“
I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table.
I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as a starfish loves a coral reef and as a kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza.
I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. i will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey.
I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and as an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as the taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.
”
”
Lemony Snicket
“
Soon after the completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His hour came,—the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the horizon,—that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered only as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the figure,—he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman, in one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly, his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her guardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the wife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has done, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort. Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once into a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time of the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand dollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.
The married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining a brilliant circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake Pontchartrain, when, one day, a letter was brought to him in that well-remembered writing. It was handed to him while he was in full tide of gay and successful conversation, in a whole room-full of company. He turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his composure, and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at the moment carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a short time after, was missed from the circle. In his room,alone, he opened and read the letter, now worse than idle and useless to be read. It was from her, giving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed by her guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and she related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive; how she had written time and again, till she became weary and doubtful; how her health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had discovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both. The letter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions of undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy young man. He wrote to her immediately:
I have received yours,—but too late. I believed all I heard. I was desperate. I am married, and all is over. Only forget,—it is all that remains for either of us."
And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St. Clare. But the real remained,—the real, like the flat, bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,—exceedingly real.
Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.
”
”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
“
The compass rose is nothing but a star with an infinite number of rays pointing in all directions.
It is the one true and perfect symbol of the universe.
And it is the one most accurate symbol of you.
Spread your arms in an embrace, throw your head back, and prepare to receive and send coordinates of being. For, at last you know—you are the navigator, the captain, and the ship.
”
”
Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
“
She heard footsteps thumping from the crew quarters and Jacin appeared in the cargo bay, eyes wide. “What happened? Why is the ship screaming?”
“Nothing. Everything’s fine,” Cinder stammered.
“No, everything is not fine,” said Iko. “How can they be invited? I’ve never seen a bigger injustice in all my programmed life, and believe me, I have seen some big injustices.”
Jacin raised an eyebrow at Cinder.
“We just learned that my former guardian received an invitation to the wedding.” She opened the tab beside her stepmother’s name, thinking maybe it was a mistake.
But of course not.
Linh Adri had been awarded 80,000 univs and an official invitation to the royal wedding as an act of gratitude for her assistance in the ongoing manhunt for her adopted and estranged daughter, Linh Cinder.
“Because she sold me out,” she said, sneering. “Figures.”
“See? Injustice. Here we are, risking our lives to rescue Kai and this whole planet, and Adri and Pearl get to go to the royal wedding. I’m disgusted. I hope they spill soy sauce on their fancy dresses.”
Jacin’s concern turned fast to annoyance. “Your ship has some messed-up priorities, you know that?”
“Iko. My name is Iko. If you don’t stop calling me the ‘ship,’ I am going to make sure you never have hot water during your showers again, do you understand me?”
“Yeah, hold that thought while I go disable the speaker system.”
“What? You can’t mute me. Cinder!
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
Now, therefore, I will sleep. I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men."
Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear me hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Numenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive."
So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“
There’s a famous Russian proverb about this type of behavior. One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.
”
”
Bill Browder (Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice)
“
Suppose that you didn’t make your Easter duty and it’s Pentecost Sunday, the last day, and you’re on a ship at sea. And the chaplain goes into a coma! But you wanted to receive. And then it’s Monday, too late… But then you cross the International Date Line! Would that then be a sin then, Father?
”
”
George Carlin
“
He walked straight out of college into the waiting arms of the Navy.
They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back?
Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn't prove his intelligence, what would?
Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal.
Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
“
My town is a factory for the production of human babies. People live in nests packed closely together. It's just like the silkworm room in Granny's house. The nests are lined up neatly in rows, and each contains a breeding pair of male and female humans and their babies. The breeding pairs raise their young inside their nests.
The Baby Factory produces humans connected by flesh and blood. Eventually we children will also leave the factory and be shipped out.
Once shipped out, male and female humans are trained how to take food back to their own nests. They become society's tools, receive money from other humans, and purchase food. Eventually these young humans also form breeding pairs, coop themselves up in new nests, and manufacture more babies.
”
”
Sayaka Murata (Earthlings)
“
Not all of us receive the ends that we deserve. Many moments that change a life's course - a conversation with a stranger on a ship, for example - are pure luck. And yet no one writes you a letter, or chooses you as their confessor, without good reason. This is what she taught me: you have to be ready in order to be lucky. You have to put your pieces into play.
”
”
Jessie Burton (The Muse)
“
Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea.
When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair.
In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed.
Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.
”
”
Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)
“
When you didn’t know how to do anything that’s what you became—a shipping clerk, receiving clerk, stock boy.
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Post Office)
“
One early challenge was that the book distributors required retailers to order ten books at a time. Amazon didn’t yet have that kind of sales volume, and Bezos later enjoyed telling the story of how he got around it. “We found a loophole,” he said. “Their systems were programmed in such a way that you didn’t have to receive ten books, you only had to order ten books. So we found an obscure book about lichens that they had in their system but was out of stock. We began ordering the one book we wanted and nine copies of the lichen book. They would ship out the book we needed and a note that said, ‘Sorry, but we’re out of the lichen book.’ ”4
”
”
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
“
Since thou wilt not remain here, chieftain, thou shalt receive the boon whatsoever thy tongue may name, as far as the wind dries, and the rain moistens, and the sun revolves, and the sea encircles, and the earth extends; save only my ship; and my mantle; and Caledvwlch, my sword; and Rhongomyant, my lance; and Wynebgwrthucher, my shield; and Carnwenhau, my dagger; and Gwenhwyvar, my wife
”
”
Anonymous (The Mabinogion (Penguin Classics))
“
You have never felt how small you were when looking at the ocean."
He laughed. "Never. Nor looking at the planets. Nor at mountain peaks. Nor at the Grand Canyon. Why should I? When I look at the ocean, I feel the the greatness of man. I think of man's magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of air planes."
"Yes. And that particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in contemplating nature- I've never received it from nature, only from ..." she stopped.
”
”
Ayn Rand
“
Contrary to popular assumption, going on an expedition around the world is not merely a matter of obtaining a ship and charting a course. There are visas to be considered, and bureaucracy to navigate when those visas fail to arrive in time, expire too soon, or meet with blank stares on the receiving end. The politics of nations and their economic markets may interfere with your journey. In short, you may spend an appalling amount of time mired in stuffy little offices, trying to get permission to be where you are.
”
”
Marie Brennan (The Voyage of the Basilisk (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #3))
“
Once more she knew the humility of being born a woman, when the breaking down of strength and spirit was taken as natural and unquestioned. Were she a man, now, she would receive rough treatment, or indifference at the best, and be requested to ride at once perhaps to Bodmin or to Launceston to bear witness, with an understanding that she should find her own lodging and betake herself to the world’s end if she wished when all questions had been asked. And she would depart, when they had finished with her, and go on a ship somewhere, working her passage before the mast; or tramp the road with one silver penny in her pocket and her heart and soul at liberty.
”
”
Daphne du Maurier (Jamaica Inn)
“
How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it--but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there. They know nothing and they've never heard of the Archipelago as a whole or any one of its innumerable islands.
Those who go to the Archipelago to administer it get there via the training schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Those who go there to be guards are conscripted via the military conscription centers.
And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.
Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?
The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest."
If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm?
But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these displacements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience,
can gasp out only: "Me? What for?"
And this is a question which, though repeated millions and
millions of times before, has yet to receive an answer.
Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another.
We have been happily borne—or perhaps have unhappily
dragged our weary way—down the long and crooked streets of
our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood,
rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given
a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to penetrate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is
where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away
from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous number of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these
fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And
all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four
white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but nonetheless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap,
ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to
our past life, is slammed shut once and for all.
That's all there is to it! You are arrested!
And you'll find nothing better to respond with than a lamblike
bleat: "Me? What for?"
That's what arrest is: it's a blinding flash and a blow which
shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into
omnipotent actuality.
That's all. And neither for the first hour nor for the first day
will you be able to grasp anything else.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation V-VII)
“
I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.
”
”
Lemony Snicket (The Beatrice Letters)
“
Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy?
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick: or, the White Whale)
“
In any age, there is no shortage of people willing to embark on a hazardous adventure. Columbus and Magellan filled eight ships between them for voyages into the void. One hundred and fifty years ago, the possibilities offered by missionary service were limitless and first-rate. Later, Scott and Shackleton turned away droves after filling their crews for their desperate Antarctic voyages. In 1959 ... sailor H.W. Tilman, looking for a crew for a voyage in an old wooden yacht to the Southern Ocean, ran this ad in the London Times: "Hand [man] wanted for long voyage in small boat. No pay, no prospects, not much pleasure." Tilman received more replies than he could investigate, one from as far away as Saigon.
”
”
Peter Nichols (Evolution's Captain: The Dark Fate of the Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around the World)
“
Honest James, forgetting the injury he had so lately received from him, flew to his assistance, and, with great difficulty, hauled him in again, but, in the attempt, was, by a sudden jerk of the ship, thrown overboard himself, in sight of the very fellow whom he had risked his life to save, and who took not the least notice of him in this distress.
”
”
Voltaire (Candide)
“
Shipping work must also solve a problem and result in customers truly receiving value from whatever was shipped.
”
”
Richard Banfield (Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams)
“
Every fatline receiver in the Web, Outback, galaxy, and universe would monitor the squirt, but only the Consul’s ship could decode it. Or so she hoped. The
”
”
Dan Simmons (The Fall of Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #2))
“
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.
One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.
I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.
For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.
We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.
Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.
I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.
”
”
Czesław Miłosz
“
But one thing is certain: those daughters of Leda are a plague on their menfolk. Did Odysseus worry that he would receive a similar welcome here on Ithaca? That I, the devout Penelope, would treat him as Clytemnestra had treated her husband? The idea is preposterous. My name is a byword for patience and loyalty, no matter which bard sings it. But that is my Odysseus. And your Odysseus. Always finding things out the hard way.
”
”
Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships)
“
Salaethus himself began to despair of the arrival of the ships, and therefore he put into the hands of the common people (who had hitherto been light-armed) shields and spears, intending to lead them out against the Athenians. But, having once received arms, they would no longer obey their leaders; they gathered into knots and insisted that the nobles should bring out the corn and let all share alike; if not, they would themselves negotiate with the Athenians and surrender the city.
”
”
Thucydides (The Complete Works of Thucydides)
“
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, "Thank God that son of a bitch is dead.
”
”
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
“
It is even so in a commonwealth and in the councils of princes; if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot cure some received vice according to your wishes, you must not, therefore, abandon the commonwealth, for the same reasons as you should not forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds. You are not obliged to assault people with discourses that are out of their road, when you see that their received notions must prevent your making an impression upon them: you ought rather to cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your power, so that, if you are not able to make them go well, they may be as little ill as possible; for, except all men were good, everything cannot be right, and that is a blessing that I do not at present hope to see.
”
”
Thomas More (Utopia)
“
Penny receives a delivery of her Penny Blossom accessory creations. The props department, led by Scott London, weren’t about to put a shipping label that just said “Penny.” And so, years later, eagle-eyed fans zoomed in on that label and found a very hard-to-make-out surname: Teller.
”
”
Jessica Radloff (The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series)
“
The saints are little pieces of mystical Christ, sick of love for union. The wife of youth, that wants her husband some years, and expects he shall return to her from oversea lands, is often on the shore; every ship coming near shore is her new joy; her heart loves the wind that shall bring him home. She asks at every passenger news: "Oh! saw ye my husband? What is he doing? When shall he come? Is he shipped for a return?" Every ship that carrieth not her husband, is the breaking of her heart. What desires hath the Spirit and Bride to hear, when the husband Christ shall say to the mighty angels, "Make you ready for the journey; let us go down and divide the skies, and bow the heaven: I will gather my prisoners of hope unto me; I can want my Rachel and her weeping children no longer. Behold, I come quickly to judge the nations." The bride, the Lamb's wife, blesseth the feet of the messengers that preach such tidings, "Rejoice, O Zion, put on thy beautiful garments; thy King is coming." Yea, she loveth that quarter of the sky, that being rent asunder and cloven, shall yield to her Husband, when he shall put through his glorious hand, and shall come riding on the rainbow and clouds to receive her to himself.
”
”
Samuel Rutherford (The Trial and Triumph of Faith)
“
This is not mysticism, but identification; man, building this greatest and most personal of all tools, has in turn received a boat-shaped mind, and the boat, a man-shaped soul. His spirit and the tendrils of his feeling are so deep in a boat that the identification is complete. It is very easy to see why the Viking wished his body to sail away in an unmanned ship, for neither could exist without the other; or, failing that, how it was necessary that the things he loved most, his women and his ship, lie with him and thus keep closed the circle. In the great fire on the shore, all three started at least in the same direction, and in the gathered ashes who could say where man or woman stopped and ship began?
”
”
John Steinbeck (The Log from the Sea of Cortez)
“
After the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 P.M., the ship’s radio operator sent out an SOS. An SOS is the international distress signal in Morse code. Unfortunately, the only ship near the Titanic had turned off its radio for the night. All the other ships who received the message were too far away to help. When the Titanic sank around 2:20 A.M., she was all alone.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
Before me green slopes made a wide amphitheatre, enclosing a frothy and pulsating lake into which, over many-coloured rocks, a waterfall was pouring. Here once again I realised that something had happened to my senses so that they were now receiving impressions which would normally exceed their capacity. On earth, such a waterfall could not have been perceived at all as a whole; it was too big. Its sound would have been a terror in the woods for twenty miles. Here, after the first shock, my sensibility ‘took’ both as a well-built ship takes a huge wave. I exulted. The noise, though gigantic, was like giants’ laughter: like the revelry of a whole college of giants together laughing, dancing, singing, roaring at their high works.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)
“
Were she a man, now, she would receive rough treatment, or indifference at the best, and be requested to ride at once perhaps to Bodmin or to Launceston to bear witness, with an understanding that she should find her own lodging and betake herself to the world’s end if she wished when all questions had been asked. And she would depart, when they had finished with her, and go on a ship somewhere, working her passage before the mast; or tramp the road with one silver penny in her pocket and her heart and soul at liberty. Here she was, with tears ready to the surface and an aching head, being hurried from the scene of action with smooth words and gestures, a nuisance and a factor of delay, like every woman and every child after tragedy.
”
”
Daphne du Maurier (Jamaica Inn)
“
The young Winston Churchill used to stand in the doorway of a ballroom, rating female looks on the Helen of Troy basis: ‘Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ he would ask a friend standing with him, receiving in answer a murmured: ‘Two hundred ships?’ as a young woman passed. ‘By no means,’ Winston would respond. ‘A covered sampan or a small gunboat at most.
”
”
Anne de Courcy (The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy)
“
They reported that children were typically paid roughly two dollars a day regardless of production and that they received little to no assistance when they suffered injuries. The diggers at Tilwezembe described hazardous conditions and harsh reprisals if they did not obey their bosses. Some were locked inside a shipping container called a cachot (“dungeon”) without food or water for up to two days.
”
”
Siddharth Kara (Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives)
“
We found a loophole,” he said. “Their systems were programmed in such a way that you didn’t have to receive ten books, you only had to order ten books. So we found an obscure book about lichens that they had in their system but was out of stock. We began ordering the one book we wanted and nine copies of the lichen book. They would ship out the book we needed and a note that said, ‘Sorry, but we’re out of the lichen book.
”
”
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
“
I was on duty when our submarine went into port in Nassau and tied up at the Prince George Wharf, and I was the officer who accepted an invitation from the governor-general of the Bahamas for our officers and crewmen to attend an official ball to honor the U.S. Navy. There was a more private comment that a number of young ladies would be present with their chaperones. All of us were pleased and excited, and Captain Andrews responded affirmatively. We received a notice the next day that, of course, the nonwhite crewmen would not be included. When I brought this message to the captain, he had the crew assemble in the mess hall and asked for their guidance in drafting a response. After multiple expletives were censored from the message, we unanimously declined to participate. The decision by the crew of the K-1 was an indication of how equal racial treatment had been accepted—and relished. I was very proud of my ship. On leave
”
”
Jimmy Carter (A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety)
“
Most of the energy of a chemical rocket goes into lifting its own weight into space, but a nanoship passively receives its energy from external ground-based lasers, so there is no wasted fuel—100 percent of it goes into propelling the ship. And since nanoships do not have to generate their own energy, they have no moving parts. This significantly reduces the chances of mechanical breakdowns. They also have no explosive chemicals and would not blow up on the launchpad or in space.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny BeyondEarth)
“
Granger bounded towards the command console and tapped the video display showing the priority message received from CENTCOM. A zoomed-in image of Mars appeared, and a handful of grainy-looking ships snapped into orbit, decelerating at incredible speeds. After a brief battle with a handful of defending orbital patrol ships, a harsh white light appeared in the midst of the invading fleet. As the light intensified, the image started to pulse with static. Suddenly, the brilliant light disappeared in a flash.
”
”
Nick Webb (Constitution (Legacy Fleet Trilogy, #1))
“
The relationship between the Sophotechs and the men as depicted in that tale made no sense. How could they be hostile to each other?”
Diomedes said, “Aren’t men right to fear machines which can perform all tasks men can do, artistic, intellectual, technical, a thousand or a million times better than they can do? Men become redundant.”
Phaethon shook his head, a look of distant distaste on his features, as if he were once again confronted with a falsehood that would not die no matter how often it was denounced. In a voice of painstaking patience, he said: “Efficiency does not harm the inefficient. Quite the opposite. That is simply not the way it works. Take me, for example. Look around: I employed partials to do the thought-box junction spotting when I built this ship. My employees were not as skilled as I was in junction spotting. It took them three hours to do the robopsychology checks and hierarchy links I could have done in one hour. But they were in no danger of competition from me. My time is too valuable. In that same hour it would have taken me to spot their thought-box junction, I can earn far more than their three-hour wages by writing supervision architecture thought flows. And it’s the same with me and the Sophotechs.
“Any midlevel Sophotech could have written in one second the architecture it takes me, even with my implants, an hour to compose. But if, in that same one second of time, that Sophotech can produce something more valuable—exploring the depth of abstract mathematics, or inventing a new scientific miracle, anything at all (provided that it will earn more in that second than I earn in an hour)—then the competition is not making me redundant. The Sophotech still needs me and receives the benefit of my labor. Since I am going to get the benefit of every new invention and new miracle put out on the market, I want to free up as many of those seconds of Sophotech time as my humble labor can do.
“And I get the lion’s share of the benefit from the swap. I only save him a second of time; he creates wonder upon wonder for me. No matter what my fear of or distaste for Sophotechs, the forces in the marketplace, our need for each other, draw us together.
“So you see why I say that not a thing the Silent One said about Sophotechs made sense. I do not understand how they could have afforded to hate each other. Machines don’t make us redundant; they increase our efficiency in every way. And the bids of workers eager to compete for Sophotech time creates a market for merely human work, which it would not be efficient for Sophotechs to underbid.
”
”
John C. Wright (The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age, #3))
“
The prayer that moves Omnipotence to pity, and summons all the hosts of heaven to help, is not the prayer of nicely rounded periods--Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null--but the prayer of passionate entreaty. It is a call--a call such as a doctor receives at dead of night; a call such as the fireman receives when all the alarms are clanging; a call such as the ships receive in mid-ocean, when, hurtling through the darkness and the void, there comes the wireless message, 'S.O.S.' 'Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.
”
”
F.W. Boreham (A Handful of Stars: Texts That Have Moved Great Minds)
“
The ship did not respond to queries. Without the ship, there could be no fatline relay to the Ousters, the Web, or anywhere else beyond Hyperion. Normal comm bands were down. ‘Could the ship have been destroyed?’ Sol asked the Consul. ‘No. The message is being received, just not responded to. Gladstone still has the ship in quarantine.’ Sol squinted out over the barrens to where the mountains shimmered in the heat haze. Several klicks closer, the ruins of the City of Poets rose jaggedly against the skyline. ‘Just as well,’ he said. ‘We have one deus ex machina too many as it is.’ Paul
”
”
Dan Simmons (The Fall of Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #2))
“
On 20 November, front-line troops got 500 grams of bread per day, factory workers received 250, and everyone else 125 (that is, two slices). ‘Twigs were collected and stewed,’ records an historian of the siege. ‘Peat shavings, cottonseed cake, bonemeal was pressed into use. Pine sawdust was processed and added to the bread. Mouldy grain was dredged from sunken barges and scraped out of the holds of ships. Soon Leningrad bread was containing 10% cottonseed cake that had been processed to remove poisons. Household pets, shoe leather, fir bark and insects were consumed, as was wallpaper paste which was reputed to be made with potato flour. Guinea pigs, white mice and rabbits were saved from vivisection in the city’s laboratories for a more immediately practical fate. ‘Today it is so simple to die,’ wrote one resident, Yelena Skryabina, in her diary. ‘You just begin to lose interest, then you lie on your bed and you never get up again. Yet some people were willing to go to any lengths in order to survive: 226 people were arrested for cannibalism during the siege. ‘Human meat is being sold in the markets,’ concluded one secret NKVD report, ‘while in the cemeteries bodies pile up like carcasses, without coffins.
”
”
Andrew Roberts (The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War)
“
Thus the Athenians by the good-will of the allies, who detested Pausanias, obtained the leadership. They immediately fixed which of the cities should supply money and which of them ships for the war against the Barbarians, the avowed object being to compensate themselves and the allies for their losses by devastating the King's country.
Then was first instituted at Athens the office of Hellenic treasurers (Hellenotamiae), who received the tribute,for so the contributions were termed. The amount was originally fixed at 460 talents.The island of Delos was the treasury, and the meetings of the allies were held in the temple.
(Book 1 Chapter 96)
”
”
Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War: Books 1-2)
“
What made Bacon’s Rebellion especially fearsome for the rulers of Virginia was that black slaves and white servants joined forces. The final surrender was by “four hundred English and Negroes in Armes” at one garrison, and three hundred “freemen and African and English bondservants” in another garrison. The naval commander who subdued the four hundred wrote: “Most of them I persuaded to go to their Homes, which accordingly they did, except about eighty Negroes and twenty English which would not deliver their Armes.” All through those early years, black and white slaves and servants ran away together, as shown both by the laws passed to stop this and the records of the courts. In 1698, South Carolina passed a “deficiency law” requiring plantation owners to have at least one white servant for every six male adult Negroes. A letter from the southern colonies in 1682 complained of “no white men to superintend our negroes, or repress an insurrection of negroes. . . .” In 1691, the House of Commons received “a petition of divers merchants, masters of ships, planters and others, trading to foreign plantations . . . setting forth, that the plantations cannot be maintained without a considerable number of white servants, as well to keep the blacks in subjection, as to bear arms in case of invasion.
”
”
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
“
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.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
“
The bottom of the sea was aflame with a vast bloody glow that spread beneath the schooner; the light slid under the keel and illuminated the sails and rigging from below. It was as though we were on a boat in the Drury Lane Theatre, lighted by an invisible row of flares.
‘Phosphorescence?’ I ventured.
‘Look,’ whispered Jellewyn.
The water had become as transparent as glass. At an enormous depth, we saw great dark masses with unreal shapes: there were manors with immense towers, gigantic domes, horribly straight streets lined with frenzied houses. We appeared to be flying over a furiously busy city at an incredible height.
‘There seems to be movement,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
We could see a swarming crowd of amorphous beings engaged in some sort of feverish and infernal activity.
‘Get back!’ Jellewyn shouted, pulling me violently by the belt.
One of those beings was rising toward us with astounding speed. In less than a second its immense bulk had hidden the undersea city from us; it was as though a flood of ink had instantaneously spread around us.
The keel received a tremendous blow. In the crimson light, we saw three enormous tentacles, three times as high as the mainmast, hideously writhing in the air. A formidable face composed of black shadows and two eyes of liquid amber rose above the port side of the ship and gave us a terrifying look.
”
”
Jean Ray (Ghouls in My Grave)
“
This day have I begotten thee.” If this refers to the Godhead of our Lord, let us not attempt to fathom it, for it is a great truth, a truth reverently to be received, but not irreverently to be scanned. It may be added, that if this relates to the Begotten One in his human nature, we must here also rejoice in the mystery, but not attempt to violate its sanctity by intrusive prying into the secrets of the Eternal God. The things which are revealed are enough, without venturing into vain speculations. In attempting to define the Trinity, or unveil the essence of Divinity, many men have lost themselves: here great ships have foundered. What have we to do in such a sea with our frail skiffs?
”
”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (The Treasury of David: Commentary on the Psalms (Complete Six Volumes))
“
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great services to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, "Thank God that son of a bitch is dead."
Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.
There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, "What can we do now? How can we go on without him?
”
”
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
“
You can bottle happiness?” This was contrary to every bit of advice I’d ever received. I handed the precious bottle back to my aunt. “No. Just the memory of it.” Gwyneth’s tone was tinged with regret. My aunt twisted the cork in the neck of the bottle, cracking its wax seal and releasing a scent of fallen leaves and apple cider. I felt a crisp breeze on my skin, and the warm sun on my face. Children could be heard playing in the distance, their voices raised as they scampered across the meadow where piles of golden grass had been cut and gathered. A cow lowed, a bell sounded. A ship under full sail passed by The Nestling. I shielded my eyes to see it better, but my hand was not my own. I was looking out at the world through different eyes, seeing what someone else had seen, a very long time ago.
”
”
Deborah Harkness (The Black Bird Oracle (All Souls #5))
“
There is no doubt: it was San Domingo—Haiti that gave the Creole independence movement a decisive turn. To overcome the fierce resistance of the Spanish troops, Simón Bolívar sought to secure the support of the rebel ex-slaves of the Caribbean state, which he personally visited. The president at the time was Alexandre Pétion, who immediately received the Latin American revolutionary. He promised him the aid he requested on condition that he freed the slaves in areas as they were wrested from Spanish control. Transcending the class and caste limits of the social group he belonged to, and demonstrating intellectual and political courage, Bolívar accepted. Seven ships, 6,000 men with arms and munitions, a printing press and numerous advisors set out from the island. This was the beginning of the abolition of slavery in much of Latin America.
”
”
Domenico Losurdo (Liberalism: A Counter-History)
“
On 1 November 1983 Secretary of State George Shultz received intelligence reports showing that Iraq was using chemical weapons almost daily. The following February, Iraq used large amounts of mustard gas and also the lethal nerve agent tabun (this was later documented by the United Nations); Reagan responded (in November) by restoring diplomatic relations with Iraq. He and Bush Sr. also authorized the sale of poisonous chemicals, anthrax, and bubonic plague. Along with French supply houses, American Type Culture Collection of Manassas, Virginia, shipped seventeen types of biological agents to Iraq that were then used in weapons programs. In 1989, ABC-TV news correspondent Charles Glass discovered what the U.S. government had been denying, that Iraq had biological warfare facilities. This was corroborated by evidence from a defecting Iraqi general. The Pentagon immediately denied the facts.
”
”
Morris Berman (Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire)
“
As usual in such matters, there were as many opinions about why the mackerel had scarcely appeared this year as there were people to ask. A local fishmonger told me with great authority that a monstrous new ship was operating in the Irish Sea, fishing not with a net but with a vacuum tube that sucked up the mackerel and everything else that came its way, which it turned into fishmeal for use as fertilizer and animal feed. It had been licensed by the Environment Agency to catch 500 tonnes of mackerel a day, and had received a £13 million subsidy from the European Commission. I checked this story and soon discovered that the Environment Agency has no jurisdiction at sea, that vacuum tubes are used not for fishing but for sucking the catch out of the nets, that there is no such fishmeal operation in the Irish Sea and that no boat is licensed to take such a tonnage. Otherwise the explanation was impeccable.
”
”
George Monbiot (Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding)
“
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung has come and gone, and the majestic roll of circling centuries begins anew: justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, with a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom the iron shall cease, the golden race arise, befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, this glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin, and the months enter on their mighty march. Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain of our old wickedness, once done away, shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear. He shall receive the life of gods, and see heroes with gods commingling, and himself be seen of them, and with his father's worth reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy, first shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray with foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed, and laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves, untended, will the she-goats then bring home their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield shall of the monstrous lion have no fear. Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die, die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far and wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon as thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame, and of thy father's deeds, and inly learn what virtue is, the plain by slow degrees with waving corn-crops shall to golden grow, fom the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape, and stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships, gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth. Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be, her hero-freight a second Argo bear; new wars too shall arise, and once again some great Achilles to some Troy be sent.
”
”
Virgil (The Eclogues)
“
Stalin’s appeasement of Hitler had continued with a large increase in deliveries to Germany of grain, fuel, cotton, metals and rubber purchased in south-east Asia, circumventing the British blockade. During the period of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union had provided 26,000 tons of chromium, used in metal alloys, 140,000 tons of manganese and more than two millions tons of oil to the Reich. Despite having received well over eighty clear indications of a German invasion–indeed probably more than a hundred–Stalin seemed more concerned with ‘the security problem along our north-west frontier’, which meant the Baltic states. On the night of 14 June, a week before the German invasion, 60,000 Estonians, 34,000 Latvians and 38,000 Lithuanians were forced on to cattle trucks for deportation to camps in the distant interior of the Soviet Union. Stalin remained unconvinced even when, during the last week before the invasion, German ships rapidly left Soviet ports and embassy staff were evacuated.
”
”
Antony Beevor (The Second World War)
“
Identify your strengths, and then—this is important—major in them. Take a few irons out of the fire so this one can get hot. Failing to focus on our strengths may prevent us from accomplishing the unique tasks God has called us to do. A lighthouse keeper who worked on a rocky stretch of coastline received oil once a month to keep his light burning. Not being far from a village, he had frequent guests. One night a woman needed oil to keep her family warm. Another night a father needed oil for his lamp. Then another needed oil to lubricate a wheel. All the requests seemed legitimate, so the lighthouse keeper tried to meet them all. Toward the end of the month, however, he ran out of oil, and his lighthouse went dark, causing several ships to crash on the coastline. The man was reproved by his superiors, “You were given the oil for one reason,” they said, “to keep the light burning.”1 We cannot meet every need in the world. We cannot please every person in the world. We cannot satisfy every request in the world. But some of us try. And in the end, we run out of fuel. Have a sane estimate of your abilities and stick to them.
”
”
Max Lucado (Just Like Jesus: A Heart Like His)
“
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung has come and gone, and the majestic roll of circling centuries begins anew: justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, with a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom the iron shall cease, the golden race arise, befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, this glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin, and the months enter on their mighty march. Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain of our old wickedness, once done away, shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear. He shall receive the life of gods, and see heroes with gods commingling, and himself be seen of them, and with his father's worth reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy, first shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray with foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed, and laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves, untended, will the she-goats then bring home their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield shall of the monstrous lion have no fear. Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die, die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far and wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon as thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame, and of thy father's deeds, and inly learn what virtue is, the plain by slow degrees with waving corn-crops shall to golden grow, fom the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape, and stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships, gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth. Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be, her hero-freight a second Argo bear; new wars too shall arise, and once again some great Achilles to some Troy be sent. Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man, no more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark
ply traffic on the sea, but every land shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more shall feel the harrow's grip, nor vine the hook; the sturdy ploughman shall loose yoke from steer, nor wool with varying colours learn to lie; but in the meadows shall the ram himself, now with soft flush of purple, now with tint
of yellow saffron, teach his fleece to shine. While clothed in natural scarlet graze the lambs.
”
”
Virgil (The Eclogues)
“
We feel, mostly, that our actions matter, and that earnest communication is happening, that we are real and permanent and in control of our fate. And under normal circumstances, these things are (mostly) true: we are sane sailors on a sturdy ship in a calm harbor. But every now and then the scrim drops (there’s a scrim in this metaphorical harbor) and out there: the open ocean, huge waves, fierce winds. And we find ourselves heading out. Soon it becomes clear that we are not, after all, in control, not a high-functioning sailor standing stably on a nice calm deck, a deck that we have created through our virtue. The ship is pitching, and the deck is covered in ice, and we’re wearing special headphones that distort what our crewmates are shouting and special mouthpieces that distort what we’re shouting back in return. And now the ship is going down and some action is required, some cooperation, some compassion. And we intend to be compassionate, we really do, but the intended compassion, passing out through those distorting mouthpieces and being received through those distorting headphones, is off; it doesn’t help, and may even hurt, or, worst of all, may make no difference at all.
”
”
George Saunders (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life)
“
And then now a very strange argument indeed ensues, me v. the Lebanese porter, because it turns out I am putting this guy, who barely speaks English, in a terrible kind of sedulous-service double-bind, a paradox of pampering: viz. the The-Passenger’s-Always-Right-versus-Never-Let-A-Passenger-Carry-His-Own-Bag paradox. Clueless at the time about what this poor little Lebanese man is going through, I wave off both his high-pitched protests and his agonized expression as mere servile courtesy, and I extract the duffel and lug it up the hall to 1009 and slather the old beak with ZnO and go outside to watch the coast of Florida recede cinematically à la F. Conroy. Only later did I understand what I’d done. Only later did I learn that that little Lebanese Deck 10 porter had his head just about chewed off by the (also Lebanese) Deck 10 Head Porter, who’d had his own head chewed off by the Austrian Chief Steward, who’d received confirmed reports that a Deck 10 passenger had been seen carrying his own luggage up the Port hallway of Deck 10 and now demanded rolling Lebanese heads for this clear indication of porterly dereliction, and had reported (the Austrian Chief Steward did) the incident (as is apparently SOP) to an officer in the Guest Relations Dept., a Greek officer with Revo shades and a walkie-talkie and officerial epaulets so complex I never did figure out what his rank was; and this high-ranking Greek guy actually came around to 1009 after Saturday’s supper to apologize on behalf of practically the entire Chandris shipping line and to assure me that ragged-necked Lebanese heads were even at that moment rolling down various corridors in piacular recompense for my having had to carry my own bag. And even though this Greek officer’s English was in lots of ways better than mine, it took me no less than ten minutes to express my own horror and to claim responsibility and to detail the double-bind I’d put the porter in—brandishing at relevant moments the actual tube of ZnO that had caused the whole snafu—ten or more minutes before I could get enough of a promise from the Greek officer that various chewed-off heads would be reattached and employee records unbesmirched to feel comfortable enough to allow the officer to leave; 42 and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-fraught and filled almost a whole Mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psychoskeletal outline.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments)
“
Under these circumstances, revenue from the New World in the form of exports of gold and silver was critical. The Spanish government, however, imposed strict rules limiting economic exchange—a system known as mercantilism—under the mistaken belief that this would maximize its income from the colonies. Exports from the New World could go only to Spain, indeed, to a single port in Spain; they were required to travel in Spanish ships; and the colonies were not permitted to compete with Spanish producers of manufactured goods. Mercantilism, as Adam Smith was to demonstrate in The Wealth of Nations, created huge inefficiencies and was highly detrimental to economic growth. It also had very significant political consequences: access to markets and the right to make productive economic investments were limited to individuals or corporations favored by the state. This meant that the route to personal wealth lay through the state and through gaining political influence. This then led to a rentier rather than an entrepreneurial mentality, in which energy was spent seeking political favor rather than initiating new enterprises that would create wealth. The landowning and merchant classes that emerged under this system grew rich because of the political protection they received from the state.
”
”
Francis Fukuyama (Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy)
“
UKIP SHIPPING FORECAST by Nicholas Pegg After a UKIP councillor claimed widespread flooding in the UK was God’s punishment for allowing same-sex marriage, author/performer Nicholas Pegg wrote his own version of the Shipping Forecast. His recording went viral, receiving 250,000 hits in four days. ‘And now the shipping forecast issued by UKIP on Sunday the 19 January 2014 at 1200 UTC. There are warnings of gays in Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Southeast Iceland and Bongo Bongo land. The general synopsis at midday: Low intelligence expected, becoming Little England by midnight tonight. And now the area forecasts for the next 24 hours. Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire: south easterly gay seven to severe gay nine, occasionally bisexual. Showers – gay. Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher: women veering southerly 4 or 5, losing their identity and becoming sluts. Rain – moderate or gay. German blight, immigration veering north – figures variable, becoming psychotic. Showers – gay. Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth: benefit tourism 98%, becoming variable – later slight, or imaginary. Showers – gay. Biscay, Trafalgar: warm, lingering nationalism. Kiss me Hardy, later becoming heterosexual – good. FitzRoy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey: right or extreme right, veering racist 4 or 5, increasing to 5 to 7. Homophobic outburst – back-peddling westerly and becoming untenable. Showers – gay. Fair Isle, Faeroes, South East Iceland: powerbase decreasing, variable – becoming unelectable. Good. And that concludes the forecast.
”
”
Nic Compton (The Shipping Forecast: A Miscellany)
“
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung has come and gone, and the majestic roll of circling centuries begins anew: justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, with a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Inly do thou, at the boy's birth in whom the iron shall cease, the golden race arise, befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, this glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin, and the months enter on their mighty march. Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain of our old wickedness, once done away, shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear. He shall receive the life of gods, and see heroes with gods commingling, and himself be seen of them, and with his father's worth reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy, first shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray with foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed, and laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves, untended, will the she-goats then bring home their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield shall of the monstrous lion have no fear. Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die, die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far and wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon as thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame, and of thy father's deeds, and inly learn what virtue is, the plain by slow degrees with waving corn-crops shall to golden grow, fom the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape, and stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships, gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth. Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be, her hero-freight a second Argo bear; new wars too shall arise, and once again some great Achilles to some Troy be sent.
”
”
Virgil (The Eclogues)
“
The Unknown Soldier
A tale to tell in bloody rhyme,
A story to last ’til the dawn of end’s time.
Of a loving boy who left dear home,
To bear his countries burdens; her honor to sow.
–A common boy, I say, who left kith and kin,
To battle der Kaiser and all that was therein.
The Arsenal of Democracy was his kind,
–To make the world safe–was their call and chime.
Trained he thus in the far army camps,
Drilled he often in the march and stamp.
Laughed he did with new found friends,
Lived they together for the noble end.
Greyish mottled images clipp’ed and hack´ed–
Black and white broke drum Ʀ…ɧ..λ..t…ʮ..m..ȿ
—marching armies off to ’ttack.
Images scratched, chopped, theatrical exaggerate,
Confetti parades, shouts of high praise
To where hell would sup and partake
with all bon hope as the transport do them take
Faded icons board the ship–
To steel them away collaged together
–joined in spirit and hip.
Timeworn humanity of once what was
To broker peace in eagles and doves.
Mortal clay in the earth but to grapple and smite
As warbirds ironed soar in heaven’s light.
All called all forward to divinities’ kept date,
Heroes all–all aces and fates.
Paris–Used to sing and play at some cards,
A common Joe everybody knew from own heart.
He could have been called ‘the kid’ by the ‘old man,’
But a common private now taking orders to stand.
Receiving letters from his shy sweet one,
Read them over and over until they faded to none.
Trained like hell with his Commander-in-Arms,
–To avoid the dangers of a most bloody harm.
Aye, this boy was mortal, true enough said,
He could be one of thousands alive but now surely dead.
How he sang and cried and ate the gruel of rations,
And grumbled as soldiers do at war’s great contagions.
Out–out to the battle this young did go,
To become a man; the world to show.
(An ocean away his mother cried so–
To return her boy safe as far as the heavens go).
Lay he down in trenched hole,
With balls bursting overhead upon the knoll.
Listened hardnfast to the “Sarge” bearing the news,
—“We’re going over soon—” was all he knew.
The whistle blew; up and over they went,
Charging the Hun, his life to be spent
(“Avoid the gas boys that’ll blister yer arse!!”).
Running through wires razored and deadened trees,
Fell he into a gouge to find in shelter of need
(They say he bayoneted one just as he–,
face to face in War’s Dance of trialed humanity).
A nameless sonnuvabitch shell then did untimely RiiiiiiiP
the field asunder in burrrstzʑ–and he tripped.
And on the field of battle’s blood did he die,
Faceless in a puddle as blurrs of ghosting men
shrieked as they were fleeing by–.
Perished he alone in the no man’s land,
Surrounded by an army of his brother’s teeming bands . . .
And a world away a mother sighed,
Listened to the rain and lay down and cried.
. . . Today lays the grave somber and white,
Guarded decades long in both the dark and the light.
Silent sentinels watch o’er and with him do walk,
Speak they neither; their duty talks.
Lone, stark sentries perform the unsmiling task,
–Guarding this one dead–at the nation’s bequest.
Cared over day and night in both rain or sun,
Present changing of the guard and their duty is done
(The changing of the guard ’tis poetry motioned
A Nation defining itself–telling of
rifles twirl-clicking under the intensest of devotions).
This poem–of The Unknown, taken thus,
Is rend eternal by Divinity’s Iron Trust.
How he, a common soldier, gained the estate
Of bearing his countries glory unto his unknown fate.
Here rests in honored glory a warrior known but to God,
Now rests he in peace from the conflict path he trod.
He is our friend, our family, brother, our mother’s son
–belongs he to us all,
For he has stood in our place–heeding God’s final call.
”
”
Douglas M. Laurent
“
In A.D. 1223 an infant was born, clutching a jewel in her tiny fist. Her peasant father ran to the castle to bring back a priest, but by the time they returned to the hut, the jewel had disappeared. The priest declared that such would be the child's life: all good would slip through her fingers.
The years passed, and the girl's beauty became celebrated. Knights and kings journeyed far to gaze into her eyes before leaving her on their crusades. Women and children made pilgrimages to look upon her angelic face. All who saw her felt blessed.
But an ancient evil called the Atrox also saw her unearthly perfection and pursued her, offering her father great treasures if she would betroth it. The girl saw her father's poverty and agreed to the union, making only one request for herself--- that her beauty should last forever. The Atrox agreed, and she pledged her devotion for eternity.
A Follower of the Atrox came to take the young woman to the underworld, but when he saw her beauty and grace, he fell desperately in love with her and she, too, with him.
They tried to hide their love, but the Atrox saw through their deception. When the young woman stepped into the Cold Fire to receive immortality, instead of preserving her beauty for eternity, the flames consumed her flesh and bones, turning her into a wind spirit.
The knight could not endure life without her. The force of his love drove him across the world, searching for a sorceress with the power to restore her human form. As he was crossing the sea, a storm broke out and sent his ship off course to the island of Aeaea, where Circe, an ancient enchantress, lived. Circe gave him a magic potion. With it, his beloved could possess any body she desired.
Since then many young women have felt her presence and wondered afterward what made them act so wickedly, never understanding that for a brief time, the spirit of the wind had taken over their mind and soul.
”
”
Lynne Ewing (Possession (Daughters of the Moon, #8))
“
[MINERVA appears.] MIN. Whither, whither sendest thou this troop to follow [the fugitives,] king Thoas? List to the words of me, Minerva. Cease pursuing, and stirring on the onset of your host. For by the destined oracles of Loxias Orestes came hither, fleeing the wrath of the Erinnyes, and in order to conduct his sister's person to Argos, and to bear the sacred image into my land, by way of respite from his present troubles. Thus are our words for thee, but as to him, Orestes, whom you wish to slay, having caught him in a tempest at sea, Neptune has already, for my sake, rendered the surface of the sea waveless, piloting him along in the ship. But do thou, Orestes, learning my commands, (for thou hearest the voice of a Goddess, although not present,) go, taking the image and thy sister. And when thou art come to heaven-built Athens, there is a certain sacred district in the farthest bounds of Atthis, near the Carystian rock, which my people call Alœ—here, having built a temple, do thou enshrine the image named after the Tauric land and thy toils, which thou hast labored through, wandering over Greece, under the goad of the Erinnyes. But mortals hereafter shall celebrate her as the Tauric Goddess Diana. And do thou ordain this law, that, when the people celebrate a feast in grateful commemoration of thy release from slaughter, [188] let them apply the sword to the neck of a man, and let blood flow on account of the holy Goddess, that she may have honor. But, O Iphigenia, thou must needs be guardian of the temple of this Goddess at the hallowed ascent of Brauron; [189] where also thou shalt be buried at thy death, and they shall offer to you the honor of rich woven vestments, which women, dying in childbed, may leave in their houses. But I command thee to let these Grecian women depart from the land on account of their disinterested disposition, [190] I, having saved thee also on a former occasion, by determining the equal votes in the Field of Mars, Orestes, and that, according to the same law, he should conquer, whoever receive equal suffrages. But, O son of Agamemnon, do thou remove thy sister from this land, nor be thou angered, Thoas.
”
”
Euripides (The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I.)
“
Soldiers of the Eastern Front!
Filled with grave concern for the existence and the future of our Volk, I decided on June 22 to direct an appeal to you in order to forestall the threatening attack of an opponent at the last minute. As we know today, it was the intention of the rulers in the Kremlin to destroy not only Germany, but also Europe. Comrades, you have realized two things in the meantime:
1. This opponent armed himself militarily for his attack to such an enormous extent that even our greatest fears were surpassed.
2. Lord have mercy on our Volk and on the entire European world if this barbaric enemy had been able to get his tens of thousands of tanks to move before we could. All of Europe would have been lost. For this enemy does not consist of soldiers, but, for the most part, of beasts (Bestien).
Now, my comrades, you have personally seen this ”paradise of workers and peasants” with your own eyes. In a country, whose vastness and fertility could feed the whole world, a poverty reigns that we Germans cannot imagine. This is the result of nearly twenty-five years of Jewish rule which, as Bolshevism, basically reflects the basest form of capitalism. The bearers of this system are the same in both instances: Jews and again Jews! Soldiers! When I called on you to ward off the danger threatening our homeland on June 22, you faced the greatest military power of all time. In barely three months, thanks to your bravery, my comrades, it has been possible to destroy one tank brigade after another belonging to this opponent, to eliminate countless divisions, to take uncounted prisoners, to occupy endless space. And this space is not empty, it is a space in which this opponent lives and from which his gigantic war industry receives raw materials of all types. In a few weeks, three of his most vital industrial districts will be completely in your hands! Your names, soldiers of the German Wehrmacht, and the names of our brave allies, the names of your divisions, regiments, your ships and squadrons, will be tied for all time to the mightiest victories in world history.
Proclamation to the soldiers of the Eastern Front Fuhrer Headquarters, October 2, 1941
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Collection of Speeches: 1922-1945)
“
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung has come and gone, and the majestic roll of circling centuries begins anew: justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, with a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom the iron shall cease, the golden race arise, befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, this glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin, and the months enter on their mighty march. Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain of our old wickedness, once done away, shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear. He shall receive the life of gods, and see heroes with gods commingling, and himself be seen of them, and with his father's worth reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy, first shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray with foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed, and laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves, untended, will the she-goats then bring home their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield shall of the monstrous lion have no fear. Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die, die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far and wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon as thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame, and of thy father's deeds, and inly learn what virtue is, the plain by slow degrees with waving corn-crops shall to golden grow, fom the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape, and stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships, gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth. Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be, her hero-freight a second Argo bear; new wars too shall arise, and once again some great Achilles to some Troy be sent. Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man, no more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark ply traffic on the sea, but every land shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more shall feel the harrow's grip, nor vine the hook; the sturdy ploughman shall loose yoke from steer, nor wool with varying colours learn to lie; but in the meadows shall the ram himself, now with soft flush of purple, now with tint
of yellow saffron, teach his fleece to shine.
”
”
Virgil (The Eclogues)
“
What a lovely day again; were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm—frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!—it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing that that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along!
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
“
Article VI No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility. No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue. No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assembled, with any King, Prince or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain. No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled, for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage. No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United States in Congress assembled, and then only against the Kingdom or State and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise.
”
”
Benjamin Franklin (The Articles of Confederation)
“
I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets
returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted
stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one
eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from
one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of
the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the
children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women
who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they
wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of
the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up
and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken
tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of
the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions,
all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking
through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the
evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in
the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances,
their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries
on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the
markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled;
of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the
pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold
mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of
the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the
smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings,
now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a
woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled
brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the
young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy
messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are
missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and
blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces
in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow
alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose
lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like
gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an
evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets
who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever
notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman
Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when
everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken;
of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and
everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE
”
”
Orhan Pamuk (Istanbul: Memories and the City)
“
In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.
Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.
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Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
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Only seventy-six miles west of Brunswick, on the Piscataqua River that separates Maine from New Hampshire, another player in the American Civil War began life in 1828. Unlike Joshua Chamberlain, however, the ship William Badger received no honors for her struggle to preserve
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Peter Kurtz (Bluejackets in the Blubber Room: A Biography of the William Badger, 1828-1865)
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BONUS #3 - Top 100 Common Italian Verbs To make things easier, I’ve collated the top 100 Italian verbs that you will use more than any other verbs, especially in your early development. Essere - to be Avere - to have Fare - to make, do Andare - to go Potere - to be able to Dare - to give Volere - to want Venire - to come Dovere - to have to Stare - to be, stay Dire - to say Sapere - to know (how) Vedere - to see Mangiare - to eat Parlare - to talk Uscire - to go out, exit Prendere - to take Piacere - to like Leggere - to read Amare - to love Bere - to drink Finire - to finish Capire - to understand Arrivare - to arrive Scrivere - to write Partire - to leave, depart Mettere - to put, place, set Rimanere -to remain Dormire - to sleep Vivere - to live Conoscere - to know Sentire - to feel, sense, hear Cucinare - to cook Studiare - to study Giocare - to play Chiedere - to ask, demand Trovare - to find Credere - to believe Aprire - to open Lavorare - to work Pensare - to think Correre - to run Tenere - to keep Guardare - to watch Chiamare - to call Tornare - to return Salire - to go up Preferire - to prefer Morire - to die Aspettare - to wait Comprare - to buy Nascere - to be born Cercare - to search Perdere - to lose Cantare - to sing Passare - to pass Cominciare - to start Ascoltare - to listen Riuscire - to succeed Decidere - to decide Abitare - to live Cadere - to fall Chiudere - to close Lasciare - to leave Scegliere - to choose Portare - to carry Ricevere - to receive Lavare - to wash Rispondere - to answer Sedere - to sit Vincere - to win Pagare - to pay Alzare - to raise, lift Ridere - to laugh Scendere - to go down Incontrare - to encounter Offrire - to offer Imparare - to learn Dimenticare - to forget Svegliare - to wake up Crescere - to grow Vendere - to sell Divertire - to have fun Diventare - to become Porre, mettere - to place, put Entrare - to enter Temere - to fear Pulire - to clean Vestire - to dress Seguire - to follow Restare - to stay, remain Cambiare - to change Viaggiare - to travel Spegnere - to turn off Ricordare - to remember Apparire - to appear Aiutare - to help Tacere - to be quiet Spedire - to send, ship 100. Preparare - to prepare
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Michele Frolla (Learn Italian FAST in Just 8 Hours! (How to): No Memorisation. No Homework. No Exercises! (Fluent Before You Fly))
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In 1777, the U.S. Congress ordered a second naval ship built, the Ranger. The Ranger was the most famous of all the ships built on Langdon's Island. She was an 18-gun sloop and was the first American ship to be coppered. Her biography mirrors that of the Raleigh: designed by William Hackett, built by James Hackett on Rising Castle/Langdon's Island, and captured by the British, off Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. John Paul Jones commanded the vessel, and she captured a number of British ships during her brief career. She also carried news of British general John Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga to Europe and received the first salute ever given to an American ship, off Quiberon Bay in France.12
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Peter Kurtz (Bluejackets in the Blubber Room: A Biography of the William Badger, 1828-1865)
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At their invitation we crowded into the spacious control cabin of the great airship, where scientific gear occupied every available cubic—perhaps hypercubic—inch. Among the fantastical glass envelopes and knottings of gold wire as unreadable to us as the ebonite control panels scrupulously polished and reflecting the Arctic sky, we were able here and there to recognize more mundane items—here Manganin resistance-boxes and Tesla coils, there Leclanché cells and solenoidal magnets, with electrical cables sheathed in commercial-grade Gutta Percha running everywhere. Inside, the overhead was much higher than expected, and the bulkheads could scarcely be made out in the muted light through three hanging Fresnel lenses, the mantle behind each glowing a different primary color, from sensitive-flames which hissed at different frequencies. Strange sounds, complex harmonies and dissonances, resonant, sibilant, and percussive at once, being monitored from someplace far Exterior to this, issued from a large brass speaking-trumpet, with brass tubing and valvework elaborate as any to be found in an American marching band running back from it and into an extensive control panel on which various metering gauges were ranked, their pointers, with exquisite Breguet-style arrowheads, trembling in their rise and fall along the arcs of italic numerals. The glow of electrical coils seeped beyond the glass cylinders which enclosed them, and anyone’s hands that came near seemed dipped in blue chalk-dust. A Poulsen’s Telegraphone, recording the data being received, moved constantly to and fro along a length of shining steel wire which periodically was removed and replaced. “Ætheric impulses,” Dr. Counterfly was explaining. “For vortex stabilization we need a membrane sensitive enough to respond to the slightest eddies. We use a human caul—a ‘veil,’ as some say.” “Isn’t a child born with a veil believed to have powers of second sight?” Dr. Vormance inquired. “Correct. And a ship with a veil aboard it will never sink—or, in our case, crash.” “Things have been done to obtain a veil,” darkly added a junior officer, Mr. Suckling, “that may not even be talked about.
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Thomas Pynchon (Against the Day)
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There’s a famous Russian proverb about this type of behavior. One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.” The moral is simple: when it comes to money, Russians will gladly—gleefully, even—sacrifice their own success to screw their neighbor.
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Bill Browder (Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice)
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BECKONED to the square to listen to a representative of the Virginia Company of London. He seemed an unpretentious man, a clerk, if you will, who had some important points to make before the Jamestown colonists started mingling with the new members. The man stepped up on a makeshift wooden box and spoke to the good people gathered for the day’s celebration. As he looked out at the more delicate gender, he released a sigh of satisfaction. The bride ship had come through, and it was hoped these ninety women would secure the colony’s growth. The clerk waved a document in the air and the crowd hushed, anxious to hear what he would say. “Each woman,” he called out, to reach the hearing of those standing furthest away. “Each woman, upon entering into marriage with a man of Jamestown, will receive as promised, one new apron, two new pairs of shoes, six pairs of sheets…” He droned on, reciting the promises made by the Virginia Company of London. As each new item was listed, gasps of delight flickered in the air. The gifting lent the day even more enjoyment for these items were needed to set up a good home and many of the women were arriving with few possessions. The representative talked at length about marriage licenses and how each couple would be married, one after the other, until all were satisfied. When all was said, and done, there would be a lot of paperwork, but these contracts were the foundation of the colony, the building blocks that would ensure the birth of children on this new soil. It wasn’t just the Virginia Company of London who wanted the population to grow in the colony, it was also the wish of Scarlett. These people who would be her neighbours, these men who would make business deals with her husband, these children who would grow by her child’s side, were the herd. From these people, would she harvest, and as they prospered, so would she.
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Cheryl R. Cowtan (Girl Desecrated: Vampires, Asylums and Highlanders 1984)
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at the commencement of the battle-cruiser action the German Von der Tann had fought an unimpeded ship-to-ship duel with the British Indefatigable. In fourteen minutes’ firing with her eleven-inch guns the Von der Tann had sunk the Indefatigable without receiving a single hit from the Indefatigable’s twelve-inch.
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Richard Hough (Dreadnought: A History of the Modern Battleship)
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What can you tell me about this ship?”
“She’s one hundred fifteen feet in length, with a beam of twenty-eight, and a depth of sixteen—”
“I meant, more generally, what can you tell me about the ship?”
“We were a whaler, came sailing around Cape Horn, where we put in at Paita in Peru. The captain received an urgent letter from the American consulate there, enjoining him to pick up passengers and cargo at Panama and bring them to San Francisco. We sold off or unloaded all our stores right there, and converted the ship as well as we might en route to Panama. Once we got here, the captain decided to run the ship aground at high tide. . . .”
Again, not exactly what I need to know. “Maybe it would just be better to take us on a tour.”
“I can do that,” he says.
“Olive! Andrew!” calls out Becky. “Gather around. We’re going to take a tour of the ship.”
Our group, which had been wandering and inspecting independently, converges at the center of the deck. Melancthon points to the front of the ship. “That’s the foaksul . . .”
“Pardon me, the what?” asks Tom. “Could you spell that please?”
“F-O-R-E-C-A-S-T-L-E.”
“Ah,” says Tom, as if this makes perfect sense.
“Forecastle?” I ask.
“That’s what I said!” Melancthon points in the other direction. “And that’s the quarter deck, and there in the rear, that’s the poop deck.”
Olive turns to her mother. “Ma, did he just say poop deck?”
“I’m certain you misheard,” Becky says.
“It’s from la poupe, the French word for the stern of the ship,” Henry explains. “Which, in turn, is derived from the Latin word puppis.”
“La poop, la poop, la poop,” Andrew says. His mother turns scarlet.
This is all going terribly off track. “Maybe I can just tell you what I want, and you can tell me if it can be done, and, if so, how fast you can do it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Melancthon says.
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Rae Carson (Into the Bright Unknown (The Gold Seer Trilogy, #3))
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First, A ship of the finest make and model available shall be furnished to carry the constructors home.
2nd, The said ship shall be laden with various cargo as here specified: diamonds—four bushels, gold coin—forty bushels, platinum, palladium, and whatever other ready valuables they happen to think of—eight bushels of each, also whatever mementos and tokens from the Royal Apartments the signatories of this instrument may deem appropriate.
3rd, Until such time as the said ship shall be in readiness for takeoff, every nut and bolt in place, fully loaded and delivered up to the constructors complete with red carpet, an eighty-piece send-off band and children's chorus, an abundance of honors, decorations and awards, and a wildly cheering crowd—until then, no King.
4th, That a formal expression of undying gratitude shall be stamped upon a gold medallion and addressed to Their Most Sublime and Radiant Constructors Trurl and Klapaucius, Delight and Terror of the Universe, and moreover it shall contain a full account of their victory and be duly signed and notarized by every high and low official in the land, then set in the richly embellished barrel of the King's favorite cannon, which Lord Protozor, Master of the Royal Hunt, shall himself and wholly unaided carry on board—no other Protozor but the one who lured Their Most Sublime and Radiant Constructors to this planet thinking to work their painful and ignominious death thereby.
5th, That the aforesaid Protozor shall accompany them on their return journey as insurance against any sort of double-dealing, pursuit, and the like. On board he shall occupy a cage three by three by four feet and shall receive a a daily allowance of humble pie with a filling made of that very same sawdust which Their Most Sublime and Radiant Constructors saw fit to order in the process of indulging the King's foolishness and which was subsequently taken to police headquarters by unmarked balloon.
6th and lastly, The King need not crave forgiveness of Their Most Sublime and Radiant Constructors on bended knee, since he is much too beneath them to deserve notice.
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Stanisław Lem (The Cyberiad)
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Nerissa, mo grá,” he said weakly, from where he had been dragged to a corner and propped up against someone’s jacket. “Mo cróga, bean laoch álainn.” He was still in the bloodied breeches, a clean band of linen wound just above one knee. “My brave, beautiful warrior woman.” His eyes, deep and bottomless in the lantern-lit darkness, looked up at her through their absurdly long lashes, and she reached a hand, still smelling of gunpowder, down to touch his bristled cheek. He closed his eyes and held it there, reluctant to ever let her go, and she reveling in the warmth of his skin beneath hers, the knowledge that his heart still pumped his lifeblood beneath her hand. “I could not let you die,” she breathed, kneeling down beside him and offering him the strength of her own slim, lithe body. His face was ghostly from loss of blood, and she could see that it was an effort for him to even keep his eyes open, let alone press her hand to his cheek. She sat down on the hard, blood-stained planking and gently gathered him in her arms, stroking his heavy curls as he rested his forehead against her shoulder. “Tá tú mo banlaoch,” he whispered. “My heroine. My savior….” “Sleep, Ruaidri. The ship is back in your men’s hands and you, my love, are safe in mine.” She threaded her fingers up through his hair and gently caressed his scalp, wincing at the hard swelling she found there. She did not want to think about how he must have received it. She did not want to think of him being hurt, she did not want to think of anything but how grateful she was that he was alive and safely in her arms. Hadley… the Royal Navy… Lucien. Strength and a hard, ruthless confidence filled her heart. She had come this far. She could deal with all of them. Ruaidri’s forehead grew heavy against her collarbone. He murmured something unintelligible and, with her hand still quietly caressing him, finally gave himself up to the demands of his body and slept.
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Danelle Harmon (The Wayward One (The de Montforte Brothers, #5))
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He said he commenced it on the deck of their vessel, in the fervor of the moment when he saw the enemy hastily retreating to their ships, and looked at the flag he had watched for so anxiously as the morning opened: that he had written some lines or brief notes that would aid him in calling them to mind upon the back of a letter which he happened to have in his pocket, and for some of the lines as he proceeded he was obliged to rely altogether on his memory, and that he finished it in the boat on his way to the shore and wrote it out as it now stands at the hotel on the night he reached Baltimore, and immediately after he arrived; he said that on the next day he immediately sent it to a printer, and directed copies to be struck off in hand-bill form, and that he — Mr. Key — believed it to have been favorably received by the Baltimore public.” In fact, Key composed the song on the back of a letter he was carrying in his pocket, and he completed it during a stay at the Indian Queen Hotel following his release. He titled his work, “Defence of Fort M’Henry.
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Charles River Editors (Francis Scott Key: The Life and Legacy of the Man Who Wrote America’s National Anthem)
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It is a curious mystery [...] that the exact same notions of the Seven Sages as the bringers of civilization in the remotest antiquity, and of the preservation and repromulgation of “writings on stones from before the flood,” turn up in the supposedly completely distinct and unrelated culture of Ancient Egypt.
Of the greatest interest, at any rate, is the [Temple of Horus]’s idea of itself expressed in the acres of enigmatic inscriptions that cover its walls. These inscriptions, the so-called Edfu Building Texts, take us back to a very remote period called the “Early Primeval Age of the Gods”--and these gods, it transpired, were not originally Egyptian, but lived on a sacred island, the “Homeland of the Primeval Ones,” in the midst of a great ocean. Then, at some unspecified time in the past, a terrible disaster--a true cataclysm of flood and fire [...]-- overtook this island, where “the earliest mansions of the gods” had been founded, destroying it utterly, inundating all its holy places and killing most of its divine inhabitants. Some survived, however, and we are told that this remnant set sail in their ships (for the texts leave us in no doubt that these gods of the early primeval age were navigators) to “wander” the world.
[...] Of particular interest is a passage at Edfu in which we read of a circular, water-filled “channel” surrounding the original sacred domain that lay at the heart of the island of the Primeval Ones--a ring of water that was intended to fortify and protect that domain. In this there is, of course, a direct parallel to Atlantis, where the sacred domain on which stood the temple and palace of the god, whom Plato names as “Poseidon,” was likewise surrounded by a ring of water, itself placed in the midst of further such concentric rings separated by rings of land, again with the purpose of fortification and protection.
Intriguingly, Plato also hints at the immediate cause of the earthquakes and floods that destroyed Atlantis. In the Timaeus, as a prelude to his account of the lost civilization and its demise, he reports that the Egyptian priests from whom Solon received the story began by speaking of a celestial cataclysm: “There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them being by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means. Your own [i.e. the Greeks’] story of how Phaeton, child of the sun, harnessed his father’s chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father’s course and so burned up things on earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is at long intervals a variation in the course of the heavenly bodies and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on earth.
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Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
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seventy-six miles west of Brunswick, on the Piscataqua River that separates Maine from New Hampshire, another player in the American Civil War began life in 1828. Unlike Joshua Chamberlain, however, the ship William Badger received no honors for her struggle to preserve the Union. In fact, she warrants only a brief
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Peter Kurtz (Bluejackets in the Blubber Room: A Biography of the William Badger, 1828-1865)
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Why did Connex for QuickBooks Online succeed? Here are the reasons: I received free app store listings on Intuit’s website. My app was even on the first page of their store briefly. This drove large amounts of traffic to my site. I received free listings on many other sites before they started asking for a commission. I later pulled those listings, since the cost to advertise exceeded the revenue they brought to the company. These stores failed to show how many installs and conversions they generated. I had many positive and real reviews on my app store listings. I noticed competitors had hundreds of five-star reviews that mostly looked fake. QuickBooks Online had few integrations at the time. I was one of the first companies to get listed. For QuickBooks Canada and QuickBooks U.K., my app was one of the first system integrators. I had almost no competitors who serviced QuickBooks outside of the U.S. Shopify, BigCommerce, ShipStation and other companies had no native integration. Mine was one of the first. I recorded videos and added landing pages that ranked high on Google with minimal effort. Since I had a shoestring marketing budget, this was very important. The issue I had with other products was that they didn’t offer free promotion. Since my company was one of the first, we had ample time to add features and fix problems. We have a solution that is light years ahead of competitors. Why would someone want to compete with us? In the words of one of my partner companies, “We could build one, but yours would be a lot better.” My app required no desktop apps or website plugins to install. Since my audience was small business owners, the easier the install the better. Most business users have a limited understanding of websites. Asking them to change a bunch of settings or configure something on their own is daunting. We set up Connex for qualified users. Many competitors just let users go through a self-guided trial. We received feedback from many customers that they would purchase if they could make Connex work. I added a talk-to-sales component, and our conversion ratio increased. Connex was successful because I added a personal touch in a world where SaaS owners expect users to just “figure it out” on their own. Software that requires no support and maintenance is a pipe dream.
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Joseph Anderson (The $20 SaaS Company: from Zero to Seven Figures without Venture Capital)
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SEARCH: Floatball game this week //DOWNLOAD: Lightspeed Lemurs at Cosmic Drakes- Series 2 Game 3 //DOWNLOAD FAILED; connection interrupted SEND TEXT TO AI-CHAR: Charlie, why does the connection on CNIS ships suck ass? RECEIVE TEXT FROM AI-CHAR: Sorry Brayson, that was me. Agent Bilal needed the bandwidth to send a message to Senica. You know, something important? SEARCH: How to unplug AI core —User CR-BRAY computer activity :: Accessed by User XO-
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S.M. Ragon (Galaxy Asunder)
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First Officer William Warms had given the order. It is almost certain there would have been no fire drill if Captain Robert Wilmott had been in full command. Warms’s order directly contradicted a policy the master of the Morro Castle first instituted on June 16, 1934. On that day—in violation of the seaworthy certificate issued by the government’s Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection, and at the risk of endangering the lives of everybody on board—Captain Wilmott had banned all further fire drills. His order could lay him open to prosecution, imprisonment, and the certain loss of his master’s license. Confronted by the classic dilemma of the company man, Wilmott had acted in what he believed to be the Ward Line’s best interests. The basis for his decision was simple. In May 1934, during a fire drill, a woman passenger had fallen on a deck wet down by a leaking joint connection between a fire hose and its hydrant. She fractured an ankle and hired a good lawyer, and the Ward Line settled out of court for twenty-five thousand dollars. Captain Wilmott, after a visit to the shipping line office, ordered the Morro Castledeck fire hydrants capped and sealed; 2100 feet of fire hose was locked away, along with nozzles, outlets, and wrenches for each length of hose. Whether the captain received positive instructions from an executive of the Ward Line, or whether he acted independently, is not known, nor is it important. What is known is that as a result of Wilmott’s order, the pride of the American merchant marine, one of the fastest and most luxurious liners afloat, became from that moment on, a floating fire hazard in all but its cargo holds. If a fire started in any of the passenger areas, the only pieces of equipment readily available to fight it were seventy-three half-gallon portable fire extinguishers and twenty-one carbon tetrachloride extinguishers.
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Gordon Thomas (Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle)
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In the mean time, Captain Wilkes, commander of the vessel which had made the visit and search of the Trent, returned to the United States and was received with general plaudit, both by the people and the Government. The House of Representatives passed a vote of thanks, an honor not heretofore bestowed except for some deed deserving well of the country. In the midst of all this exultation at the seizure of our Commissioners on board of a British merchant-ship, came the indignant and stern demand for the restoration of those Commissioners to the British protection from which they had been taken, and an apology for the aggression.
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Jefferson Davis (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government)
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In the days of sailing-ships, the English fleet operated against Brest making its base at Torbay and Plymouth. The plan was simply this: in easterly or moderate weather the blockading fleet kept its position without difficulty but in westerly gales, when too severe, they bore up for English ports, knowing that the French fleet could not get out till the wind shifted, which equally served to bring them back to their station. The advantage of geographical nearness to an enemy, or to the object of attack, is nowhere more apparent than in that form of warfare which has lately received the name of commerce-destroying, which the French call _guerre de course_.
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Alfred Thayer Mahan (The Influence of Sea Power upon History: The Maritime Influence on Global History)
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Scott’s eight novels, published under the pen name Sidney McCall, were well received in their day, and her poetry, often centering on flowers, was published in newspapers across the country. The article under consideration here, titled “Affika Town,” was also published widely. It includes the only interview conducted with Noah Hart, who as Timothy Meaher’s houseboy had a front-row seat to the Clotilda story. Scott wrote the breezy feature after her “pretty New York cousin,” came to town and asked to visit “an African Village near here. I have heard it spoken of so often.” It
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Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
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In 1927, the school started by the Africans, then known as the “Plateau Normal and Industrial Institute for the Education of the Head, Heart and Hands of the Colored Youth,” received a grant from the Rosenwald Fund to build a new, much larger school, with ten classrooms and living quarters for ten teachers. The fund was the brainchild of Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, the CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Co. The pair met in Chicago in 1911, after Rosenwald attended a speech by Washington. Rosenwald, whose fortune would have ranked him as a billionaire by today’s standards, was looking for a philanthropic cause to answer what he believed were “the special duties that capitalists and men of wealth owed to society.” Rosenwald provided an endowment for Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and embraced Washington’s dream of funding schools across the South to teach what the educator described as “industrial education.
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Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
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He was pleased to receive his colleague’s ships, but had no serious intention of finding him his legions.
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Anthony Everitt (Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor)
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We started with a small number of two-pizza teams so that we could learn what worked and refine the model before widespread adoption. One significant lesson became clear fairly early: each team started out with its own share of dependencies that would hold them back until eliminated, and eliminating the dependencies was hard work with little to no immediate payback. The most successful teams invested much of their early time in removing dependencies and building “instrumentation”—our term for infrastructure used to measure every important action—before they began to innovate, meaning, add new features. For example, the Picking team owned software that directed workers in the fulfillment centers where to find items on the shelves. They spent much of their first nine months systematically identifying and removing dependencies from upstream areas, like receiving inventory from vendors, and downstream areas, like packing and shipping. They also built systems to track every important event that happened in their area at a detailed, real-time level. Their business results didn’t improve much while they did so, but once they had removed dependencies, built their fitness function, and instrumented their systems, they became a strong example of how fast a two-pizza team could innovate and deliver results. They became advocates of this new way of working. Other teams, however, put off doing the unglamorous work of removing their dependencies and instrumenting their systems. Instead, they focused too soon on the flashier work of developing new features, which enabled them to make some satisfying early progress. Their dependencies remained, however, and the continuing drag soon became apparent as the teams lost momentum.
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Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
“
The English diplomat Andrew Holes had returned to England in 1444, following a dozen years in Italy. During his sojourn he had put together a manuscript collection so large that, according to Vespasiano, he was forced to send the books to England on board a ship. His successor as King Henry VI’s representative at the Roman Curia was the other expatriate English bibliophile, William Grey. Following his visit to Florence in 1442, Grey had pursued his humanistic studies in Padua, receiving his doctorate in divinity in September 1445, a few weeks before his appointment as the king’s proctor. He then left Padua for Rome, to which Pope Eugenius had at last returned in 1443 after having finally judged it safe to chance his presence among the unruly Roman mob. But first of all, Grey stopped in Florence on important business.
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Ross King (The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance)
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I dreamed of you once,” I said suddenly. I had not been planning to say the words.
He opened one cat-yellow eye. “I think we had this conversation before. A long time ago.”
“No. This is different. I didn’t know it was you until just now. Or maybe I did.” It had been a restless night, years ago, and when I awakened the dream had cling to my mind like pitch on my hands. I had known it was significant, and yet the snatch of what I had seen had made so little sense, I could not grasp its significance. “I didn’t know you had gone golden, you see. But now, when you leaned back with your eyes closed…You—or someone—were lying on a rough wooden floor. Your eyes were closed; you were sick or injured. A man leaned over you. I felt he wanted to hurt you. So I…”
I had repelled at him, using the Wit in a way I had not for years. A rough thrust of animal presence to shove him away, to express dominance of him in a way he could not understand, yet hated. The hatred was proportionate to his fear. The Fool was silent, waiting for me.
“I pushed him away from you. He was angry, hating you, wanting to hurt you. But I pressed on his mind that he had to go and fetch help for you. He had to tell someone you needed help. He resented what I did to him, but he had to obey me.”
“Because you Skill-burned it into him,” the Fool said quietly.
“Perhaps,” I admitted unwillingly. Certainly, the next day had been one long torment of headache and Skill-hunger. The thought made me uneasy. I had been telling myself that I could not Skill that way. Certain other dreams stirred uneasily in my memories. I pushed them down again. No, I promised myself. They were not the same.
“It was the deck of a ship,” he said quietly. “And it’s quite likely you saved my life.” He took a breath. “I thought something like that might have happened. It never made sense to me that he didn’t get rid of me when he could have. Sometimes, when I was most alone, I mocked myself that I could cling to such hope. That I could believe I was so important to anyone that he would travel in his dreams to protect me.”
“You should have known better than that,” I said quietly.
“Should I?” The question was almost a challenge. He gave me the most direct look I had ever received from him. I did not understand the hurt I saw in his eyes, not the hope. He needed something from me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I tried to find something to say, but before I could, the moment seemed to pass. He looked away from me, releasing me from his plea. When his eyes came back to mine, he changed both his expression and the subject.
”
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Robin Hobb (Fool's Errand (Tawny Man, #1))
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”
tomharvey009
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It was an act of God, many alleged, that the three Saltwood children were absent when assassins struck. They were trekking in the Great Karroo with a Hottentot family, gathering ostrich plumes for sale in Paris. When they returned, their parents were already buried, and there was heated discussion as to what should happen to them. Some said they should be freighted down to Grahamstown on the next wagon heading south, but word was received that they were not wanted there. So there was some talk of sending them along to LMS headquarters in Cape Town, but they already had a flood of Coloured orphans and abandoned children. It would be quite improper to ship them off to England, where their ancestry would damn them. Put simply, there was no place for them. No one felt any responsibility for the offspring of what from the start had been a disastrous marriage. So the children were left with the Hottentots with whom they had hunted ostrich plumes. For a few years they would be special, for the older ones could read and write, but as time passed and the necessity for marriage arrived, they would slide imperceptibly into that amorphous, undigestible mass of people called Coloured.
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James A. Michener (The Covenant)
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was greatly handicapped by the fact that it always remained the personal crusade of a single leader whose autocratic methods and slipshod financial practices alienated much of the support the movement might otherwise have received.”17 His business venture into the Black Star Line shipping company was successful as far as promoting the possibilities of black economic power, but a disaster as far as it concerned the financial capabilities of the U.N.I.A. and Garvey’s own legal status in America. J. Edgar Hoover, later famous as the head of the F.B.I., was the Bureau of Investigation agent assigned to investigate and help eliminate Garvey from the American scene, and because of the careless and inept business practices of the Black Star Line, Hoover was able to bring about Garvey’s arrest in 1922 and in 1923 his conviction (on very flimsy
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Marcus Garvey (Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey (Dover Thrift Editions: Black History))