate change, species extinction, racial injustice, and poverty-matters that can be disturbing, depressing, or even frightening. Since engagement with such topics is congruent with their values, however, it makes life meaningful-but perhaps not cheerful.
J.B. MacKinnon (The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves)
In this case and at this moment the ability to “let go” is of decisive importance. But since everything passes, the moment may come when the relinquished ego must be reinstated in its functions. Letting go gives the unconscious the opportunity it has been waiting for. But since it consists of opposites—day and night, bright and dark, positive and negative—and is good and evil and therefore ambivalent, the moment will infallibly come when the individual, like the exemplary Job, must hold fast so as not to be thrown catastrophically off balance—when the wave rebounds. The holding fast can be achieved only by a conscious will, i.e., by the ego. That is the great and irreplaceable significance of the ego, but one which, as we see here, is nonetheless relative. Relative, too, is the gain won by integrating the unconscious. We add to ourselves a bright and a dark, and more light means more night.88 The urge of consciousness towards wider horizons, however, cannot be stopped; they must needs extend the scope of the personality, if they are not to shatter it.
C.G. Jung (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works, Vol 9i))
Но, прослышав дня через два, что твердыня добродетели уже взята, философ начал давать больше простора своим желаниям: он не принадлежал к числу тех привередливых людей, которые не прикасаются к лакомству, потому что другой уже отведал его." "История Тома Джонса, найденыша" "But when the philosopher heard, a day or two afterwards, that the fortress of virtue had already been subdued, he began to give a large scope to his desires. His appetite was not of that squeamish kind which cannot feed on a dainty because another hath tasted it.
Henry Fielding
Yet in Fawcett’s day the Society was helping to engineer one of the most incredible feats of humankind: the mapping of the world. Perhaps no deed, not the building of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Panama Canal, rivals its scope or human toll. The endeavor, from the time the ancient Greeks laid out the main principles of sophisticated cartography, took hundreds of years, cost millions of dollars, and claimed thousands of lives, and, when it was all but over, the achievement was so overwhelming that few could recall what the world looked like before, or how the feat had been accomplished.
David Grann (The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon)
Onomasticians and toponymists have a field day with this book. Of particular interest to language fiends, and to this translator, is Zamyatin’s relationship to the sounds of words. He told the artist Yuri Annenkov of the qualities he ascribes to certain sounds and letters. L is pale, cold, light blue, liquid, light. R is loud, bright, red, hot, fast. N is tender, snow, sky, night. D or T is stifling, grave, foggy, obscuring, stagnant. M is kind, soft, motherly, sea-like. A is wide, distant, ocean, misty mirage, breadth of scope. O is high, deep, sea-like, bosom. I is close, low, pressing.
Yevgeny Zamyatin (We)
And while [we] do have possibilities that are vast and magnificent and almost infinite in scope, it's important to remember that our choice-rich lives have the potential to breed their own brand of trouble. We are susceptible to emotional uncertainties and neuroses that are probably not very common among the Hmong, but that run rampant these days among my contemporaries in, say, Baltimore. The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice...Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision. By choosing Door Number Three, we fear we have killed off a different -- but equally critical piece of our soul that could only have been made manifest by walking through Door Number One or Door Number Two. ...Two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives. Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order. In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers - always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead. Compulsive comparing, of course, only leads to debilitating causes of "life envy": the certainty that somebody else is much luckier than you, and that if only you had her body, her husband, her children, her job, everything would be easy and wonderful and happy. All these choices and all this longing can create a weird kind of haunting in our lives - as though the ghosts of all our other, unchosen, possibilities linger forever in a shadow world around us, continuously asking, "Are you certain this is what you really wanted?" And nowhere does that question risk haunting us more than in our marriages, precisely because the emotional stakes of that most intensely personal choice have become so huge.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
Wild animals enjoying one another and taking pleasure in their world is so immediate and so real, yet this reality is utterly absent from textbooks and academic papers about animals and ecology. There is a truth revealed here, absurd in its simplicity. This insight is not that science is wrong or bad. On the contrary: science, done well, deepens our intimacy with the world. But there is a danger in an exclusively scientific way of thinking. The forest is turned into a diagram; animals become mere mechanisms; nature's workings become clever graphs. Today's conviviality of squirrels seems a refutation of such narrowness. Nature is not a machine. These animals feel. They are alive; they are our cousins, with the shared experience kinship implies. And they appear to enjoy the sun, a phenomenon that occurs nowhere in the curriculum of modern biology. Sadly, modern science is too often unable or unwilling to visualize or feel what others experience. Certainly science's "objective" gambit can be helpful in understanding parts of nature and in freeing us from some cultural preconceptions. Our modern scientific taste for dispassion when analyzing animal behaviour formed in reaction to the Victorian naturalists and their predecessors who saw all nature as an allegory confirming their cultural values. But a gambit is just an opening move, not a coherent vision of the whole game. Science's objectivity sheds some assumptions but takes on others that, dressed up in academic rigor, can produce hubris and callousness about the world. The danger comes when we confuse the limited scope of our scientific methods with the true scope of the world. It may be useful or expedient to describe nature as a flow diagram or an animal as a machine, but such utility should not be confused with a confirmation that our limited assumptions reflect the shape of the world. Not coincidentally, the hubris of narrowly applied science serves the needs of the industrial economy. Machines are bought, sold, and discarded; joyful cousins are not. Two days ago, on Christmas Eve, the U.S. Forest Service opened to commercial logging three hundred thousand acres of old growth in the Tongass National Forest, more than a billion square-meter mandalas. Arrows moved on a flowchart, graphs of quantified timber shifted. Modern forest science integrated seamlessly with global commodity markets—language and values needed no translation. Scientific models and metaphors of machines are helpful but limited. They cannot tell us all that we need to know. What lies beyond the theories we impose on nature? This year I have tried to put down scientific tools and to listen: to come to nature without a hypothesis, without a scheme for data extraction, without a lesson plan to convey answers to students, without machines or probes. I have glimpsed how rich science is but simultaneously how limited in scope and in spirit. It is unfortunate that the practice of listening generally has no place in the formal training of scientists. In this absence science needlessly fails. We are poorer for this, and possibly more hurtful. What Christmas Eve gifts might a listening culture give its forests? What was the insight that brushed past me as the squirrels basked? It was not to turn away from science. My experience of animals is richer for knowing their stories, and science is a powerful way to deepen this understanding. Rather, I realized that all stories are partly wrapped in fiction—the fiction of simplifying assumptions, of cultural myopia and of storytellers' pride. I learned to revel in the stories but not to mistake them for the bright, ineffable nature of the world.
David George Haskell (The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature)
There are a few other things. Weesee, when she used that word, Loup-garou, was right, at least in a sense. The word means werewolf.' Whitaker protested with a gasp of astonishment. 'They don't exist,' he said sharply, jolted by a memory of old movies. The doctor replied quickly: 'No, of course not. Not that way, not like some monster, a vampire or some such' 'What's the matter with him?' The doctor spoke softly, unwilling to stop until he had talked out the whole scope of the problem. 'It is a type of encephalitis. Uncommon, but there, as solidly classified in medical literature as measles. Late effects of acute infectious encephalitis, lycanthropy, to be exact. Once it was called a form of monomania. Morbus lupinus is another name.' 'You will have to hunt him down. Then he will have to be kept in a cell, for a long time, under strong drugs, probably until he dies.' De Glew touched his throat, cleared it slightly. 'The alternative is that you hunt him down and kill him. He will kill, Aaron.' 'Won't it pass?' asked Whitaker incredulously. 'I don't think so, not permanently. And pass for how long? Suppose he is only mad one day out of four.' The doctor paused. 'Or when the moon is full. Or when he sees it full in his mind's eye.
Leslie H. Whitten Jr. (Moon of the Wolf)
He leaned back against the brick step, puffing out slow clouds of smoke. Far out across that field he knew there was still a depression in the ground where he had buried Virginia, where she had unburied herself. But knowing it brought no glimmer of reflective sorrow to his eyes. Rather than go on suffering, he had learned to stultify himself to introspection. Time had lost its multidimensional scope. There was only the present for Robert Neville; a present based on day-to-day survival marked by neither heights of joy nor depths of despair. I am predominantly vegetable, he often thought to himself. That was the way he wanted it.
Richard Matheson (I Am Legend)
The famous extensions of this famous section were as follows: The scope of “agitation containing an appeal” was enlarged to include a face-to-face conversation between friends or even between husband and wife, or a private letter. The word “appeal” could mean personal advice. And we say “could mean” because, in fact, it did. “Subverting and weakening” the government could include any idea which did not coincide with or rise to the level of intensity of the ideas expressed in the newspaper on any particular day. After all, anything which does not strengthen must weaken: Indeed, anything which does not completely fit in, coincide, subverts!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation)
Your view, no matter how breathtaking and beautiful or how grim and dismal, is not the full scope of reality. Whatever is seen—all that can be measured or documented or quantified with the five physical senses or through the lens of your current emotional state—is not all that is meant to be seen. The physical cannot fully grasp the comprehensiveness of the spiritual. God’s work is behind the scenes, beyond all the obvious readouts. If we limit the scope for our hopefulness to what’s immediately visible, we’ll get an inaccurate reading on any scenario we’re seeking to evaluate. Believers must live by faith, by believing what they cannot yet see.
Priscilla Shirer (Awaken: 90 Days with the God Who Speaks)
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes   I all alone beweep my outcast state,   And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,   And look upon myself, and curse my fate,   Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,   Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,   Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,   With what I most enjoy contented least;   Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,   Haply I think on thee,— and then my state,   Like to the lark at break of day arising   From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;     For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings     That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
The mathematician is only too willing to admit that he is dealing exclusively with acts of the mind. To be sure, he is aware that the ingenious artifices which form his stock in trade had their genesis in the sense impressions which he identifies with crude reality, and he is not surprised to find that at times these artifices fit quite neatly the reality in which they were born. But this neatness the mathematician refuses to recognize as a criterion of his achievement: the value of the beings which spring from his creative imagination shall not be measured by the scope of their application to physical reality. No! Mathematical achievement shall be measured by standards which are peculiar to mathematics. These standards are independent of the crude reality of our senses. They are: freedom from logical contradictions, the generality of the laws governing the created form, the kinship which exists between this new form and those that have preceded it. The mathematician may be compared to a designer of garments, who is utterly oblivious of the creatures whom his garments may fit. To be sure, his art originated in the necessity for clothing such creatures, but this was long ago; to this day a shape will occasionally appear which will fit into the garment as if the garment had been made for it. Then there is no end of surprise and of delight!
Tobias Dantzig (Number: The Language of Science)
Shakespeare’s twenty-ninth sonnet. Do you know it? “‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Sylvain Reynard (Gabriel's Redemption (Gabriel's Inferno, #3))
The scope was vast: Liquidators’ decontamination shifts ranged from a few minutes up to 10 hours a day, depending on exposure levels. First, they built one large and several small dams along river banks near the plant, to prevent rainfall from gathering up the radioactive dust and debris and washing it into the country’s most vital source of water.216 This gave them time to collect, remove and bury the same material that had been blown across the surrounding area. This included burying the Red Forest, which could not be burned because it would spread contaminated particles. Efforts to decontaminate the forest had failed because wind and rain would continually re-distribute radioactivity.217
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
the success of physical science in the last five hundred years is due to the fact that Galileo narrowed its scope of inquiry. Just as my head of department said to me, “Don’t bother for now with administration,” so Galileo said to physical scientists, “Don’t bother for the moment with the sensory qualities.” The argument from “Physical science has been extremely successful” to “Physical science will one day explain the sensory qualities of consciousness” is not supported by the history of science. Let me repeat for the sake of clarity: I’m not saying that this proves that physical science cannot explain consciousness. But it does undermine arguments that try to show that it inevitably will.
Philip Goff (Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness)
Yet the scene around me had its influence, and a guilty feeling possessed me as I realized that of all present in that place of peace and clean content, I was the only profane thing, an ogre lurking to destroy. The half-grown ferns and evergreen sedge grasses through which the early breeze whispered, would, if I had my way, soon be smeared with the blood of some animal, who was viewing, perhaps with feelings akin to my own, the dawning of another day; to be is last. Strange thoughts, maybe, coming from a trapper, one whose trade is to kill;but be it known to you that he who lives much alone within the portals of the temple of Nature learns to think, and deeply, of things which seldom come within the scope of ordinary life. Much Killing brings ine time, no longer triumph, but a revulsion of feeling.
Grey Owl
Facebook’s own North American marketing director, Michelle Klein, who told an audience in 2016 that while the average adult checks his or her phone 30 times a day, the average millennial, she enthusiastically reported, checks more than 157 times daily. Generation Z, we now know, exceeds this pace. Klein described Facebook’s engineering feat: “a sensory experience of communication that helps us connect to others, without having to look away,” noting with satisfaction that this condition is a boon to marketers. She underscored the design characteristics that produce this mesmerizing effect: design is narrative, engrossing, immediate, expressive, immersive, adaptive, and dynamic.11 If you are over the age of thirty, you know that Klein is not describing your adolescence, or that of your parents, and certainly not that of your grandparents. Adolescence and emerging adulthood in the hive are a human first, meticulously crafted by the science of behavioral engineering; institutionalized in the vast and complex architectures of computer-mediated means of behavior modification; overseen by Big Other; directed toward economies of scale, scope, and action in the capture of behavioral surplus; and funded by the surveillance capital that accrues from unprecedented concentrations of knowledge and power. Our children endeavor to come of age in a hive that is owned and operated by the applied utopianists of surveillance capitalism and is continuously monitored and shaped by the gathering force of instrumentarian power. Is this the life that we want for the most open, pliable, eager, self-conscious, and promising members of our society?
Shoshana Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism)
As your prospective of the world increases, not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules or atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large such as cloud formations, river deltas, cloud formations, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed
Karl Ove Knausgård (Min kamp 1 (Min kamp, #1))
The same thing, notes Brynjolfsson, happened 120 years ago, in the Second Industrial Revolution, when electrification—the supernova of its day—was introduced. Old factories did not just have to be electrified to achieve the productivity boosts; they had to be redesigned, along with all business processes. It took thirty years for one generation of managers and workers to retire and for a new generation to emerge to get the full productivity benefits of that new power source. A December 2015 study by the McKinsey Global Institute on American industry found a “considerable gap between the most digitized sectors and the rest of the economy over time and [found] that despite a massive rush of adoption, most sectors have barely closed that gap over the past decade … Because the less digitized sectors are some of the largest in terms of GDP contribution and employment, we [found] that the US economy as a whole is only reaching 18 percent of its digital potential … The United States will need to adapt its institutions and training pathways to help workers acquire relevant skills and navigate this period of transition and churn.” The supernova is a new power source, and it will take some time for society to reconfigure itself to absorb its full potential. As that happens, I believe that Brynjolfsson will be proved right and we will start to see the benefits—a broad range of new discoveries around health, learning, urban planning, transportation, innovation, and commerce—that will drive growth. That debate is for economists, though, and beyond the scope of this book, but I will be eager to see how it plays out. What is absolutely clear right now is that while the supernova may not have made our economies measurably more productive yet, it is clearly making all forms of technology, and therefore individuals, companies, ideas, machines, and groups, more powerful—more able to shape the world around them in unprecedented ways with less effort than ever before. If you want to be a maker, a starter-upper, an inventor, or an innovator, this is your time. By leveraging the supernova you can do so much more now with so little. As Tom Goodwin, senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media, observed in a March 3, 2015, essay on TechCrunch.com: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
A learned society of our day, no doubt with the loftiest of intentions, has proposed the question, “Which people, in history, might have been the happiest?” If I properly understand the question, and if it is not altogether beyond the scope of a human answer, I can think of nothing to say except that at a certain time and under certain circumstances every people must have experienced such a moment or else it never was [a people]. Then again, human nature is no vessel for an absolute, independent, immutable happiness, as defined by the philosopher; rather, she everywhere draws as much happiness towards herself as she can: a supple clay that will conform to the most different situations, needs, and depressions. Even the image of happiness changes with every condition and location (for what is it ever but the sum of “the satisfaction of desire, the fulfillment of purpose, and the gentle overcoming of needs,” all of which are shaped by land, time, and place?). Basically, then, all comparison becomes futile. As soon as the inner meaning of happiness, the inclination has changed; as soon as external opportunities and needs develop and solidify the other meaning—who could compare the different satisfaction of different meanings in different worlds? Who could compare the shepherd and father of the Orient, the ploughman and the artisan, the seaman, runner, conqueror of the world? It is not the laurel wreath that matters, nor the sight of the blessed flock, neither the merchant vessels nor the conquered armies’ standards—but the soul that needed this, strove for it, finally attained it and wanted to attain nothing else. Every nation has its center of happiness within itself, as every ball has its center of gravity!
Johann Gottfried Herder (Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings (Hackett Classics))
We blasted out of the crater and rocketed around the moon’s opposite side, and the fragile Earth became visible to us once again, hovering in the blackness ahead. Over the comm channel, I heard my father gasp at the sight—one he hadn’t seen with his own eyes in an entire lifetime. My lifetime. “There it is,” he said softly. “Home sweet home. Man, I really missed it.” I’d missed it, too, I realized. And I’d been gone less than a day. As our five ships moved into formation and turned homeward, toward Earth, I checked my scope and saw that the three unmanned Interceptors were heading in the opposite direction, out into space, toward whatever destination my father had programmed into them. I turned my gaze back to Earth and watched it begin to grow in size as we approached, until its blue curve completely filled the view outside of my spacecraft. My father sent a tactical map to the display screens inside our cockpits. “They’re dividing their forces in half again,” my father said over the comm. “See?
Ernest Cline (Armada)
Look, de Mazel, you've known him for years - hasn't he been known to sleep for forty hours in two days?' 'Forty hours?' 'Certainly. He awoke at meal times, just to take nourishment, and afterwards fell again into his torpor. And Freneuse had a strange horror of sleep; there was some abnormal phenomenon associated with it, some lesion of the brain or neurotic depression.' 'The troublesome cerebral anaemia which results from excessive debauchery. Another myth! I've never believed, myself, in the supposed debauchery of that poor gentleman. Such a frail chap, with such a delicate complexion! Quite frankly, there was no scope in him for debauchery. 'Pooh! About as much as Lorenzaccio!' 'You associate him with the Medicis! Lorenzaccio was a Florentine impassioned by rancour, a man of energy slowly brooding over his vengeance, caressing it as he might caress the blade of a dagger! There is not the slightest comparison to be drawn between Lorenzaccio and that gall-green, liverish creature Freneuse.
Jean Lorrain (Monsieur De Phocas)
Her problem was that she thought too much- “toxic thinking” and so forth- so she tried to stop, but a physical sensation of exertion remained. Was it her fault that her husband made more money? That it made more sense for her to quit her job than for him to quit his? Was it her fault that he was always gone, rendering her a de facto single mom for the majority of the week? Was it her fault that she found playing trains really, really boring? That she longed for even the smallest bit of mental stimulation, for a return to her piles of books, to her long-abandoned closet of half-formed projects, to one entire afternoon of solitude and silence? Was it her fault that, though she longed for mental stimulation, she still found herself unable to concoct a single, original thought or opinion? She did not actually care about anything anymore. Politics, art, philosophy, film: all boring. She craved gossip and reality TV. Was it her fault that she hated herself for her preference for reality TV? Was it her fault that she had bought into the popular societal myth that if a young woman merely secured a top-notch education she could then free herself from the historical constraints of motherhood, that if she simply had a career she could easily return to work after having a baby and sidestep the drudgery of previous generations, even though having a baby did not, in any way, represent a departure from work to which a woman might, theoretically, one day return. It actually, instead, marked an immersion in work, and unimaginable weight of work, a multiplication of work exponential in its scope, staggering, so staggering, both physically and psychically (especially psychically), that even the most mentally well person might be brought to her knees beneath such a load, a load that pitted ambition against biology, careerism against instinct, that bade the modern mother be less of an animal in order to be happy, because- come on, now- we’re evolved and civilized, and, really, what is your problem? Pull it together. This is embarrassing.
Rachel Yoder (Nightbitch)
Give All to Love Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good-fame, Plans, credit and the Muse,— Nothing refuse. ’T is a brave master; Let it have scope: Follow it utterly, Hope beyond hope: High and more high It dives into noon, With wing unspent, Untold intent: But it is a god, Knows its own path And the outlets of the sky. It was never for the mean; It requireth courage stout. Souls above doubt, Valor unbending, It will reward,— They shall return More than they were, And ever ascending. Leave all for love; Yet, hear me, yet, One word more thy heart behoved, One pulse more of firm endeavor,— Keep thee to-day, To-morrow, forever, Free as an Arab Of thy beloved. Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise, First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem, Nor the palest rose she flung From her summer diadem. Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Early Poems Of Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Corvallis sometimes thought back on the day, three decades ago, when Richard Forthrast had reached down and plucked him out of his programming job at Corporation 9592 and given him a new position, reporting directly to Richard. Corvallis had asked the usual questions about job title and job description. Richard had answered, simply, “Weird stuff.” When this proved unsatisfactory to the company’s ISO-compliant HR department, Richard had been forced to go downstairs and expand upon it. In a memorable, extemporaneous work of performance art in the middle of the HR department’s open-plan workspace, he had explained that work of a routine, predictable nature could and should be embodied in computer programs. If that proved too difficult, it should be outsourced to humans far away. If it was somehow too sensitive or complicated for outsourcing, then “you people” (meaning the employees of the HR department) needed to slice it and dice it into tasks that could be summed up in job descriptions and advertised on the open employment market. Floating above all of that, however, in a realm that was out of the scope of “you people,” was “weird stuff.” It was important that the company have people to work on “weird stuff.” As a matter of fact it was more important than anything else. But trying to explain “weird stuff” to “you people” was like explaining blue to someone who had been blind since birth, and so there was no point in even trying. About then, he’d been interrupted by a spate of urgent text messages from one of the company’s novelists, who had run aground on some desolate narrative shore and needed moral support, and so the discussion had gone no further. Someone had intervened and written a sufficiently vague job description for Corvallis and made up a job title that would make it possible for him to get the level of compensation he was expecting. So it had all worked out fine. And it made for a fun story to tell on the increasingly rare occasions when people were reminiscing about Dodge back in the old days. But the story was inconclusive in the sense that Dodge had been interrupted before he could really get to the essence of what “weird stuff” actually was and why it was so important. As time went on, however, Corvallis understood that this very inconclusiveness was really a fitting and proper part of the story.
Neal Stephenson (Fall; or, Dodge in Hell)
Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph—not merely in the end but in every moment. Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting. They begin to subside the instant they arise, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert. The pleasure of dessert lasts a few seconds, and then the lingering taste in your mouth must be banished by a drink of water. The warmth of the sun feels wonderful on your skin, but soon it becomes too much of a good thing. A move to the shade brings immediate relief, but after a minute or two, the breeze is just a little too cold. Do you have a sweater in the car? Let’s take a look. Yes, there it is. You’re warm now, but you notice that your sweater has seen better days. Does it make you look carefree or disheveled? Perhaps it is time to go shopping for something new. And so it goes.
Sam Harris (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion)
I'll always remember a certain radio exchange that occurred one day as Walt and I were screaming across southern California 13 miles high. We were monitoring various radio transmissions from other aircraft as we entered Los Angeles Center's airspace. Though they didn't really control us, they did monitor our movement across their scope. I heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its groundspeed. "90 knots," Center replied. Moments later a Twin Beech required the same. "120 knots," Center answered. We weren't the only one proud of our speed that day as almost instantly an F-18 smugly transmitted, "Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests groundspeed readout." There was a slight pause. "525 knots on the ground, Dusty." Another silent pause. As I was thinking to myself how ripe a situation this was, I heard the familiar click of a radio transmission coming from my back-seater. It was at that precise moment I realized Walt and I had become a real crew, for we were both thinking in unison. "Center, Aspen 20, you got a ground speed readout for us?" There was a longer than normal pause. "Aspen, I show one thousand seven hundred and forty-two knots." No further inquiries were heard on that frequency.
Brian Shul (Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet)
While we waited on a bench outside the motel office, I bought a copy of the Nashville Tennessean out of a metal box, just to see what was happening in the world. The principal story indicated that the state legislature, in one of those moments of enlightenment with which the southern states often strive to distinguish themselves, was in the process of passing a law forbidding schools from teaching evolution. Instead they were to be required to instruct that the earth was created by God, in seven days, sometime, oh, before the turn of the century. The article reminded us that this was not a new issue in Tennessee. The little town of Dayton—not far from where Katz and I now sat, as it happened—was the scene of the famous Scopes trial in 1925, when the state prosecuted a schoolteacher named John Thomas Scopes for rashly promulgating Darwinian hogwash. As nearly everyone knows, Clarence Darrow, for the defense, roundly humiliated William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, but what most people don’t realize is that Darrow lost the case. Scopes was convicted, and the law wasn’t overturned in Tennessee until 1967. And now the state was about to bring the law back, proving conclusively that the danger for Tennesseans isn’t so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them.
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
As we mature we progressively narrow the scope and variety of our lives. Of all the interests we might pursue, we settle on a few. Of all the people with whom we might associate, we select a small number. We become caught in a web of fixed relationships. We develop set ways of doing things. "As the years go by we view our familiar surroundings with less and less freshness of perception. We no longer look with a wakeful, perceiving eye at the faces of people we see every day, nor at any other features of our everyday world. "It is not unusual to find that the major changes in life-a marriage, a move to a new city, a change of jobs, or a national emergency-break the patterns of our lives and reveal to us quite suddenly how much we had been imprisoned by the comfortable web we had woven around ourselves. "One of the reasons why mature people are apt to learn less than young people is that they are willing to risk less. Learning is a risky business, and they do not like failure. In infancy, when the child is learning at a truly phenomenal rate-a rate he or she will never again achieve-he or she is also experiencing a shattering number of failures. Watch him or her. See the innumerable things he or she tries and fails. And see how little the failures discourage him or her. "With each year that passes he or she will be less blithe about failure. By adolescence the willingness of young people to risk failure has diminished greatly. And all too often parents push them further along that road by instilling fear, by punishing failure, or by making success seem too precious.
Karl Albrecht (Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success)
The earliest commentaries on Scripture had been of this discursive nature, being addresses by word of mouth to the people, which were taken down by secretaries, and so preserved. While the traditionary teaching of the Church still preserved the vigour and vividness of its Apostolical origin, and spoke with an exactness and cogency which impressed an adequate image of it upon the mind of the Christian Expositor, he was able to allow himself free range in handling the sacred text, and to admit into the comment his own particular character of mind, and his spontaneous and individual ideas, in the full security, that, however he might follow the leadings of his own thoughts in unfolding the words of Scripture, his own deeply fixed views of Catholic truth would bring him safe home, without overstepping the limits of truth and sobriety. Accordingly, while the early Fathers manifest a most remarkable agreement in the principles and the substance of their interpretation, they have at the same time a distinctive spirit and manner, by which each may be known from the rest. About the vith or viith century this originality disappears; the oral or traditionary teaching, which allowed scope to the individual teacher, became hardened into a written tradition, and henceforward there is a uniform invariable character as well as substance of Scripture interpretation. Perhaps we should not err in putting Gregory the Great as the last of the original Commentators; for though very numerous commentaries on every book of Scripture continued to be written by the most eminent doctors in their own names, probably not one interpretation of any importance would be found in them which could not be traced to some older source. So that all later comments are in fact Catenas or selections from the earlier Fathers, whether they present themselves expressly in the form of citations from their volumes, or are lections upon the Lesson or Gospel for the day, extempore indeed in form, but as to their materials drawn from the previous studies and stores of the expositor. The latter would be better adapted for the general reader, the former for the purposes of the theologian.
Thomas Aquinas (Catena Aurea: Volume 1-4)
Our team’s vision for the facility was a cross between a shooting range and a country club for special forces personnel. Clients would be able to schedule all manner of training courses in advance, and the gear and support personnel would be waiting when they arrived. There’d be seven shooting ranges with high gravel berms to cut down noise and absorb bullets, and we’d carve a grass airstrip, and have a special driving track to practice high-speed chases and real “defensive driving”—the stuff that happens when your convoy is ambushed. There would be a bunkhouse to sleep seventy. And nearby, the main headquarters would have the feel of a hunting lodge, with timber framing and high stone walls, with a large central fireplace where people could gather after a day on the ranges. This was the community I enjoyed; we never intended to send anyone oversees. This chunk of the Tar Heel State was my “Field of Dreams.” I bought thirty-one hundred acres—roughly five square miles of land, plenty of territory to catch even the most wayward bullets—for $900,000. We broke ground in June 1997, and immediately began learning about do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. That land was ugly: Logging the previous year had left a moonscape of tree stumps and tangled roots lorded over by mosquitoes and poisonous creatures. I killed a snake the first twelve times I went to the property. The heat was miserable. While a local construction company carved the shooting ranges and the lake, our small team installed the culverts and forged new roads and planted the Southern pine utility poles to support the electrical wiring. The basic site work was done in about ninety days—and then we had to figure out what to call the place. The leading contender, “Hampton Roads Tactical Shooting Center,” was professional, but pretty uptight. “Tidewater Institute for Tactical Shooting” had legs, but the acronym wouldn’t have helped us much. But then, as we slogged across the property and excavated ditches, an incessant charcoal mud covered our boots and machinery, and we watched as each new hole was swallowed by that relentless peat-stained black water. Blackwater, we agreed, was a name. Meanwhile, within days of being installed, the Southern pine poles had been slashed by massive black bears marking their territory, as the animals had done there since long before the Europeans settled the New World. We were part of this land now, and from that heritage we took our original logo: a bear paw surrounded by the stylized crosshairs of a rifle scope.
Anonymous
In the opinion of the A. C. Nielsen Company, the ideal radio research service must: 1. Measure the entertainment value of the program (probably best indicated by the size of the audience, bearing in mind the scope of the broadcasting facilities). 2. Measure the sales effectiveness of the program. 3. Cover the entire radio audience; that is: a. All geographical sections. b. All sizes of cities. c. Farms. d. All income classes. e. All occupations. f. All races. g. All sizes of family. h. Telephone and non-telephone homes, etc., etc. 4. Sample each of the foregoing sections of the audience in its proper portion; that is, there must be scientific, controlled sampling — not wholly random sampling. 5. Cover a sufficiently large sample to give reliable results. 6. Cover all types of programs. 7. Cover all hours of the day. 8. Permit complete analysis of each program; for example: a. Variations in audience size at each instant during the broadcast. b. Average duration of listening. c. Detection of entertainment features or commercials which cause gain or loss of audience. d. Audience turnover from day to day or week to week, etc., etc. 9. Reveal the true popularity and listening areas of each station and each network; that is, furnish an "Audit Bureau of Circulations" for radio. A study was made by A. C. Nielson Company of all possible methods of meeting these specifications. After careful investigation, they decided to use a graphic recording instrument known as the "audimeter" for accurately measuring radio listening. . . . The audimeter is installed in radio receivers in homes.
Judith C. Waller (Radio: The Fifth Estate)
It may not be the "Great American Novel" they talk about, because its scope is not broad enough to take in all of America, but it pictures the people and the customs and the drama of upstate New York in the days preceding and following the Civil War with a simplicity that, to my mind, is true art.
Clyde Brion Davis (The Great American Novel)
Emerson writes that 'no one expects the days to be gods.' But now, as time flies and a baby will grow in a place of my choosing, I know. The days are gods. They are each unrepeatable and each a lesson in scope and wholeness, each worth honoring. I can hold and turn these days, consider their resonance, dim and bright moments, sound the depth and know the lullingly measured length. And know that for the time being my memories, and the days in which they are created, are not the only ones of which I'm in stewardship.
Liz Stephens (The Days Are Gods (American Lives))
Emerson writes that "no one expects the days to be gods." But now, as time flies and a baby will grow in a place of my choosing, I know. The days are gods. They are each unrepeatable and each a lesson in scope and wholeness, each worth honoring. I can hold and turn these days, consider their resonance, dim and bright moments, sound the depth and know the lullingly measured length. And know that for the time being my memories, and the days in which they are created, are not the only ones of which I'm in stewardship.
Liz Stephens (The Days Are Gods (American Lives))
There are other problems more closely related to the question of culture. The poor fit between large scale and Korea’s familistic tendencies has probably been a net drag on efficiency. The culture has slowed the introduction of professional managers in situations where, in contrast to small-scale Chinese businesses, they are desperately needed. Further, the relatively low-trust character of Korean culture does not allow Korean chaebol to exploit the same economies of scale and scope in their network organization as do the Japanese keiretsu. That is, the chaebol resembles a traditional American conglomerate more than a keiretsu network: it is burdened with a headquarters staff and a centralized decision-making apparatus for the chaebol as a whole. In the early days of Korean industrialization, there may have been some economic rationale to horizontal expansion of the chaebol into unfamiliar lines of business, since this was a means of bringing modern management techniques to a traditional economy. But as the economy matured, the logic behind linking companies in unrelated businesses with no obvious synergies became increasingly questionable. The chaebol’s scale may have given them certain advantages in raising capital and in cross-subsidizing businesses, but one would have to ask whether this represented a net advantage to the Korean economy once the agency and other costs of a centralized organization were deducted from the balance. (In any event, the bulk of chaebol financing has come from the government at administered interest rates.) Chaebol linkages may actually serve to hold back the more competitive member companies by embroiling them in the affairs of slow-growing partners. For example, of all the varied members of the Samsung conglomerate, only Samsung Electronics is a truly powerful global player. Yet that company has been caught up for several years in the group-wide management reorganization that began with the passing of the conglomerate’s leadership from Samsung’s founder to his son in the late 1980s.72 A different class of problems lies in the political and social realms. Wealth is considerably more concentrated in Korea than in Taiwan, and the tensions caused by disparities in wealth are evident in the uneasy history of Korean labor relations. While aggregate growth in the two countries has been similar over the past four decades, the average Taiwanese worker has a higher standard of living than his Korean counterpart. Government officials were not oblivious to the Taiwanese example, and beginning in about 1981 they began to reverse somewhat their previous emphasis on large-scale companies by reducing their subsidies and redirecting them to small- and medium-sized businesses. By this time, however, large corporations had become so entrenched in their market sectors that they became very difficult to dislodge. The culture itself, which might have preferred small family businesses if left to its own devices, had begun to change in subtle ways; as in Japan, a glamour now attached to working in the large business sector, guaranteed it a continuing inflow of Korea’s best and brightest young people.73
Francis Fukuyama (Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity)
The new GST: A halfway house In spite of all the favourable features of the GST, it introduces the anomaly of having an origin-based tax on interstate trade he proposed GST would be a single levy. 1141 words From a roadblock during the UPA regime, the incessant efforts of the BJP government have finally paved way for the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST). This would, no doubt, be a major reform in the existing indirect tax system of the country. With a view to introducing the GST, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has introduced the Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill 2014 in Parliament. The new tax would be implemented from April 1, 2016. Both the government and the taxpayers will have enough time to understand the implications of the new tax and its administrative nuances. Unlike the 119th Amendment Bill, which lapsed with the dissolution of the previous Lok Sabha, the new Bill will hopefully see the light of the day as it takes into account the objections of the state governments regarding buoyancy of the tax and the autonomy of the states. It proposes setting up of the GST Council, which will be a joint forum of the Centre and the states. This council would function under the chairmanship of the Union finance minister with all the state finance ministers as its members. It will make recommendations to the Union and the states on the taxes, cesses and surcharges levied by the Union, the states and the local bodies, which may be subsumed in the GST; the rates including floor rates with bands of goods and services tax; any special rate or rates for a specified period to raise additional resources during any natural calamity or disaster etc. However, all the recommendations will have to be supported by not less than three-fourth of the weighted votes—the Centre having one-third votes and the states having two-third votes. Thus, no change can be implemented without the consent of both the Centre and the states. The proposed GST would be a single levy. It would aim at creating an integrated national market for goods and services by replacing the plethora of indirect taxes levied by the Centre and the states. While central taxes to be subsumed include central excise duty (CenVAT), additional excise duties, service tax, additional customs duty (CVD) and special additional duty of customs (SAD), the state taxes that fall in this category include VAT/sales tax, entertainment tax, octroi, entry tax, purchase tax and luxury tax. Therefore, all taxes on goods and services, except alcoholic liquor for human consumption, will be brought under the purview of the GST. Irrespective of whether we currently levy GST on these items or not, it is important to bring these items under the Constitution Amendment Bill because the exclusion of these items from the GST does not provide any flexibility to levy GST on these items in the future. Any change in the future would then require another Constitutional Amendment. From a futuristic approach, it is prudent not to confine the scope of the tax under the bindings of the Constitution. The Constitution should demarcate the broad areas of taxing powers as has been the case with sales tax and Union excise duty in the past. Currently, the rationale of exclusion of these commodities from the purview of the GST is solely based on revenue considerations. No other considerations of tax policy or tax administration have gone into excluding petroleum products from the purview of the GST. However, the long-term perspective of a rational tax policy for the GST shows that, at present, these taxes constitute more than half of the retail prices of motor fuel. In a scenario where motor fuel prices are deregulated, the taxation policy would have to be flexible and linked to the global crude oil prices to ensure that prices are held stable and less pressure exerted on the economy during the increasing price trends. The trend of taxation of motor fuel all over the world suggests that these items
Anonymous
The reason we recoil from this is that we have in our day started by getting the whole picture upside down. Starting with the doctrine that every individuality is 'of infinite value,' we then picture God as a kind of employment committee whose business it is to find suitable careers for souls, square holes for square pegs. In fact, however, the value of the individual does not lie in him. He is capable of receiving value. He receives it by union with Christ. There is no question of finding for him a place in the living temple which will do justice to his inherent value and give scope to his natural idiosyncrasy. The place was there first. The man was created for it. He will not be himself till he is there. We shall be true and everlasting and really divine persons only in Heaven, just as we are, even now, coloured bodies only in the light.
C.S. Lewis
I put my faith in something unknown, beyond the moon, sun, and stars, one day I will own. I put my faith in something, renew. Beyond the rivers, deserts, mountains and valleys.One day it shall become new. I cannot renounce the struggle But yes, it’s what this destiny holds The pain is worst. My heart is whole and will not burst.I live on sweet nothing.I am tired of hope, when this dream is not in the scope. I told the pope, he told me to hold on to life and use the rope.I put my faith in you, this is too good to be true.
Henry Johnson Jr
Such was unfortunately not the case. Neither Benedict XIII nor Gregory XII acquiesced before the negative judgments of the Council of Pisa on their respective claims to be pope. Ironically enough, the council’s actions in electing a new pope had only expanded the scope of the schism. Now there were three popes in Christendom. Moreover, each had loyal followers in certain corners of Europe.
John D. Woodbridge (Church History, Volume Two: From Pre-Reformation to the Present Day: The Rise and Growth of the Church in Its Cultural, Intellectual, and Political Context)
You do seem different.” He touched her arms, pulled her in closer. “I’m happy to see you too, if you’d know. I think I missed you a bit.” “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” “I’m certain I could think of something nicer.” He looked up, thinking before turning back to her again. “I’m sorry about what I said before. All the other women I’ve seen at Pembrook Park seemed to be toying with ideas of affairs while their husbands were on business trips. I couldn’t reconcile what I knew of the women who come here and what I knew of you. When I saw you that day walking with Mr. Nobley and the others, I realized you’re here because you’re not satisfied--you’re looking for something. And when I finally realized that, can you imagine how lucky I felt that out of everyone, you would choose me?” “Thanks,” she said. “That was honest and encouraging, but Martin, you were going for nice.” “I wasn’t finished yet! I also wanted to tell you that you’re beautiful.” “That’s better.” “Unbelievably beautiful. And…and I don’t know how to say it. I’m not very good at saying what I’m thinking. But you make me feel like myself.” He swept a loose lock of hair from her forehead. “You remind me of my sister.” “Oh, really? You have that kind of sister?” “Yes, confident, funny…” “No, I meant the kind that you want to smooch.” Martin swept her up again, this time in a more romantic style than the over-the-shoulder baggage. She fit her arm around his neck and let him kiss her. She pressed her hand to his chest, trying to detect if his heart was pounding like hers. She peered at him and saw a little frown line between his eyes. “No, my sister doesn’t kiss half so well.” He walked her around, singing some ludicrous lullaby as though she were a baby, then set her down on a tree stump so they were nearly the same height. “Martin, could you lose your job over this?” He traced the line of her cheek with his finger. “At the moment, I don’t care.” “I’ll talk to Mrs. Wattlesbrook about it at our departure meeting tomorrow, but I don’t think my opinion means much to her.” “It might. Thank you.” Then there was silence and with it a hint of ending, and Jane realized she wasn’t quite ready for it. Martin was the first real guy she’d ever been able to relax with, turn off the obsessive craziness and just have fun. She needed to be with him longer and practice up for the real world. “I’m supposed to leave tomorrow,” she said, “but I can stay a couple more days, change my flight. I could find a hotel in London, far away from Wattlesbrook’s scope of vision, and I could see you. Just hang out a bit before I go home, no weirdness, no pressure, I promise.” He smiled broadly. “That’s an offer I can’t refuse because I’m simply mad to see you in pants. I have a feeling you have a very nice bum.
Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
I'm supposed to leave tomorrow," she said, "but I can stay a couple more days, change my flight. I could find a hotel in London, far away from Wattlesbrook's scope of vision, and I could see you. Just hang out a bit before I go home, no weirdness, no pressure, I promise." He smiled broadly. "That's an offer I can't refuse because I'm simply mad to see you in pants. I have a feeling you have a very nice bum.
Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
WordPress Site If done right, a self-hosted WordPress site can act as your online business card for your freelance SEO writing services.  You can refer potential clients to it for a listing of your services and rates, plus to see your writing samples and client testimonials.   Details on how to set up a self-hosted Wordpress site are beyond the scope of this book, but it’s easy to do.  In a nutshell, all you do is purchase a domain name, purchase web hosting, install Wordpress on your site, and customize it the way you want it. If you are interested in setting up your own website for your business, sign up for the Money Machine Inner Circle (it’s FREE!) and you’ll get instant access to a free report listing exactly which services I recommend for setting up your site.  Especially if you’re new to the world of setting up a website, this will save you a ton of time since you won’t have to waste time researching which services are the best or easiest to use for a non-techie. A basic website should have the following pages: Home Page This is where you describe your freelance SEO writing services, and even include a testimonial or two once you’ve worked with clients for a while. Samples Page Use this page to show off the sample articles that you’ve written. About Page This is where you explain who you are, your experience (if any), and why someone should hire you. Contact Page This is where you set up a simple contact form that visitors to your website can use to get in touch with you. Action Steps 1. On days 1 and 2, make sure you have a reliable computer, access to high-speed internet, and a PayPal account set up.  If you don’t have
Avery Breyer (Turn Your Computer Into a Money Machine: How to make money from home and grow your income fast, with no prior experience! Set up within a week!)
But what should I care about? That is the question. In order to clarify, circumscribe, and bring order to the scope of my contractual liabilities and responsibilities, I’m drafting (in addition to the rubber stamp disclaimers) what will be, I like to think, the ultimate e-mail disclaimer. One happy day, it will automatically appear in bold print at the foot of my messages and trounce the fuckers once and for all.
Joseph O'Neill (The Dog)
I dreamed in night vision; white flowers of nocturnal gun fire – day residue shot to hell. If I held my dreams to a windowsill, sun would sieve through my screams.
Jalina Mhyana (The Trauma Scope: Poems of Heartache & Optical Illusion)
NEW YEAR All endings have beginnings. All beginnings have their end. Sometimes our cards bring us winnings, Sometimes the dealer’s not our friend. Time can bring us sadness. Time can bring us joy. But let it not bring madness. Never be Time’s toy. Now the year has gone. It cannot be redone. At least we carried on. Regrets? Let us have none. A glorious New Year beckons, Seducing with its hope. Its day, its hours, its seconds, All have happiness within their scope. Be glad for what Life dealt, Cards of joy, or cards of pain. You were alive and felt. You may not pass this way again
Carl Martin Johnson
Lerner held that Brigadoon was one of Minnelli’s least vivacious efforts, despite the potential offered by CinemaScope. Only the wedding scene and the chase that follows reveal Minnelli’s unique touch. Before shooting began, Freed rushed to inform Lerner that “Vincente is bubbling over with enthusiasm about Brigadoon.” But, evidently, his heart was not in this film. Early on, Minnelli made a mistake and confessed to Kelly that he really hadn’t liked the Broadway show. As a film, Brigadoon was curiously flat and rambling, lacking in warmth or charm, and the direction lacks Minnelli’s usual vitality and smooth flow. Admittedly, Lerner’s fairy-tale story was too much of a wistful fancy. Two American hunters go astray in the Scottish hills, landing in a remote village that seems to be lost in time. One of the fellows falls in love with a bonnie lass from the past, which naturally leads to some complications. Minnelli thought that it would be better to set the story in 1774, after the revolts against English rule had ended. For research about the look of the cottages, he consulted with the Scottish Tourist Board in Edinburgh. But the resulting set of the old highland village looks artificial, despite the décor, the Scottish costumes, the heather blossoms, and the scenic backdrops. Inexplicably, some of the good songs that made the stage show stand out, such as “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” “My Mother’s Wedding Day,” and “There But for You Go I,” were omitted from the film. Other songs, such as “The Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like Being in Love,” had some charm, though not enough to sustain the musical as a whole. Moreover, the energy of the stage dances was lost in the transfer to the screen, which was odd, considering that Kelly and Charisse were the dancers. For some reason, their individual numbers were too mechanical. What should have been wistful and lyrical became an exercise in trickery and by-now-predictable style. With the exception of “The Chase,” wherein the wild Scots pursue a fugitive from their village, the ensemble dances were dull. Onstage, Agnes de Mille’s choreography gave the dance a special energetic touch, whereas Kelly’s choreography in the film was mediocre at best and uninspired at worst. It didn’t help that Kelly and Charisse made an odd, unappealing couple. While he looks thin and metallic, she seems too solemn and often just frozen. The rest of the cast was not much better. Van Johnson, as Kelly’s friend, pouts too much. As Scottish villagers, Barry Jones, Hugh Laing, and Jimmy Thompson act peculiarly, to say the least.
Emanuel Levy (Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer)
My grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and great-great-great-grandfather were Torah scribes - and for all I know the tradition goes back to the days before the Diaspora. The texts I compose and redact are not sacred, but I am a kind of scribe as well. I count myself proudly among the people of the book. I commit to paper the stories of those who came before me. What we have done, what we have lost, what remains, what we can pass on - this is the scope of my work. The family work, as I now understand. Though I have ceased to attend synagogue and don't claim my ancestors' knowledge or share their faith, I have come to love and revere the Judaism that sustained my family through the generations. The more I learn about them, the more amazed I am by the breadth and originality of their lives. Their daring, their drive, their inventiveness and ambition and confidence and secret melancholy strike me now like something out of Dos Passos or Isaac Bashevis Singer. They were giants; wittingly or not, they enacted epics. They gave me so much, these fierce, passionate immigrants - my life, my freedom and privileges, my education, my identity, my country. The least I can do is give their stories back to them.
David Laskin (The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century)
He stood at the window, staring at the black scope of sky, and thought of his father glaring at the front door the day his mother left, as if persistence alone was enough to make it swing open and reveal her. He had set a chair there and two bottles. Hours he seemed to sit. “She’ll be back,” he had said, and Harold lay in his bed, his body so taut with listening he felt he was more silence than boy. In the morning, her frocks were strewn like empty mothers all over the small house. Some were even perched in the scrap of grass they called a front lawn. “What’s been going on?” said the lady from next door. Harold had collected the clothes in his arms and screwed them into a ball. His mother’s deep smell was so vividly present it was impossible to credit she wasn’t coming back.
Rachel Joyce (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1))
All men are created equal,” at the time, was certainly not intended to include women, slaves, or Indians. It was a radical concept for its day, regardless of its limited scope. Beyond that, as Wood and others have maintained, the concept of equality served as a blueprint for the future, pointing in a direction which would eventually extend across the lines of gender and to all racial, ethnic, religious, or political minorities.
Ray Raphael (A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence)
In the last days of ancient Israel, nine harbingers appeared in the land, warning of national calamity and coming destruction. . . . The same harbingers of warning, the same nine signs of a nation under judgment, have now manifested on American soil. Some have appeared in New York City and Washington, DC, and some have involved American leaders. They’ve all reappeared, all nine of them, and in precise and eerie detail. And those involved in their reappearing had no idea of the mystery or their part in fulfilling it. And yet it all replayed on American soil, warning of national calamity and judgment.” “And what was the first harbinger of the nine harbingers to manifest in ancient Israel?” “The breach,” I replied. “It happened in the year 732 BC, when Israel’s hedge of protection was lifted. An enemy was allowed to strike the land. The strike brought destruction, a destruction that was limited in its scope and duration. But it was enough to shake the nation. It was the wake-up call to a civilization that had grown so hardened and deafened to the call of God that nothing else would get through to it. It was a warning and a call to return.” “And with America?” “The first harbinger, the breach, manifested on American soil on September 11, 2001, when America’s hedge of protection was lifted.
Jonathan Cahn (The Harbinger II: The Return)
ONE SHE HAD THAT new kid look. Anyone paying attention could have seen it. In the flinchiness of her shoulders. In the way her eyes skittered from face to face as the other students streamed past. Managed to show up, her shoulders and eyes said, but not sure about having the nerve to actually go in. Might be too much today. Not that anyone was paying attention. First day of school at Monarch Middle, everyone was scoping for friends, shouting hey, clustering up. It was a hot morning. It felt like summer swearing it was going to stick around this year, no really. The
Lisa Bunker (Zenobia July)
I remember. A gunship’s crew laughing before mowing down reporters and civilians - in short bursts. A truck crossing a shadowy bridge, seconds before it explodes along with those inside the pressroom, as the general declares the driver “the luckiest man in Bagdad.” Our military - using attack helicopters and night scopes – to spray bullets at fleeing soldiers, like roaches running from a giant can of Raid. The pressroom laughs again. It’s not funny and there lies the rub.
Gary J. Floyd (Liberté: The Days of Rage 1990-2020)
Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk
Jesse Tevelow (The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions)
Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk is becoming a household name. He cofounded Paypal. He now runs two companies simultaneously. The first, Tesla Motors, builds electric cars. The second, SpaceX, builds rocket ships. Many people think of Elon Musk as a real-world Iron Man—a superhero. He’s a living legend. He works extremely hard, and he’s brilliant. Did you know that Elon Musk never worked at Netscape? This is interesting because he actually wanted to work there very badly. He applied to Netscape while he was in grad school at Stanford, but never received a response. He even went to Netscape’s lobby with resume in hand, hoping to talk to someone about getting a job. No one in the lobby ever spoke to Elon that day. After getting nervous and feeling ashamed of himself, he walked out. That’s right. Elon Musk failed to get hired at Netscape. The recruiting managers didn’t see a need for him, and he was too ashamed to keep badgering them. So what happened next? Well, we know what happened from there. Musk went on to become one of the most successful and respected visionaries of our time.[30] Take a deep breath and realize that there are no life-ending failures, only experiments and results. It’s also important to realize that you are not the failure—the experiment is the failure. It is impossible for a person to be a failure. A person’s life is just a collection of experiments. We’re meant to enjoy them and grow from them. If you learn to love the process of experimentation, the prospect of failure isn’t so scary anymore.
Jesse Tevelow (The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions)
There appears to be a large duffel bag in my bedroom.” “I’m moving in for a while, unless you throw me out. My mom is at Luke’s for the evening. She and I will spend tomorrow afternoon with Rosie while you’re in Redding at work. I thought I’d take babysitting duty while you do your twenty-four-hour shift. If that’s okay with you. Wednesday morning, while Rosie’s at preschool and day care, I’m driving my mom to the airport. She’s going home to get some things done around her condo so she can come right back. I guess the plants are dying, and the bills need to be paid. On the way over here this afternoon, after picking up my things at Luke’s, I scoped out the pumpkin patch and bought new pajamas.” He grinned at her. “I thought you might be annoyed we didn’t invite you along, so I took lots of pictures.” “Weren’t you going to ask?” she said. “About the pumpkin patch?” he returned. “About the pajamas,” she stressed. He straightened and his expression was serious. “I was going to beg. I have four weeks of leave, if they don’t call me in early. Can you put up with me? If I’m neat?” Her heart swelled, but she was afraid to let it show. He’d always been neat. In fact, he was a little on the fussy side. Things he valued had to be perfectly maintained—his home, his car, his man toys. Put up with him? “We’ve never actually done this before, you know,” she pointed out to him. “We’ve never really lived together.” The look in his eyes was tender. “We should have.” *
Robyn Carr (Angel's Peak (Virgin River #10))
Tenacity is essential for accomplishment in anything you do. Without drive, determination and a strong-willed attitude, one's level of success at many endeavors will be limited in scope.
Gabriella Marigold Lindsay (Living F.I.T.: A 40-Day Guide to Living Faithfully, Intentionally, and Tenaciously)
You may want to know if Tyrese ever goes down to Florida and what happens to TJ and Latisha. You may be wondering if Shauna and Linda stay together and what that means to Mark. But I can’t tell any of that because I don’t know. This story ends now, four days after the death of Hoyt Parker and Griffin Scope. It is late. Very late. I am lying in bed with Elizabeth, watching her body rise and fall in sleep. I watch her all the time. I don’t close my eyes much. My dreams have perversely reversed themselves. It is in my dreams now that I lose her—where she is dead again and I am alone. So I hold her a lot. I am clingy and needy. So is she. But we’ll work that out. As
Harlan Coben (Tell No One)
Shortly before we closed the deal, Randy Michaels and Terry Jacobs, who were running Jacor, came to me to finance the acquisition of a Denver station. Jacor already owned one of the other FM stations in Denver, and this one was losing money and available cheap. They showed up in Chicago carrying a thick book of details, prepared to make their pitch. “This is a great deal,” Randy assured me. He thumped the book on the table, ready to take me through it. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Do you understand the scope of the deal—why we should buy it?” “Yes,” he replied. “All the details are right here in this book.” He added that he and Terry had worked feverishly night and day to prepare it. I picked up the book and tossed it into a corner of my office, where it landed with a thud. Randy and Terry stared at me wide-eyed. “If you really understand it, you don’t need a book,” I said. “You could put it on a single piece of paper.” They looked uncertain. “I assume this says things are going to be great, right?” They nodded. “What happens if you’re wrong? How do I get out of the room?” “What do you mean?” Randy asked. “How bad can it get?” “Well,” he said, “it’s pretty bad now, and if we fail to fix it you could lose some operating capital. But I don’t see a station in Denver ever being worth less than $4 million. I mean, the building, the transmitter—the physical assets alone are worth close to that.” “Okay, great. How good could it get?” The answer, in short, was very good. So I said, “Go do it.
Sam Zell (Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel)