Ship Sinks Quotes

I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they are the first to be rescued off of sinking ships.

If you want to find out who your real friends are, sink the ship. The first ones to jump aren't your friends.

She was a dangerous, dangerous girl. A plague. A Mountain of Adamant who tore the iron from ships, sinking them to their watery graves without a second thought. With a mere smile and a wrinkle of her nose.

But all the love in the world won't save a sinking ship. You have to either bail or jump overboard.

An entire sea of water can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. Similarly, the negativity of the world can’t put you down unless you allow it to get inside you.

I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.

Stripping the protection wards off the ship was bad enough—it's a strong, strong enchantment, demon-based—but when you fell, I had to put a fast spell on the truck so it wouldn't sink when I lost consciousness. And I will lose consciousness, Alec.

It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body... On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.

But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ship s sink, or maybe we're grass--our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.

One leak will sink a ship, and one sin will destroy a sinner.

Alcohol makes for loose lips and loose lips sink ships.

As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can.

We need not be paranoiac but let us follow our path, with consistency and common sense, and avoid being run over by the steamroller of social media through loose-tongued prattle and unthoughtful actions. We must be aware that loose lips sink ships. (“Juicy rumors”)

Get rid of their mast, knock holes in the hull, then get back on board." "You want us to sink her?" Gundar asked, and Halt shook his head. "No. I want her badly damaged but capable of making it back to port. I want the word to go out that the strange ship with the red falcon ensign"—he gestured to Evanlyn's ensign, flying from the mast top—"is manned by dangerous, hairy maniacs with axes and is to be avoided at all costs." "That sounds like us," Gundar said cheerfully.

How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?

I can't stop," the shark rasped. "If I stop, I shall sink and die. That's the way I'm made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I'm going, I'll have to keep on. That's living.

Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out, we continue to cling to the wreckage with absolute faith in its structural soundness.

The ship is sinking The ship is sinking There's leak, there's a leak,in the boiler room The poor, the lame, the blind Who ore the ones that we kept in charge Killers, thieves, and lawyers God's Away, God's away God's away on Business

the captain is supposed to go down with the ship" . "unless the first mate knocks him out and throws him in a lifeboat

Loose lips sink ships.

Loose lips sink ships

But let me say this. I am a superstitious man, a ridiculous failing but I must confess it here. And so if some unlucky accident should befall my youngest son, if some police officer should accidentally shoot him, if he should hang himself while in his jail cell, if new witnesses appear to testify to his guilt, my superstition will make me feel that it was the result of the ill will still borne me by some people here. Let me go further. If my son is struck by a bolt of lightning I will blame some of the people here. If his plane show fall into the sea or his ship sink beneath the waves of the ocean, if he should catch a mortal fever, if his automobile should be struck by a train, such is my superstition that I would blame the ill will felt by people here. Gentlemen, that ill will, that bad luck, I could never forgive. But aside from that let me swear by the souls of my grandchildren that I will never break the peace we have made. After all, are we or are we not better men than those pezzonovanti who have killed countless millions of men in our lifetimes?

A small leak will sink a great ship.

I am trying to sleep on the front porch of forgiveness. I am too young to be this lonely. Still, do not mistake all of my honest open for empty. I didn’t leave the door of my love unlocked so you could mistake my sadness for a shelf. I do not have room to carry anyone’s chaos but my own. If I sink, it will be in my own ocean. If I float, it will be on the ship I built with my own hands.

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnotised by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! 'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'What used the darling ones to do? 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching 'round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How the Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did.

A tiny leak can sink a ship.

Loose lips sink ships.

You all know we are only passing by. We only walk over these stones a few times, our boats float a little while and then they have to sink. The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her.

I feel like I'm in a disaster movie, and that belt is the iceberg that's going to sink the good ship Orgasm. It must be destroyed.

It’s not the rats who first abandon a sinking ship. It’s the crew members who know how to swim.

Everyone knows the ship could sink, unable to hold the piles of bodies that keep crawling on like raging ants from a disrupted nest. But no one is heartless enough to say stop because what if they had been stopped before their turn?

Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking- had he the gold? or the gold him?

It's all about perspective. The sinking of the Titanic was a miracle to the lobsters in the ship's kitchen. (Oct 4, 2011)

Lies upon lies upon lies. Once you started lying, you had to continue, and then it was like being captain of a leaky ship, always plugging holes in the side to stop yourself sinking.

There is also a fable told by Phaedrus, about how Simonides was once a victim of shipwreck. As the other passengers scurried about the sinking ship trying to save their possessions, the poet stood idle. When questioned, he declared, mecum mea sunt cuncta: everything that is me is with me.

The ship was sinking---and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, "We've got to get the lifeboats in the water right away." But the crew said, "First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats." Then the women said, "First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait." The racial minorities said, "First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly." The captain said, "These are all important issues, but they won't matter a damn if we don't survive. We've got to lower the lifeboats right away!" But the religionists said, "First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats." Then the pro-life contingent said, "First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else." The right-to-choose contingent said, "First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we'll help with the lifeboats." The socialists said, "First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that's done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats." The animal-rights activists said, "First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can't let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats." Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned. The last thought of more than one of them was, "I never dreamed that solving humanity's problems would take so long---or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.

Beware of little expenses; A small leak will sink a great ship, as Poor Richard says; and again, Who dainties love, shall beggars prove; and moreover, Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them.

Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent. The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.) Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone. Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future? One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now"likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.

People on sinking ships do not complain of distractions during their prayer.

It’s . . . From the moment we’re born we’re on the Titanic. We’re going down, we won’t survive this, it’s already been decided. Nothing can change that. But we can choose whether we’re going to run around screaming in panic, or whether we’re like the musicians who play on, bravely and with dignity, although the ship is sinking.

Alcohol makes for loose lips and losse lips sink ships.

Dammit, Ethan, help me!” I feel like I’m in a disaster movie, and that belt is the iceberg that’s going to sink the good ship Orgasm. It must be destroyed.

Why was her ship sinking? Her ship? It's always sinking, she hates it, it's either sinking or it's exploding, either way it never seems to be going anywhere.

God is at the helm even when you think your ship is sinking. Just keep trusting that the captain knows more about where you're heading than you do, and eventually you'll get where you need to be.

the moments when one of us was the lifeboat to the other’s ship sinking under the weight of self-hatred, and then us succumbing together to that sinking, convincing ourselves and each other that it was a good idea,

The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship

And you know what happens when a ship gets too many rats on board? It sinks. That's what. I wondered if a ship had ever really sunk that way.

Your mind is a ship; it can sail across the universe as long as you don't allow negative thoughts to sink it.

Or one time, I’d even managed to restrain my violent temper when a pack of bawdy sailors had kidnapped one of my sea maidens, attempting to rape her. Instead of following my first inclination of sinking their ship, opening up a fissure in the earth so that lava spewed up from its guts and boiled them alive, I instead chopped off their balls, boiled them in onion water, and fed them to Bruce, my pet great white. I was rather proud of myself for that level of restraint.

The greatest of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island.

...when a storm was coming on, and they anticipated that a ship might sink, they swam before it, and sang most sweetly of the delight to be found beneath the water, begging the seafarers not to be afraid of coming down below.

All around, the sea was full of ships. Some were burning, some were sinking, some had been smashed to splinters.

Not the waves, not the storms, but often we ourselves sink our ships!

A ship doesn't sink because it is in the ocean in the midst of a storm. It only sinks when the hull is breached, and the ocean get inside it.

I'm not of your religion. . ." "Death is not a religion," Ironeyes said. "It is a fact." "But--" "How would you like to die, mortal?" Ironeyes asked, stepping closer, robes billowing around him. "And when? Quietly? In the night, of a failing heart? Drowning, on one of your new ships as it sinks? Here? Right now? Crushed by the weight of your own stupidity?

Married people, it’s up to you. It’s entirely on your shoulders to keep this sinking institution afloat. It’s a stately old ship, and a lot of people, like me, want to get on board. Please be psyched, and convey that psychedness to us. And always remember: so many, many people are envious of what you have. You’re the star at the end of the Shakespearean play, wearing the wreath of flowers in your hair. The rest of us are just the little side characters.

A little hole in the ship sinks it. A small breach in a dyke carries away all before it. A little stab at the heart kills a man. A little sin, without a great deal of mercy, will damn a man!

Even a life raft is only supposed to get you from the sinking ship back to land, you were never intended to live in the life raft, to drift years on end, in sight of land but never close enough.

Snow does not freeze the hands, but like ether distends the lungs until they burst. All the ships are sinking with fire in their bowels, and there are fires hissing in the cellars of every house.

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is the deadliest disaster in maritime history, with losses dwarfing the death tolls of the famous ships Titanic and Lusitania. Yet remarkably, most people have never heard of it. On January 30, 1945, four torpedoes waited in the belly of Soviet submarine S-13.

He shook with another sob, sinking to one knee and realizing that the survival of that one ship – one girl, really – had been for a moment more important than the war itself, or a city’s millions. Then the wind shifted, and Alek breathed in the burnt-meat smells that filled the room behind him. Important enough for him to kill a man, it seemed.

When you are truly afraid, you experience an urgent desire to split from your body. You want to remove yourself from the thing that will experience pain and horror, but you are that thing. You are aboard a sinking ship, and you are the ship itself.

He had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognised the loss of something. From now on, every hour of light-heartedness would be, not a prerogative but an achievement - one more axe or case-bottle or fowling-piece, rescued, Crusoe-fashion, from a sinking ship.

We are dying birds we are sinking ships— the world rocks down against us and we throw out our arms and we throw out our legs like the death kiss of the centipede: but they kindly snap our backs and call our poison “politics.

There are parts of a ship which taken by themselves would sink. The engine would sink. The propeller would sink. But when the parts of a ship are built together, they float. So with the events of my life. Some have been tragic. Some have been happy. But when they are built together, they form a craft that floats and is going someplace.

Naphta loathed the bourgeois state and its love of security. He found occasion to express this loathing one autumn afternoon when, as they were walking along the main street, it suddenly began to rain and, as if on command, there was an umbrella over every head. That was a symbol of cowardice and vulgar effeminacy, the end product of civilization. An incident like the sinking of the Titanic was atavistic, true, but its effect was most refreshing, it was the handwriting on the wall. Afterward, of course, came the hue and cry for more security in shipping. How pitiful, but such weak-willed humanitarianism squared very nicely with the wolfish cruelty and villainy of slaughter on the economic battlefield known as the bourgeois state. War, war ! He was all for it – the universal lust for war seemed quite honorable in comparison.

If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once. That a woman on a sinking ship becomes a life raft -- no matter how soft her skin is.

Loose lips sink ships,

loose lips don’t merely sink ships, they summon krakens with too many tentacles.

Never name a ship after your wife in one of your novels, then sink it in the next chapter...

I have not yet begun to fight!” John Paul Jones September 23, 1779. He said this when his ship was on fire and sinking.

Beware of little expenses; A small Leak will sink a great Ship; and again, Who Dainties love, shall Beggars prove; and moreover, Fools make Feasts, and wise Men eat them.

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.

We sink ships and try to pretend that they’re just ships—things without people in them. It’s dishonest, but we do it anyway.

I shake Mira's hand away, letting the ship steal my attention. Its wood creaks with laughter as it settles onto the sand, mocking me. The sounds sinks into my bones, and I wonder: If I cannot rule one ship, then how am I ready to rule an entire kingdom?

He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had acted quickly enough; but precisely because of the extremity of danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same, he percieved, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situatuions. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.

It is not the ship in the water but the water in the ship that sinks it. So it is not the Christian in the world but the world in the Christian that constitutes the danger. Anything that dims my vision of Christ, or takes away my taste for Bible study, or cramps my prayer life, or makes Christian work difficult, is wrong for me, and I must, as a Christian, turn away from it. ~J. Wilbur Chapman

Keefe?' Amy repeated, her lips curling into a grin. 'He's the supercute blonde guy you picked up cookies for, right? The one who keeps staring at you all intense when I met him, like you were the only person that mattered to him in the entire universe?' Someone coughed near the doorway. It was probably Grady, maybe Edaline too, but Sophie decided she would rather not know who was eavesdropping. 'He doesn't stare at me like that,' she said, hoping her cheeks weren't blushing too badly. It didn't help that Ro kept cackling beside her. ... 'I swear, you have no idea how lucky you are, getting to be around so many gorgeous boys all the time. I don't know how you haven't dated any of them--or have you?' 'She tried with Fitzy,' Ro answered for her. 'But then she realized he was too boring, so they broke up.' 'That's not what happened!' Sophie argued--over lots more coughing from the doorway. 'We didn't really date. We just sort of... liked each other... openly. But then it got super complicated, so we decided to focus on being friends. ... Why are we talking about this?' Sophie asked ... 'Because it's fun watching you get all red and fidgety!' Amy told her. 'Plus, there's a chance our boy is somewhere nearby, listening to this conversation,' Ro added before she raised her voice to a shout. 'Hear that, Hunkyhair? Get your overdramatic butt back here! Your girl is single--and the great Foster Oblivion is over! This is what you've been waiting for!' 'Hunkyhair?' Amy asked, raising one eyebrow as Sophie contemplated smothering herself with her blankets. 'Great Foster Oblivion?' 'Never mind,' Sophie mumbled, sinking deeper into her blankets.

Many of us have this view of ourselves being "captains of our ships", and just like the old adage, "the captain goes down with his ship"; we sit on our adamant moral high horses and would rather go down with our ships than let go of something to give it, and ourselves, a chance at something better. But I'm a mermaid. We don't go down with ships. We don't try to conquer the ocean; we swim and flow with the waves. We sink the ships that need to be sunk and we save the people that need to be saved.

You were amazing," Sam said. I let that sink in. Samirah wasn't big on doling out praise any more than Mallory wa big on doling out apologies. "Well, it wasn't poetry," I said at last. "More like pure panic." "Maybe there's not much difference," Sam said. "Besides just take the compliment, Chase.

He woke early the next morning. It was still cool, but he opened the window and, leaning on the ledge, looked down at the river. A ship slid by. Then another. Years later, in exile, he would watch the railway tracks from his hotel and it would sink a well in him, and he would taste the same calm water.

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

Here are the sounds of Wear. It rattles stone on stone. It sucks its teeth. It sings. It hisses like the rain. It roars. It laughs. It claps its hands. Sometimes I think it prays. In winter, through the ice, I've seen it moving swift and black as Tune, without a sound. Here are the sights of Wear. It falls in braids. It parts at rocks and tumbles round them white as down or flashes over them in silver quilts. It tosses fallen trees like bits of straw yet spins a single leaf as gentle as a maid. Sometimes it coils for rest in darkling pools and sometimes it leaps its banks and shatters in the air. In autumn, I've seen it breathe a mist so thick and grey you'd never know old Wear was there at all. Each day, for years and years, I've gone and sat in it. Usually at dusk I clamber down and slowly sink myself to where it laps against my breast. Is it too much to say, in winter, that I die? Something of me dies at least. First there's the fiery sting of cold that almost stops my breath, the aching torment in my limbs. I think I may go mad, my wits so outraged that they seek to flee my skull like rats a ship that's going down. I puff. I gasp. Then inch by inch a blessed numbness comes. I have no legs, no arms. My very heart grows still. These floating hands are not my hands. The ancient flesh I wear is rags for all I feel of it. "Praise, Praise!" I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of the years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death. In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star. Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.

I suppose there hasn’t been a single month since the war, in any trade you care to name, in which there weren’t more men than jobs. It’s brought a peculiar, ghastly feeling into life. It’s like on a sinking ship when there are nineteen survivors and fourteen lifebelts. But is there anything particularly modern in that, you say? Has it anything to do with the war? Well, it feels as if it had. The feeling that you’ve got to be everlastingly fighting and hustling, that you’ll never get anything unless you grab it from somebody else, that there’s always somebody after your job, that next month or the month after they’ll be reducing staff and it’s you that’ll get the bird – that, I swear, didn’t exist in the old life before the war.

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent.

When I've thought about him dying - which admittedly isn't that much - I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass - our roots are interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive.

So there you have it: hearing voices at sea is not a pathological condition. It’s quite normal. Welcome to the world of illusions at sea. Of mirages, looming, towering, stooping and sinking. Of moons that change size, suns that change shape, horizons that bend, lights that change colour, and sounds that play hide and seek. Of waves that speak, ships that effervesce and whales that turn into baby elephants. For the sea has a lobsterpot full of tricks and illusions to confuse and beguile even the most rational 21st century sailor.

Upon the shoulders of you mothers rests; in a great measure, the responsibility of correctly developing the mental and moral powers of the rising generation...I have often said it is the mother who forms the mind of the child. Take men anywhere, at sea, sinking with their ship, dying in battle, lying down in death almost under any circumstances, and the last thing they think if, the last word they say is "mother." Such is the influence of woman.

Lies upon lies. Once you started lying, you had to continue, and then it was like being captain of a leaky ship, always plugging holes in the side to stop yourself sinking.

She had hair the colour of' blackmail, a spine as straight as a guillotine, and a face that could sink ships.

Why be honest when no one else is?” This seems to be the motto of all sinking ships.

build a new ship out of old wood or you're destined to sink.

Loose lips sink ships, Mr. Kiss and Tell.

When the tragedy begins and the boat begins to sink I will do anything in my power to help save my mates if they reuse my help I have no choice but to jump ship to help myself

Not a few stories are sinking ships, and many of us go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are bobbing all around us.

Sink the ship that carries the load of hate .

But home is 6617 miles away; a burning building. A sinking ship. A dying thing.

On June 23rd 2016 we took the opportunity to abandon this sinking ship captained by failed politicians and unelected crooks. But we’ll still trade, we’ll still holiday abroad and America will still ask us to stand Shoulder-to-Shoulder with them in ‘their’ fight against terrorism.

when you fall do it gloriously collapse like a glass building sink like a gigantic ship and when you’re done sinking and collapsing and sinking and collapsing build yourself with your wreckage

This is a love story,” Michael Dean says, ”but really what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery or the chase, or the nosey female reporter who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely, the serial murder loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets, or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice-trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk. Just as the housewives live for catching glimpses of their own botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors and the rocked out dude on ‘roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on hookbook. Because this is reality, they are all in love, madly, truly, with the body-mic clipped to their back-buckle and the producer casually suggesting, “Just one more angle.”, “One more jello shot.”. And the robot loves his master. Alien loves his saucer. Superman loves Lois. Lex and Lana. Luke loves Leia, til he finds out she’s his sister. And the exorcist loves the demon, even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace. As Leo loves Kate, and they both love the sinking ship. And the shark, god the shark, loves to eat. Which is what the Mafioso loves too, eating and money and Pauly and Omertà. The way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar and sometimes loves the other cowboy. As the vampire loves night and neck. And the zombie, don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool, has anyone ever been more love-sick than a zombie, that pale dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms. His very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains. This, too is a love story.

They are the winds," replied the hermit, "that swell the sails of the ship; it is true, they sometimes sink her, but without them she could not sail at all. The bile makes us sick and choleric but without the bile we could not live. Everything in this world is dangerous, and yet everything in it is necessary." The

If you want to know the truth about what you’ve built, you have to ship it. You can test, you can brainstorm, you can argue, you can survey, but only shipping will tell you whether you’re going to sink or swim.

Adultery often happens, I am sure, because you are on a sinking ship, and you need to leap but can't leap. You are too spineless, maybe, to leap.The water is too dark and choppy and the sea is too large. Saving your own life, even, isn't enough reason to jump- no, you need the hands at your back, pushing, the hands of something as unavoidable and inevitable and imperative as love.It's got to be something that big, you know, to get you to jump.

Uh, yeah,” Percy said. “The Romans aren’t big on navies. They had, like, one rowboat. Which I sank. Speaking of violent storms, you’re doing a first-rate job upstairs.” “Thank you,” said Kym. “Thing is, our ship is caught in it, and it’s kind of being ripped apart. I’m sure you didn’t mean to—” “Oh, yes, I did.” “You did.” Percy grimaced. “Well...that sucks. I don’t suppose you’d cut it out, then, if we asked nicely?” “No,” the goddess agreed. “Even now, the ship is close to sinking. I’m rather amazed it’s held together this long. Excellent workmanship.” Sparks

Many of those who elected to remain might have escaped. 'Chivalry' is a mild appellation for their conduct. Some of the vaunted knights of old were desperate cowards by comparison. A fight in the open field, or jousting in the tournament, did not call out the manhood in a man as did the waiting till the great ship took the final plunge, in the knowledge that the seas round about were covered with loving and yearning witnesses whose own salvation was not assured.

Sailors need to know when to use ballast or throw down the anchor, lest the ship sink and they drown. In like manner, the virtues enable us to respond correctly to those moments of life that are the moral equivalents to such conditions at sea.

There are dark sides of every fandom. The pockets filled with a certain kind of nostalgia where everything is sacred and shouldn't be tampered with. Where new things are always trash, or judged too harshly, or not up to some unknown holy standard. Where new people with new ideas can't touch an old sinking ship even if it'll repair it---make it better than before.

Compounding the horror, German officials committed an act of staggering insensitivity: they struck a commemorative medal with a depiction of the sinking ship on one side and on the other a smiling skeleton under the inscription “Business above all.

Las Vegas has become a child's picture-book dream of a city-here a storybook castle, there a sphinx-flanked black pyramid beaming white light into the darkness as a landing beam for UFOs, and everywhere neon oracles and twisting screens predict happiness and good fortune, announce singers and comedians and magicians in residence or on their way, and the lights always flash and beckon and call. Once every hour a volcano erupts in light and flame. Once every hour a pirate ship sinks a man o'war.

When a ship sinks, the battlefield goes away. Currents move, thermal layers mix, and by the time the surveyors and rescuers arrive, the water that more witness to the slaughter is nowhere to be found. The dead disappear, carried under with their ruined vehicles. No wreckage remains for tacticians to study. There are no corpses for stretcher bearers to spirit away, no remains to shovel, bad, and bury. On the sea there is no place to anchor a memorial flagpole or headstone. It is a vanishing graveyard.

This is a story of; light & dark – moon & stars – hurt & heart A human – A Woman – A bird A man – A key A friendship – A relationship – A sinking ship Anger – Hope – Grief – Dismay A cat – A plant – A knight – A dog stray love & hate A cage – A knife And endless preys Succumbed together, Suppressed below the layers Of skin & blood vessels turned black ‘t i s a story of a heart burnt to r o t !

Selfishness sinks ships: friendships, partnerships, relationships, championships, even leaderships. Like an iceberg tearing through the hull of an ocean liner, selfishness will inevitably send all of those ships plummeting to the depths of the abyss. Selfishness sinks ships.

My life was such a cluster right now. Starting something with Beau was the epitome of stupid, but damn, his fingers had felt good against my face. And that spark in his eyes was a beacon calling to my soul. Telling me to dock my fucked-up ship in his port and he’d make sure it didn’t sink.

Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good. Now, your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully….

This is one aspect of a reporter's job that never ceases to fascinate and disturb me: facts that go unreported do not exist. How many massacres, how many earthquakes happen in the world, how many ships sink, how many volcanoes erupt, and how many people are persecuted, tortured and killed. Yet if no one is there to see, to write, to take a photograph, it is as if these facts had never occurred, this suffering has no importance, no place in history. Because history exists only if someone relates it. Every little description of a thing observed one can leave a seed in the soil of memory - that keeps me tied to my profession.

Kelly seemed to be just trying to keep the ship from sinking. At a senior staff meeting in early 2018, he announced with pride, “I now know that I will not be the shortest-serving chief of staff. I’ve now surpassed Reince.” Priebus had served 189 days, the shortest tenure of any White House chief of staff in history.

So what are they, then,” asked Lila, “these Sea Serpents?” “Swords for hire. They sink their own ships right before they attack.” “As a distraction?” asked Lila. He shook his head. “A message. That they won’t be needing them anymore, that once they’re done killing everyone aboard and dumping the bodies in the sea, they’ll take their victims’ boat instead and sail away.” “Huh,” said Lila. “Exactly.” “Seems like a waste of a perfectly good ship.” He rolled his eyes. “Only you would mourn the vessel instead of the sailors.” “Well,” she said matter-of-factly, “the ship certainly didn’t do anything wrong. The people might have deserved it.

It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget.

I decided I would not go to court to have my mother declared incompetent, I would not fight. I put the car in drive and hit the gas. I felt as if I'd jumped off a sinking ship and was in a life raft with my little girl, my face turned away from the horror, rowing, rowing, as fast and as hard as I could in the opposite direction.

Sail, sail thy best, ship of democracy, Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the present only, The past is also stored in thee, Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the western continent alone, Earth's resume entire floats upon thy keel, O ship, is steadied by thy spars, With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee, With all their ancient struggles , martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents, Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant..

you can brainstorm, you can argue, you can survey, but only shipping will tell you whether you’re going to sink or swim.

Don’t think that you didn’t launch the torpedo that sunk your ship.

Being in a storm here, on this tiny island, feels like being on a rickety old ship in the middle of the sea, one that will surely sink if the waves get too high.

A ship there is and she sails the sea. She’s loaded deep as deep can be. But not so deep as the love I’m in. I know not if I sink or swim.

It's a sinking ship," he said. "You ought to be grateful that they just threw you overboard.

If on a sinking ship out at sea, the moral law is to always help save women & children first...Why can't we apply the same morals here in our nation?

Unless it is relevant and accurate, knowledge can be the sinking ship the fool insists is sea-worthy, because knowledge often masquerades as wisdom.

The Universe is a big ship and its captain is the Laws of Physics! The bad news is that there seems to be no safe harbour to dock and no lifeboats if we sink!

Culture is like water in the sea; it can either keep the business ship afloat or drag it down and sink it.

I am a sinking ship made of unsinkable parts.

A small boat that sails the river is better than a large ship that sinks in the sea.

He who believes not in your quest should not sail with you, so that he won't sink your ship.

In Dylan’s experience, sailors on sinking ships either cursed or prayed louder than usual. All

When the tragedy begins and the boat begins to sink. I will do everything in my power to help save my mates, if they refuse my help I have no choice but to jump ship to save myself

His ship sank. They were all on his side.

The Ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls.” Top soul (Vicarious), and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren the Secret name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in. Second soul (Jambi), and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power. LIGHT. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons. Number three (Wings/Days) is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she or it is third man out...depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. The sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense - but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to Heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the land of the dead. Number four (The Pot) is Ba, the Heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk's body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba. Number five (L.C., Lost Keys, Rosetta Stoned) is Ka, the double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the Western Lands. Number six (Instension) is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives. Number seven (Right in Two) is Sekhu, the Remains

Perhaps we ought to feel with more imagination. As today the sky 70 degrees above zero with lines falling The way September moves a lace curtain to be near a pear, The oddest device can't be usual. And that is where The pejorative sense of fear moves axles. In the stars There is no longer any peace, emptied like a cup of coffee Between the blinding rain that interviews. You were my quintuplets when I decided to leave you Opening a picture book the pictures were all of grass Slowly the book was on fire, you the reader Sitting with specs full of smoke exclaimed How it was a rhyme for "brick" or "redder." The next chapter told all about a brook. You were beginning to see the relation when a tidal wave Arrived with sinking ships that spelled out "Aladdin." I thought about the Arab boy in his cave But the thoughts came faster than advice. If you knew that snow was a still toboggan in space The print could rhyme with "fallen star.

There is always a choice,' I whispered. Looking at the storm-flared sky, my heart filled up like a sinking boat, sadness welling up faster than I could ship it out with my cupped hands. 'You choose to come after me even though you knew it would cause you trouble.' 'I'll always be your friend,' replied Manjeet in a low voice. 'We just can't be friends. I'm sorry. I have to go.

But I– (Jake) But nothing, Captain. Heaven forbid you leave the helm for more than a minute. Anything could happen. God could toss down a lightning bolt and set fire to the ship. A sea monster could rise up from the depth of the ocean and swallow us whole. Or, dare I say it? The weight of male egos may be so great that it plops a hole right in the center of deck and we sink from it! (Serenity)

If on a sinking ship out at sea, the moral law is to always help save women & children first...Why do we find it so dam hard to practice the same moral law here in our nation?” ― Timothy Pina, Hearts for Haiti

The whole game in the fifties and early sixties was for no one to know who you really were. We children were witness to the total pretense of how our parents wanted the world to see them. We helped them maintain this image, because if anyone outside the family could see who they really were deep down, the whole system, the ship of your family, might sink. We held our breath to give the ship buoyancy. We were little air tanks.

But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass__our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful with metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications

They were galloping...Bare level plain had taken the place of the scrub and they'd been cantering briskly, the foals prancing delightedly ahead, when suddenly the dog was a shoulder-shrugging streaking fleece, and as their mares almost imperceptibly fell into the long untrammelled undulating strides, Hugh felt the sense of change, the keen elemental pleasure one experienced too on board a ship which, leaving the choppy waters of the estuary, gives way to the pitch and swing of the open sea. A faint carillon of bells sounded in the distance, rising and falling, sinking back as if into the very substance of the day. Judas had forgotten; nay, Judas had been, somehow, redeemed.

He never cried, not even in his dreams, for hard-heartedness was a point of pride. A large iron anchor withstanding the corrosion of the sea and scornful of the barnacles and oysters that harass the hulls of ships, sinking polished and indifferent through heaps of broken glass, toothless combs, bottle caps, and prophylactics into the mud at harbour bottom – that was how he liked to imagine his heart. Someday he would have an anchor tattooed on his chest.

In all the heroic tales, dying soldiers saw their lives pass before their eyes. No, Martin realized. The memories were just running like rats from a sinking ship, down the ropes only to drown. He watched the backs of their heads.

Once, my grandmama told me a story about her great-grandmama. She'd come across the ocean, been kidnapped and sold. Said her great-grandmama told her that in her village, they ate fear. Said it turned the food to sand in they mouth. Said everyone knew about the death march to the cost, that word had come down about the ships, about how they packed men and women into them. Some heard it was even worse for those who sailed off, sunk into the far. Because that's what it looked like when the ship crossed the horizon: like the ship sailed off and sunk, bit by bit, into the water. Her grandmama said they never went out at night, and even in the day, they stayed in the shadows of they houses. But still, they came for her. Kidnapped her here, and she learned the boats didn't sink to some watery place, sailed by white ghosts. She learned that bad things happened on that ship, all the way until it docked. That her skin grew around the chains. That her mouth shaped to the muzzle. That she was made into an animal under the hot, bright sky, the same sky the rest of her family was under, somewhere far aways, in another world. I knew what that was, to be made a animal.

Enemy submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term submarine is to be reserved for Allied under water vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villains who sink our ships, while submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs.

To the Harbormaster" I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart. In storms and at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide around my fathomless arms, I am unable to understand the forms of my vanity or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder in my hand and the sun sinking. To you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage of my will. The terrible channels where the wind drives me against the brown lips of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet I trust the sanity of my vessel; and if it sinks, it may well be in answer to the reasoning of the eternal voices, the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

I watch the figure reach the peak Head in clouds, no room to think He gave the world a blissful wink Took a drink, destroyed the peace We watched the ships explode then sink On cardboard screens, the blood-shed pink. This is the way we choose to run things.

Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, Floats and swings the horizons bound, Seems at its distant rim to rise And climb the crystal wall of the skies, And then again to turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea, It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean. Ah! if our souls but poise and swing Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level and ever true To the toil and the task we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach The sights we see, and the sounds we hear, Will be those of joy and not of fear!

The sun burned like a fire ship on the water, sinking slowly till only a red smoke was left trailing up the sky. A fishing boat was headed into the harbor, black and small against the enormous west. Above its glittering wake a few gulls whirled like sparks which had gone out.

and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

How powerful, then, for our own pilgrimages are Ishmael's words at the end of his dark journey aboard the whaling vessel, the Pequod. The drama's done. Why then does anyone step forth? Because one did survive the wreck. . . . For almost one whole day and night I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. How poignantly anti-climactic! After the death of Ahab roped to Moby Dick as he plunged into the sea, and after the sinking of the ship and the drowning of the crew, all Ishmael can say with Job is, "And I only am escaped to tell thee," a quote from the book of Job that Melville puts at the beginning of the Epilogue. This makes the book a cautionary tale for any pilgrim who is naive about the dangers and pitfalls of the quest.

The way you start writing is by writing. Over and over again I have proven this to myself but I always forget it the next time. I always believe that I will never write again. The first time I finished a book a painter was visiting me. Her name is Ginny Stanford and her wonderful paintings have been the covers for nine of my books. 'I'll never write again,' I told her ... 'That's it ... It's over. It was great while it lasted, but now it's done.' That afternoon she made me a wonderful drawing of a ship sinking in the waves of the sea. 'I'll never write again,' it said on the bottom of the picture. 'September, 1981.

Friends, Grecian Heroes, Ministers of Mars! Grievous, and all unlook’d for, is the blow Which Jove hath dealt me; by his promise led I hop’d to raze the strong-built walls of Troy, And home return in safety; but it seems 130 He falsifies his word, and bids me now Return to Argos, frustrate of my hope, Dishonour’d, and with grievous loss of men. Such now appears th’ o’er-ruling sov’reign will Of Saturn’s son; who oft hath sunk the heads 135 Of many a lofty city in the dust, And yet will sink; for mighty is his hand. ’Tis shame indeed that future days should hear How such a force as ours, so great, so brave, Hath thus been baffled, fighting, as we do, 140 ’Gainst numbers far inferior to our own, And see no end of all our warlike toil. For should we choose, on terms of plighted truce, Trojans and Greeks, to number our array; Of Trojans, all that dwell within the town, 145 And we, by tens disposed, to every ten, To crown our cups, one Trojan should assign, Full many a ten no cup-bearer would find: So far the sons of Greece outnumber all That dwell within the town; but to their aid 150 Bold warriors come from all the cities round, Who greatly harass me, and render vain My hope to storm the strong-built walls of Troy. Already now nine weary years have pass’d; The timbers of our ships are all decay’d, 155 The cordage rotted; in our homes the while Our wives and helpless children sit, in vain Expecting our return; and still the work, For which we hither came, remains undone. Hear then my counsel; let us all agree 160 Home to direct our course, since here in vain We strive to take the well-built walls of Troy.” Thus as he spoke, the crowd, that had not heard The secret council, by his words was mov’d; So sway’d and heav’d the multitude, as when 165 O’er the vast billows of th’ Icarian sea Eurus and Notus from the clouds of Heav’n Pour forth their fury; or as some deep field Of wavy corn, when sweeping o’er the plain The ruffling west wind sways the

The expulsion of Spain from Cuba (a worthwhile venture) so that the U.S. could take control of Cuba (an unworthy venture) was preceded by a dubious story, never proven, that the Spaniards had exploded the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor. Our seizure of the Philippines (from the Filipinos) was preceded by a manufactured “incident” between Filipino and U.S. troops. The German sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania in World War I was one of the instances of “ruthless” submarine warfare given as a reason to enter that war; years afterward, it was disclosed that the Lusitania was not an innocent vessel but a munitions ship whose papers had been doctored.

The accursed ship didn't sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavour! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I have been violated; violated by a team of accountants.

She’d forgotten love could be like that, simple and easy and joyous. The love she felt for Anthony had deepened over the decades, and it had changed; life had thrown the pair of them challenges and love had adapted to meet them. Love had come to mean putting someone else first, sacrificing, keeping the patched-up ship from sinking in the storms.

On September 22, 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald, skippered by Captain Bert Lambert, left Rouge River bound for Silver Bay, Minnesota, where it was scheduled to pick up a load of taconite pellets to be delivered to Toledo. Not surprisingly, that very first load set a tonnage record when the Fitz passed through the Soo Locks a few days later. The ship's life on the Great Lakes had begun.

Now when he closes his eyes he can really look at himself. He no longer sees a mask. He sees without seeing, to be exact. Vision without sight, a fluid grasp of intangibles: the merging of sight and sound: the heart of the web. Here stream the different personalities which evade the crude contact of the senses; here the overtones of recognition discreetly lap against one another in bright, vibrant harmonies. There is no language employed, no outlines delineated. When a ship founders, it settles slowly; the spars, the masts, the rigging float away. On the ocean floor of death the bleeding hull bedecks itself with jewels; remorselessly the anatomic life begins. What was ship becomes the nameless indestructible. Like ships, men founder time and again. Only memory saves them from complete dispersion. Poets drop their stitches in the loom, straws for drowning men to grasp as they sink into extinction. Ghosts climb back on watery stairs, make imaginary ascents, vertiginous drops, memorize numbers, dates, events, in passing from gas to liquid and back again. There is no brain capable of registering the changing changes. Nothing happens in the brain, except the gradual rust and detrition of the cells. But in the minds, worlds unclassified, undenominated, unassimilated, form, break, unite, dissolve and harmonize ceaselessly. In the mind-world ideas are the indestructible elements which form the jewelled constellations of the interior life. We move within their orbits, freely if we follow their intricate patterns, enslaved or possessed if we try to subjugate them.

I would be unfair to myself if I said I did not try. I did, even if desultorily. But desire is a curious thing. If it does not exist it does not exist and there is nothing you can do to conjure it up. Worse still, as I discovered, when desire begins to sink, like a capsizing ship it takes down a lot with it.   In our case it took down the conversation, the laughter, the sharing, the concern, the dreams and nearly - the most important thing, the most important thing - and nearly the affection too. Soon my sinking desire had taken everything else down with it to the floor of the sea, and only affection remained like the bobbing hand of a drowning man, poised perilously between life and death.   More than once she tried to seize the moment and open up the issue. She did it with a hard face and a soft face; she did it when I was idling on the terrace and when I was in the thick of my works; first thing in the morning and last thing at night.   We need to talk. Yes. Do you want to talk? Sure. What's happening? I don't know. Is there someone else? No. Is it something I did? Oh no. Then what the hell's happening? I don't know. Is there anything you want to talk to me about? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I don't know. That's what I mean - I don't know. Toc toc toc.   All the while I tried to save that bobbing hand - of affection - from vanishing. I felt somehow that if it drowned there would not be a single pointer on the wide stormy surface to show me where our great love had once stood. That bobbing hand of affection was a marker, a buoy, holding out the hope that one day we could salvage the sunken ship. If it drowned, our coordinates would be completely lost and we would not know where to even begin looking.   Even in my weird state, it was an image of such desolation that it made my heart lurch wildly.   ***   For a long time, with her immense pride in herself - in us - she did not turn to anyone for help. Not friends, not family. For simply too long she imagined this was a passing phase, but then, as the weeks rolled by, through slow accretion the awful truth began to settle on her. By then she had run through all the plays of a relationship: withdrawal, sulking, anger, seduction, inquisition, affection, threat.   Logic, love, lust. Now the epitaph was beginning to creep up on her. Acceptance. 

when I've thought about him dying-which admittedly isn't that much-I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings broke, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass-our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?

I didn't talk all the way home, trying not to cry. A missed lesson! But why did it bother me so much? I'd missed lessons before. So what? Mrs. Lawrence was coming back, wasn't she? She had a right to visit her son in Houston, didn't she?...How could I explain I felt as thought part of my personal scaffolding was broken, and how I dangled one-handed from a rope? One-handed from a rope on a sinking ship? (128)

Later, I came to see that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wordsworth were thinking of men like me when they wrote their words. But most of all, I believe that William Shakespeare was. Mind you, I cannot always make sense of what he says, but it will come. It seems to me the less he said, the more beauty he made. Do you know what sentence of his I admire the most? It is “The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.” I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them—and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, over and over. If I could have thought the words “the bright day is done and we are for the dark,” I’d have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance—instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.

There are such ships, there are such logs in the swamps of our minds, and they rise to the surface of our thoughts for a moment, only to sink again. There are such ships sunk in the wastes of our lives. The years have washed over them. They are forgotten. And yet they rise, ghosts of a past that is ended. They float before us for a while to our own great astonishment, then they settle down again and are as if they never existed.

Ah, but, dear North Wind, you don't know how nice it is to feel your arms about me. It is a thousand times better to have them and the wind together, than to have only your hair and the back of your neck and no wind at all." "But it is surely more comfortable there?" "Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable." "Yes, indeed there are. Well, I will keep you in front of me. You will feel the wind, but not too much. I shall only want one arm to take care of you; the other will be quite enough to sink the ship." "Oh, dear North Wind! how can you talk so?" "My dear boy, I never talk; I always mean what I say." "Then you do mean to sink the ship with the other hand?" "Yes." "It's not like you." "How do you know that?" "Quite easily. Here you are taking care of a poor little boy with one arm, and there you are sinking a ship with the other. It can't be like you." "Ah! but which is me? I can't be two mes, you know." "No. Nobody can be two mes." "Well, which me is me?" "Now I must think. There looks to be two." "Yes. That's the very point.—You can't be knowing the thing you don't know, can you?" "No." "Which me do you know?" "The kindest, goodest, best me in the world," answered Diamond, clinging to North Wind. "Why am I good to you?" "I don't know." "Have you ever done anything for me?" "No." "Then I must be good to you because I choose to be good to you." "Yes." "Why should I choose?" "Because—because—because you like." "Why should I like to be good to you?" "I don't know, except it be because it's good to be good to me." "That's just it; I am good to you because I like to be good." "Then why shouldn't you be good to other people as well as to me?" "That's just what I don't know. Why shouldn't I?" "I don't know either. Then why shouldn't you?" "Because I am." "There it is again," said Diamond. "I don't see that you are. It looks quite the other thing." "Well, but listen to me, Diamond. You know the one me, you say, and that is good." "Yes." "Do you know the other me as well?" "No. I can't. I shouldn't like to." "There it is. You don't know the other me. You are sure of one of them?" "Yes." "And you are sure there can't be two mes?" "Yes." "Then the me you don't know must be the same as the me you do know,—else there would be two mes?" "Yes." "Then the other me you don't know must be as kind as the me you do know?" "Yes." "Besides, I tell you that it is so, only it doesn't look like it. That I confess freely. Have you anything more to object?" "No, no, dear North Wind; I am quite satisfied.

The loud sounds of my mind blind me every night. I close my eyes to sleep on time but the visions come alive. They remind me of the scars and the pain in my past life. I try to move on but this haunts me in the present time. All I want is to sleep, to snore it away, and dream. But, the mind is a pool of chaos in which I drown with every swim. I want to feel better but it gets under my skin and reminds me of a ship of hope that is about to sink.

The ceilings had set off a ghostly echo, giving all the desperate hilarity the quality of a memory even as I sat listening to it, memories of things I'd never known. Charlestons on the wings of airborne biplanes. Parties on sinking ships, the icy water bubbling around the waists of the orchestra as they sawed out a last brave chorus of "Auld Lang Syne." Actually, it wasn't "Auld Lang Syne" they'd sung, the night the Titanic went down but hymns, lots of hymns, and the Catholic priest saying Hail Marys, and the first-class salon which had really looked a lot like this: dark wood, potted palms, rose silk lampshades with their swaying fringe. I really had had too much to drink. I was sitting sideways in my chair, holding tight to the arms (Holy Mary, Mother of God), and even the floors were listing, like the decks of a foundering ship; like we might all slide to the other end with a hysterical wheeee! piano and all.

Look into the sinking of the Lusitania also,” Cassie added. “The Germans sinking that ship filled with American passengers was the reason the US got involved in World War I. The Germans posted warnings in American newspapers not to sail in the area because it was a war zone, yet the Lusitania sailed right into a place known to be filled with German subs. If the government was looking for public support to get into the war, that event gave them what they wanted.

Mladić was convinced that she had been murdered. This to him was the only logical explanation. Ana would never kill herself. He could not conceive that his daughter, his own daughter, who played Sinking Ships with him at twenty-three, could condemn him for what he did. He could not understand it. Instead of talking, they were playing childish games. To think she had been killed was easier for him: it relieved him of all responsibility. To understand why she had committed suicide would require him to admit - at least to himself - that he had indeed committed war crimes. This General Mladić could never do. Not even the death of his own dear child could make him acknowledge it. It was as if he had to sacrifice his own daughter - not his soldiers and his own life, as Prince Lazar did - to become a mythological hero. If this was the price for his immortality, the gods left him alive only to make him endure the incredible pain.

The Witnesses In Ocean's wide domains, Half buried in the sands, Lie skeletons in chains, With shackled feet and hands. Beyond the fall of dews, Deeper than plummet lies, Float ships, with all their crews, No more to sink nor rise. There the black Slave-ship swims, Freighted with human forms, Whose fettered, fleshless limbs Are not the sport of storms. These are the bones of Slaves; They gleam from the abyss; They cry, from yawning waves, We are the Witnesses! Within Earth's wide domains Are markets for men's lives; Their necks are galled with chains, Their wrists are cramped with gyves. Dead bodies, that the kite In deserts makes its prey; Murders, that with affright Scare school-boys from their play! All evil thoughts and deeds; Anger, and lust, and pride; The foulest, rankest weeds, That choke Life's groaning tide! These are the woes of Slaves; They glare from the abyss; They cry, from unknown graves, We are the Witnesses!

A Man Adrift On A Slim Spar" A man adrift on a slim spar A horizon smaller than the rim of a bottle Tented waves rearing lashy dark points The near whine of froth in circles. God is cold. The incessant raise and swing of the sea And growl after growl of crest The sinkings, green, seething, endless The upheaval half-completed. God is cold. The seas are in the hollow of The Hand; Oceans may be turned to a spray Raining down through the stars Because of a gesture of pity toward a babe. Oceans may become gray ashes, Die with a long moan and a roar Amid the tumult of the fishes And the cries of the ships, Because The Hand beckons the mice. A horizon smaller than a doomed assassin's cap, Inky, surging tumults A reeling, drunken sky and no sky A pale hand sliding from a polished spar. God is cold. The puff of a coat imprisoning air: A face kissing the water-death A weary slow sway of a lost hand And the sea, the moving sea, the sea. God is cold.

-Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever 'truer.' The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent. -The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to 'landscape' the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.) -Symmetry demands an actual + virtualfuture, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone. -Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future? -One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each 'shell' (the present) encased inside a nest of 'shells' (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of 'now' likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future. -Proposition: I am in love with Luisa Ray.

The first submarine ever credited with sinking an enemy ship was the Confederate navy’s H. L. Hunley, which, during the American Civil War, sank the Union navy’s frigate, the Housatonic. The Hunley, propelled by a crew of eight using hand cranks to turn its propeller, approached the Housatonic after dark, carrying a large cache of explosives at the end of a thirty-foot spar jutting from its bow. The explosion destroyed the frigate; it also sank the Hunley, which disappeared with all hands.

From the point of view of genes in any male body, the body itself is a sinking prison ship. Death comes to all bodies sooner or later. Even if a male devoted all of his energy to surviving, by storing up huge fat reserves and hiding in an armored underground compound, statistics guarantee that an accident would sooner or later kill him. This paranoid survivalist strategy is no way to spread one's genes through a population. The only deliverance for a male's genes is through an escape tube into a female body carrying a fertile egg. Genes can survive in the long term only by jumping ship into offspring. In species that reproduce sexually, the only way to make offspring is to merge one's genes with another individual's. And the only way to do that, for males, is to attract a female of the species through courtship. This is why males of most species evolve to act as if copulation is the whole point of life. For male genes, copulation is the gateway to immortality. This is why males risk their lives for copulation opportunities.

Slung on a stage over the gunwale of an old felucca, the Peri. A storm had just passed, rushing away toward the land in a great slope of clouds; already turning yellowish from the desert. The sea there is the color of Damascus plums; and how quiet. Sun was going down; not a beautiful sunset, more a gradual darkening of the air and that storm’s mountainside. The Peri had been damaged, we hove to alongside and hailed her master. No reply. Only the sailor—I never saw his face—one of your fellahin who abandon the land like a restless husband and then grumble for the rest of their term afloat. It’s the strongest marriage in the world. This one wore a kind of loincloth and a rag round his head for the sun which was almost gone. After we’d shouted in every dialect we had among us, he replied in Tuareg: ‘The master is gone, the crew is gone, I am here and I am painting the ship.’ It was true: he was painting the ship. She’d been damaged, not a load line in sight, and a bad list. ‘Come aboard,’ we told him, ‘night is nearly on us and you cannot swim to land.’ He never answered, merely continued dipping the brush in his earthen jar and slapping it smoothly on the Peri’s creaking sides. What color? It looked gray but the air was dark. This felucca would never again see the sun. Finally I told the helmsman to swing our ship round and continue on course. I watched the fellah until it was too dark: becoming smaller, inching closer to the sea with every swell but never slackening his pace. A peasant with all his uptorn roots showing, alone on the sea at nightfall, painting the side of a sinking ship.

Focus on the road, not the wall. When someone learns to drive a race car, one of the first lessons taught is that when you are going around a curve at 200 mph, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. If you focus on the wall, you will drive right into it. If you focus on the road, you will follow the road. Running a company is like that. There are always a thousand things that can go wrong and sink the ship. If you focus too much on them, you will drive yourself nuts and likely crash your company. Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.

This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely the serial murderer loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck, and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk just as the Housewives live for catching glimpses of their own Botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors, and the rocked-out dude on ‘roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on Hookbook, and because this is reality, they are all in love—madly, truly—with the body mic clipped to their back buckle, and the producer casually suggesting just one more angle, one more Jell-O shot. And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke love Leia (till he finds out she’s his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the Mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omerta` --the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.

1) The Titanic hit the iceberg in the North Atlantic, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. 2) The Titanic was considered unsinkable because she was built with huge watertight doors to contain any possible leaks. However, when the ship hit the iceberg, six watertight compartments quickly filled up with water, dooming the ship. 3) The signal SOS was chosen as an international distress call because of the simplicity of the three letters in Morse code: three dots, three dashes, and three dots. 4) No one knows for certain exactly how long the musicians played on the Titanic, but legend says they played until the ship went down, and their last song was the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” 5) More than 1,500 people perished in the Titanic disaster, while 705 people escaped in lifeboats and were eventually rescued by a ship named the Carpathia. 6) After the sinking of the Titanic, laws were changed so that every ship was required to have enough lifeboats to carryall its passengers. Also, the International Ice Patrol was formed, so that ships would have warning about ice conditions. 7) In 1985, a scientist named Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the undersea wreck of the Titanic.

Maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass – our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications.

THE ACCURSED SHIP didn’t sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavor! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I had been violated; violated by a team of accountants. Laura, prostrated by grief, lay weeping on my lap. Frank stared stolidly at the credits, over which, as a coup de grâce, a cat or cats were being strangled to the effect that “My Heart Will Go On,” which at this moment in time was not a sentiment I could endorse.

We are tomorrow's past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks - a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we, that were the new thing, gather magic as we go. The whirr of the spinning wheels has ceased in our parlours, and we hear no more the treadles of the loom, the swift, silken noise of the flung shuttle, the intermittent thud of the batten. But the imagination hears them, and theirs is the melody of romance." ~ from Mary Webb's introduction to her novel Precious Bane.

sea//c. i. I have been told by many that men taste like the ocean. Maybe it’s because so many of their ancestors got lost at sea but finally made their way to shore; the salt in their pores. ii. -A sailor & his sinking ship- buoyant & blue there is siren in the sea, instead of salt there is death on her skin -you cannot let waves win you over as easily as this- sink or swim choose one; swim. iii. You make it to shore and I tell you the sea and the sky look the same to me. Except one is not as wet as your eyes when you weep and our lips when they meet. iv. meanwhile, mermaids make love to men they do not know.

The hotbed of innovation was initially southern China, because the wars against the Mongol overlords of the mid-fourteenth-century Yangzi Valley would be won by storming fortresses and sinking big ships fighting in the constrained space of a river. For both these jobs, early guns were excellent. But when the fighting ended in 1368, the main theater of war shifted to the steppes in northern China. Here there were few forts to bombard, and slow-firing guns were useless against fast-moving cavalry. Chinese generals, being rational men, spent their money on extra horsemen and a great wall rather than incremental improvements in firearms.

A war always comes to someone else. In Salinas we were aware that the United States was the greatest and most powerful nation in the world. Every American was a rifleman by birth, and one American was worth ten or twenty foreigners in a fight. Pershing’s expedition into Mexico after Villa had exploded one of our myths for a little while. We had truly believed that Mexicans can’t shoot straight and besides were lazy and stupid. When our own Troop C came wearily back from the border they said that none of this was true […] Somehow we didn’t connect Germans with Mexicans. We went right back to our own myths. One American was as good as twenty Germans. This being true, we had only to act in a stern manner to bring the Kaiser to heel. He wouldn’t dare interfere with our trade--but he did. He wouldn’t stick out his neck and and sink our ships--and he did. It was stupid, but he did, and so there was nothing for it but to fight him. The war, at first anyway, was for other people. We, I, my family and friends, had kind of bleacher seats, and it was pretty exciting. And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also that somebody else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn’t true either. The dreadful telegrams began to sneak sorrowfully in, and it was everybody’s brother. Here we were, over six thousand miles from the anger and the noise, and that didn’t save us […] The draftees wouldn’t look at their mothers. They didn’t dare. We’d never thought the war could happen to us. There were some in Salinas who began to talk softly in the poolrooms and the bars. These had private information from a soldier--we weren’t getting the truth. Our men were being sent in without guns. Troopships were sunk and the government wouldn’t tell us. The German army was so far superior to ours that we didn’t have a chance. That Kaiser was a smart fellow. He was getting ready to invade America. But would Wilson tell us this? He would not. And usually these carrion talkers were the same ones who had said one American was worth twenty Germans in a scrap--the same ones.

There was another world below—this was the problem. Another world below that had volume but no form. By day the sea was blue surface and whitecaps, a realistic navigational challenge, and the problem could be overlooked. By night, though, the mind went forth and dove down through the yielding—the violently lonely—nothingness on which the heavy steel ship traveled, and in every moving swell you saw a travesty of grids, you saw how truly and forever lost a man would be six fathoms under. Dry land lacked this z-axis. Dry land was like being awake. Even in chartless desert you could drop to your knees and pound land with your fist and land didn’t give. Of course the ocean, too, had a skin of wakefulness. But every point on this skin was a point where you could sink and by sinking disappear.

This is a political age. War, Fascism, concentration camps, rubber truncheons, atomic bombs, etc., are what we daily think about, and therefore to a great extent what we write about, even when we do not name them openly. We cannot help this. When you are on a sinking ship, your thoughts will be about sinking ships. But not only is our subject-matter narrowed, but our whole attitude towards literature is coloured by loyalties which we at least intermittently realise to be non-literary. I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent, since in the absence of any accepted standards whatever—any external reference which can give meaning to the statement that such and such a book is “good” or “bad”—every literary judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to justify an instinctive preference. One’s real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually “I like this book” or “I don’t like it,” and what follows is a rationalisation. But “I like this book” is not, I think, a non-literary reaction; the non-literary reaction is “This book is on my side, and therefore I must discover merits in it.” Of course, when one praises a book for political reasons one may be emotionally sincere, in the sense that one does feel strong approval of it, but also it often happens that party solidarity demands a plain lie. Anyone used to reviewing books for political periodicals is well aware of this. In general, if you are writing for a paper that you are in agreement with, you sin by commission, and if for a paper of the opposite stamp, by omission.

When preparing for a trip, we can read about architecture and restaurants. But what ultimately breathes life into the daydreams of anticipation are the people we encounter when we're actually there, including those we merely pass on the street or, in this case, the stairwell. I thought, too, of the man on the pier who offered his hand to steady me as I stepped off the ferry, and of the old woman in the public restroom who motioned for me to come and share with her the sole tiny sink. The possibility of these wordless interactions, to which we can be particularly attuned when alone, didn't cross my mind when I was anticipating my days in Istanbul. I had envisioned ships and minarets, the Grand Bazaar and the Hagia Sofia, yet not these faces, not these moments that silently transmit the warmth of a city.

He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices–women’s voices–had burst from a side-street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep loud ‘Oh-o-o-o-oh!’ that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It’s started! he had thought. A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding round the stalls of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamoured round the stall, accusing the stall-keeper of favouritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve. There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another’s hands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

When I’ve thought about him dying — which admittedly isn’t that much — I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass — our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?

With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the Richard’s chief gunner screamed to the Serapis, “Quarter! quarter! for God’s sake!” Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the Serapis’ commander, who called, “Do you ask for quarter?” Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle of fire the famous reply came faintly back to him: “I have not yet begun to fight!” Making good his boast, Jones sprang to a 9-pounder whose gun crew were killed or wounded, loaded and fired it himself, aiming at the Serapis’ mainmast, then loaded and fired again. As the mast toppled, Pearson, surrounded by dead, with rigging on fire, hauled down his red ensign in token of surrender. Escorted to Richard’s quarterdeck, he handed over his sword to Jones just as the Serapis’ mainmast crashed over the side and its sail, nevermore to carry the wind, collapsed in a dying billow into the sea.

How To Make A Human Take the cat out of the sphinx and what is left? Riddle Me That. Take the horse from the centaur and you take away the sleek grace, the strength of harnessed power. What is left can still run across fields, after a fashion, but is easily winded; what is left will therefore erect buildings to divide the open plains so he no longer must face the wide expanse where once his equine legs raced the winds and, sometimes, won. Take the bull from the Minotaur but what is left will still assemble a herd for the sake of ruling over it. What is left will kill for sport, in an arena thronged with spectators shouting "Ole" at each deadly thrust. Take the fish from the Merman: What is left can still swim, if only with lots of splashing; gone is the sleek sliding through the waves, alert to the subtle changes in the current. What is left will build ships so he can cross the oceans without getting his feet wet, what is left won't care if his boats pollute the seas he can no longer breathe so long as their passage can keep him from sinking. Take the goat from the satyr but what is left will dance out of reach before you have the chance to get that Dionysian streak of myschief, the love of music and wine, the rutting parts that like to party all the day through. What is left will still be stubborn and refuse to give way; what is left will lock horns and butt heads with anyone who challenges him. Take the bird from the harpy, but the memory of flying, a constant yearning ache for skies so tantalizingly distant, will still remain, as will the established pecking orders, the bitter squabbling over food and territory, and the magpie eye that lusts for shining objects. What is left will cut down the whole forest to feather his sprawling urban nest. At the end of these operations, tell me: what is left? The answer: Man, a creature divorced from nature, who's forgotten where he came from.

Ancient ethics always dealt with three questions. Modern ethics usually deals with only one, or at the most two. The three questions are like the three things a fleet of ships is told by its sailing orders. (The metaphor is from C. S. Lewis.) First, the ships must know how to avoid bumping into each other. This is social ethics, and modern as well as ancient ethicists deal with it. Second, they must know how to stay shipshape and avoid sinking. This is individual ethics, virtues and vices, character building, and we hear very little about this from our modern ethical philosophers. Third, and most important of all, they must know why the fleet is at sea in the first place. What is their mission, their destination? This is the question of the summum bonum, and no modern philosophers except the existentialists seem even to be interested in this, the greatest of all questions. Perhaps that is why most modern philosophy seems so weak and wimpy, so specialized and elitist, and above all so boring, to ordinary people.

Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world. You are negotiating, instead of playing the martyr or the tyrant. You no longer have to be envious, because you no longer know that someone else truly has it better. You no longer have to be frustrated, because you have learned to aim low, and to be patient. You are discovering who you are, and what you want, and what you are willing to do. You are finding that the solutions to your particular problems have to be tailored to you, personally and precisely. You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself. Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good. Now, your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully.… Ask, and ye shall receive. Knock, and the door will open. If you ask, as if you want, and knock, as if you want to enter, you may be offered the chance to improve your life, a little; a lot; completely—and with that improvement, some progress will be made in Being itself. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

The goal of Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee was to investigate all things related to German science. Target types ran the gamut: radar, missiles, aircraft, medicine, bombs and fuses, chemical and biological weapons labs. And while CIOS remained an official joint venture, there were other groups in the mix, with competing interests at hand. Running parallel to CIOS operations were dozens of secret intelligence-gathering operations, mostly American. The Pentagon’s Special Mission V-2 was but one example. By late March 1945, Colonel Trichel, chief of U.S. Army Ordnance, Rocket Branch, had dispatched his team to Europe. Likewise, U.S. Naval Technical Intelligence had officers in Paris preparing for its own highly classified hunt for any intelligence regarding the Henschel Hs 293, a guided missile developed by the Nazis and designed to sink or damage enemy ships. The U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) were still heavily engaged in strategic bombing campaigns, but a small group from Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, was laying plans to locate and capture Luftwaffe equipment and engineers. Spearheading Top Secret missions for British intelligence was a group of commandos called 30 Assault Unit, led by Ian Fleming, the personal assistant to the director of British naval intelligence and future author of the James Bond novels. Sometimes, the members of these parallel missions worked in consort with CIOS officers in the field.

You’re the one who didn’t keep his word. And speaking of your word and its dubious worth, don’t change the subject. I saw the looks you and Miss Turner were exchanging. The lady goes bright pink every time you speak to her. For God’s sake, you put food on her plate without even asking.” “And where’s the crime in that?” Gray was genuinely curious to hear the answer. He hadn’t forgotten that shocked look she’d given him. “Come on, Gray. You know very well one doesn’t take such a liberty with a mere acquaintance. It’s…it’s intimate. The two of you are intimate. Don’t deny it.” “I do deny it. It isn’t true.” Gray took another swig from his flask and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Damn it, Joss. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to trust me. I gave you my word. I’ve kept it.” And it was the truth, Gray told himself. Yes, he’d touched her tonight, but he’d never pledged not to touch her. He had kept his word. He hadn’t bedded her. He hadn’t kissed her. God, what he wouldn’t give just to kiss her… He rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest. That same ache lingered there-the same sharp tug he’d felt when she’d brought her foot down on his and pursed her lips into a silent plea. Please, she’d said. Don’t. As if she appealed to his conscience. His conscience. Where would the girl have gathered such a notion, that he possessed a conscience? Certainly not form his treatment of her. A bitter laugh rumbled through his chest, and Joss shot him a skeptical look. “Believe me, I’ve scarcely spoken to the girl in weeks. You can’t know the lengths I’ve gone to, avoiding her. And it isn’t easy, because she won’t stay put in her cabin, now will she? No, she has to go all over the ship, flirting with the crew, tacking her little pictures in every corner of the boat, taking tea in the galley with Gabriel. I can’t help but see her. And I can see she’s too damn thin. She needs to eat; I put food on her plate. There’s nothing more to it than that.” Joss said nothing, just stared at him as though he’d grown a second head. “Damn it, what now? Don’t you believe me?” “I believe what you’re saying,” his brother said slowly. “I just can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Gray folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “And what are you hearing?” “I wondered why you’d done all this…the dinner. Now I know.” “You know what?” Gray was growing exasperated. Most of all, because he didn’t know. “You care for this girl.” Joss cocked his head. “You care for her. Don’t you?” “Care for her.” Joss’s expression was smug. “Don’t you?” The idea was too preposterous to entertain, but Gray perked with inspiration. “Say I did care for her. Would you release me from that promise? If my answer is yes, can I pursue her?” Joss shook his head. “If the answer is yes, you can-and should-wait one more week. It’s not as though she’ll vanish the moment we make harbor. If the answer is yes, you’ll agree she deserves that much.” Wrong, Gray thought, sinking back into a chair.

Ship Protected From Storm The students of the great Ghawth (r.a) state that once he was delivering his lessons as usual to them when suddenly his blessed face turned red and beads of perspiration covered his blessed forehead. He then placed his hand into his cloak and remained silent for a short time. The students state that after he removed his hand from inside his cloak, drops of water began to drip from his sleeves. Due to his spiritual state, the students say that they did not ask him any questions but rather, they recorded the date, day and time of this astonishing event. The students say that two months after this incident, a group of traders, who had come by sea to Baghdad, arrived and presented various gifts to al-Ghawth al-A’zam (r.a) The students were very confused by this as they had never seen these traders in Baghdad before. They asked the traders the reason for them bringing the gifts. The traders said that two months previously, whilst they were sailing to Baghdad, their ship was caught in a fierce storm. When they realised that there was a real danger of sinking, they called out the name of “Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani” (r.a). When they called out his name, they found that from the Unseen a hand lifted their ship to safety. When the students compared this narration to the incident in the Madrassa, it was confirmed that it was the same date, day and time in which the great Saint (r.a) had put his hand into his cloak. Suhban-Allah! This incident shows that although Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) seemed to be placing his hand into his cloak, but in reality, he was stretching his hand into the sea to assist those who called for his assistance!

No, seriously," Mark continued. "Once you've been involved for a while, do your charity work in some third world toilet, they start letting you in on some of the bigger secrets to Responsivism, and how the knowledge will save you." "Go on," Juan said to indulge him. Murph might be flakey, but he had a topflight mind. "Ever heard of 'brane theory?" He'd already talked with Eric about it so only Stone didn't return a blank stare. "It's right up there with string theory as a way of unifying all four forces in the universe, something Einstein couldn't do. In a nutshell, it says our four-dimensional universe is a single membrane, and that there are others existing in higher orders of space. These are so close to ours that zero-point matter and energy can pass between them and that gravitation forces in our universe can leak out. It's all cutting-edge stuff." "I'll take your word for it," Cabrillo said. "Anyway, "brane theory started to get traction among theoreti cal physicists in the mid-nineties, and Lydell Cooper glommed on to it, too. He took it a step further, though. It wasn't just quantum particles passing in and out of our universe. He believed that an intelligence from another 'brane was affecting people here in our dimension. This intelligence, he said, shaped our day-to-day lives in ways we couldn't sense. It was the cause of all our suffering. Just before his death, Cooper started to teach techniques to limit this influence, ways to protect ourselves from the alien power." "And people bought this crap?" Max asked, sinking deeper into depression over his son. "Oh yeah. Think about it from their side for a second. It's not a believer's fault that he is unlucky or depressed or just plain stupid. His life is being messed with across dimensional membranes It's an alien influence that cost you that promotion or prevented you from dating the girl of your dreams. It's a cosmic force holding you back, not your own ineptitude. If you believe that, then you don't have to take responsibility for your life. And we all know nobody takes responsibility for himself anymore. Responsivism gives you a ready-made excuse for your poor life choices.

And then it sends a signal to turn off the system.” “So the universe with the wallet in the chamber waiting to be sent still exists,” added Allen. “But the universe from which it is actually sent never does.”  “That is just so messed up,” said Blake in exasperation, and Jenna, Walsh, and Soyer nodded their agreement. “Here is my advice to all of you,” said Cargill. “The best thing to do is ignore time travel, and don’t think about the paradoxes too hard. If you do, your head really will explode,” he added with a wry smile. “Just think of it as duplication and teleportation. But always keep in mind that the universe seems to go out of its way to ensure that infinite alternate timelines aren’t allowed. So no matter what, we only ever get this one universe.” He sighed. “So we’d better make sure we don’t screw it up.”     48   Brian Hamilton hated Cheyenne Mountain. Sure, it was one of the most interesting places in the world to visit, but living there only worked if you were a bat. The Palomar facility had also been underground, but nothing like this. It had a much larger security perimeter, so trips to the surface were easier to make happen. Not that it really mattered. Soon enough he would be traveling on another assignment anyway, living in a hotel room somewhere. But what he really wanted was to work side by side with Edgar Knight, toward their common goal. He was tired of being Knight’s designated spy, having to watch Lee Cargill squander Q5’s vast resources and capabilities. Watching him crawl like a wounded baby when he could be soaring. Cargill was an idiot. He could transform the world, but he was too weak to do it. He could wipe out the asshole terrorists who wanted nothing more than to butcher the helpless. If you have the ultimate cure for cancer, you use it to wipe out the disease once and for all. You don’t wield your cure only as a last resort, when the cancer has all but choked the life out of you. Edgar Knight, on the other hand, was a man with vision. He was able to make the tough decisions. If you were captain of a life raft with a maximum capacity of ten people, choosing to take five passengers of a sinking ship on board was an easy decision, not a heroic one. But what about when there were fifty passengers? Was it heroic to take them all, dooming everyone to death? Or was the heroic move using force, if necessary, to limit this number, to ensure some would survive? Sure, from the outside this looked coldhearted, while the converse seemed compassionate. But watching the world circle the drain because you were too much of a pussy to make the hard decisions was the real crime. Survival of the fittest was harsh reality. In the animal kingdom it was eat or be eaten. If you saw a group of fuck-nuts just itching to nuke the world back into the Dark Ages—who believed the Messiah equivalent, the twelfth Imam, would only come out to play when Israel was destroyed, and worldwide Armageddon unleashed—you wiped them out. To a man. Or else they’d do the same to you. It had been three days since Cargill had reported that he was on the verge of acquiring Jenna Morrison and Aaron Blake.