Short Masonic Quotes

I am not being whimsical, Martha. Short another, beauty is a reason to live.

Short of another, beauty is a reason to live.

Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-- Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,-- nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,-- her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,-- that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,-- not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,-- rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common.

I knew more things than I could tell, and I felt something terrible was going to happen in a short time.

Out of suffering comes creativity

After that, Nicholas got up, stretched, and told me I could have his spot because he just remembered a girl he need to make amends with because his final act before rehab was putting a nine iron through her windscreen after taking more than his recommended daily intake of methamphetamine. 'Which I discover is non. Back shortly.

Regarding children’s literature, look for interesting content and well-constructed sentences clothed in literary language. The imagination should be warmed and the book should hold the interest of the child.  Life’s too short to spend time with books that bore us.

“Maurency seems to be undergoing a remarkable and somewhat undesirable transformation.” “What?” “He’s changed hair color, put on some muscle and now seems to be cracking skulls rather than saying his prayers.” Mason rose and rounded the table. “In short, it looks like Linnet’s ideal hero might be turning into you.” [...] “He looks improved, but I still don’t like him.” “He’s you, you fool,” responded Oswald scathingly.

Suck my dick.” Gavin grabbed ahold of Mason’s short hair and pushed his head down. “What if I don’t want to?” “Do it anyway.

time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.

He wants the baby, right? You said that. He is happy?” “Yes, but …” “If you abort his baby …” She stopped short and leaned in to embrace Gemma. “If you abort this baby,” she whispered, “there are more ways to die than death.” And

A Short Southern Screw? So I was right. You're craving something south ot the Mason-Dixon Line." He moved closer, crowding her even though there was still a good twelve inches between them. "I can assure you, though, I'm a man who isn't short in any sense of the word.

Davey Boy's Dead was given a new lease on life when doctors transplanted the Dynamite Kidney into his body. That new lease on life came to a sudden and rather hilarious end when the Dynamite Kidney exploded and tore a hole in Davey Boy's side. - The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Zombies

West Country novelist Thomas Hardy almost did not survive his birth in 1840 because everyone thought he was stillborn. He did not appear to be breathing and was put to one side for dead. The nurse attending the birth only by chance noticed a slight movement that showed the baby was in fact alive. He lived to be 87 and gave the world 18 novels, including some of the most widely read in English literature. When he did die, there was controversy over where he should be laid to rest. Public opinion felt him too famous to lie anywhere other than in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, the national shrine. He, however, had left clear instructions to be buried in Stinsford, near his birthplace and next to his parents, grandparents, first wife and sister. A compromise was brokered. His ashes were interred in the Abbey. His heart would be buried in his beloved home county. The plan agreed, his heart was taken to his sister’s house ready for burial. Shortly before, as it lay ready on the kitchen table, the family cat grabbed it and disappeared with it into the woods. Although, simultaneously with the national funeral in Westminster Abbey, a burial ceremony took place on 16 January 1928, at Stinsford, there is uncertainty to this day as to what was in the casket: some say it was buried empty; others that it contained the captured cat which had consumed the heart.

We have again, my dear child, the most horrid weather you can imagine. It has been one continuous storm for these four days past. All our walks are under water; there is no such thing as stirring out. Our masons and carpenters keep close within doors: in short, I detest this country, and am every moment wishing for your sunshine, while you, perhaps, wish as much for my rain. We are both right.

I know a person who will poke the fire, set chairs straight, pick dust specks from the floor, arrange his table, snatch up a newspaper, take down any book which catches his eye, trim his nails, waste the morning anyhow, in short, and all without premeditation - simply because the only thing he ought to attend to is the preparation of a noonday lesson in formal logic which he detests. - William James

Kingsley’s phone begins to ring, and her ringtone almost makes me grin. It has Lake and Falcon chuckling. ‘It’s your daddy calling, and you know he’s gonna chew your ear off. It’s your daddy calling, all you’re gonna hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ “Hey, Dad,” she answers. “No, we came back early.” She smiles. “Yeah, it was okay.” She leans back against the couch and catches me watching her. I glance away as she continues, “No, nothing happened. We just felt like coming back before the other students.” After a short silence, she quickly rambles, “Someone’s knocking at the door. Gotta go. Love you, Dad.” She hangs up and pulls a worried face at the phone. “That was close.” “You’re not telling your father about the avalanche?” I ask. “There’s no need to worry him about something that’s done and dealt with,” she brushes it off. Changing the subject, Layla asks, “Which ringtone do you have for me?” “Oh!” Instantly the frown vanishes, and Kingsley grins at Layla. “You’re going to love it.” A moment later ‘You are my sunshine,’ comes from the phone. “Aww… thanks, my friend,” Layla coos. Lake leans over the back of the chair. “And me?” Kingsley looks at him from over her shoulder. “Have you heard of Lucas, the spider?” “Yeah.” “You have Lucas.” Kingsley presses play, and then you hear, ‘What you eating? I’m starving.’ “That’s perfect,” Falcon chuckles. “Now I have to hear mine.” “One sec.” Kingsley scrolls to his name and then I let out a bark of laughter. “You have a call from God. Haa-llelujah! Haa-llelujah!” “Badass,” Falcon grins, obviously happy with it. “This is Mason’s.” Kingsley grins mischievously, which tells me I’m not going to like it. Then a butler’s serious voice sounds up, ‘Excuse me, but I’m afraid someone is endeavoring to contact you telephonically. Shall I tell them to fuck off?’ Lake cracks up, disappearing behind the couch which doesn’t help shit seeing as I can hear the fucker laughing his ass off.

THE mother, Lillian, comes to the consultation alone and provides the history. She is forty-three, a widow, the husband having died from appendicitis when the patient was six. The patient, Robert, is the older of two children; his sister was conceived shortly before the father’s death. Mother raised both siblings by herself in Boston, though she cohabited for some time with a dancing instructor, a relationship which ended bitterly. She is vague as to the reason, does not answer whether he was rough with her and whether this might have been witnessed by the children, though she is adamant that they were never touched. Patient attended school, performed well, though had few friends, spent most of his time reading science and mystery magazines.

If Lee discussed his proposals with Washington during a visit to Mount Vernon on November 11 and 12, he no doubt received a cold reception. Washington certainly did not take kindly to the constitutional objections that George Mason sent him on October 7, with no sense, it seems, of how much hostility they would provoke. Washington wrote Madison (who was attending Congress in New York) that Mason had carefully distributed his objections among the seceding members of the Pennsylvania assembly, who repeated them in their published “address.” Washington thought Mason was also behind Lee’s arguments. Mason, in short, had caused the opposition to the Constitution in both Congress and the Pennsylvania assembly, and for no good reason: Madison insisted that there was little if anything worthy of serious consideration in Mason’s objections, which he dismissed, one by one.

Where's Mason?” “Planting explosives.” Zinio did a double take. “You actually handed that man explosives?” “Damn it, Zinio. Let other people have some fun.” The explosion in the distance was followed by Mason yelling, “Yahoo!” Zinio and Delaney stared speechless as Mason flew by in the adjoining tunnel, riding the concussion wave of the blast. Finally, Zinio stomped after him. He peeled him off the floor in the adjoining tunnel. “You having fun yet?” “Hell yeah!” “Wanna go again?” “Hell yeah I wanta go again!” A short while later, Zinio watched Mason fly by on a concussion wave from the latest explosion, as Mason shouted, “Hot Diggity!” Zinio made his way over to the somewhat more charcoaled Mason. “You had enough yet?” Mason nodded shakily. “Good—because it'd be nice if we actually put a hole in the fricking wall! That is the object of this little exercise.

Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami Books for Banned Love Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendahl Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason

It’s a modern version of the pagan Pantheon.” Willard spoke quickly with short, choppy breaths. He pulled his face around to Dale’s, inches apart, keeping Dale’s neck hooked in his elbow. “Masons use Pantheon structures as allusions to the Temple of Solomon. The Dome of the Rock. The Knights Templar knew the truth, that the Dome was the site of Solomon’s Temple. And that’s why Masons continue to use Pantheon domes in their buildings. This one here in the world’s capital is the perfect meeting place.

Life’s too short?” “Yep, but it’s the longest thing we ever do.” “That’s very true. I’ve never thought about it like that.” “Not many do,” he said. They

He hasn’t got guts enough to go out and do it by hard work. Therefore, he does it with talk and by trying to take short cuts. When things go wrong, he feels sorry for himself and wants someone to listen to his tale of woe. When he has a little spurt of good fortune, he patronizes all of his friends and starts to strut. Then the next time he gets a body blow, he caves in and crawls all over the place, trying to put his head in your lap and sob out his troubles, while you run your fingers through his hair, tell him you’ll protect him and that it will be all right.

He’s short, but his cheekbones are so high he can barely reach them.

DEEP INSIDE BY STEP BROTHER Forbidden Alphas Straight To GAY M/M Erotica Short Stories: MM First Time, MMM Threesome, Taboo Family, Virgin, Age Gap, College, Fantasy, Dark Romance ALEX MASON

The first major area of life in which we need to be spiritually disciplined is our attention.

Set your DEATH GOAL, and achieve it!

In continental Europe,’ wrote a distraught John Maynard Keynes, shortly after storming out of the British delegation at Versailles, ‘the earth heaves and no one but is aware of the rumblings. There it is not just a matter of extravagance or “labour troubles”; but of life and death, of starvation and existence, and of the fearful convulsions of a dying civilization.’24

Are you asking if it’s my porn?” Lacey propped a hand on one hip and raised her eyebrow. Who were they to judge? The smell of cheap liquor and cheaper perfume billowed around them. And, if the hungry gleam in their eyes was anything to go by, they had enjoyed the fruits of her searches. “Well, uh… Yeah. I guess that’s what I’m asking.” At least Mason had the good grace to clear his throat in chagrin. Screw this. She was done hiding what she wanted most. Like she’d said to Ty before, life was too short to take detours. “Hell yes, it’s mine. Can’t a girl admire the scenery every once in a while?” “Um, Lace, this looks more like a habit.” Laughter danced in Ty’s eyes. “Well, what the hell good is an internet connection without porn?

Jesus was not short of drive and purpose. Men, who REALLY follow Jesus, might not have all the details of life, but they will possess in increasing measure this kind of redemptive drive that gives life a dramatic sense of purpose.

You sure you don’t know who they were?” Mason asked Blaine. “Yeah,” Blaine said. From his experience, people who couldn’t lie tended to over-explain things, so Blaine kept his answer as short as possible.

He smiled and left me to my misgivings about Paris Denard. The man had received too many accolades for too little suffering and now wore them like medals of valor everywhere he went. A little more notoriety and his ego would bring him one short step away from the ugly little snare that waits and watches for those too fond of themselves. It is the same nasty little trap that lures the nouveau rich or puerile famous. As fame and notoriety take hold, suddenly you are surrounded with an ample variety of overindulgences available to you most any time. Innocently you begin sampling the ones that do not offend your morals or ethics while secretly eyeing those that do. After a while, the lines become blurred and they all become indulgences that you rightly deserve, a normal part of the avant-garde life style you lead. The compromises become greater and greater until you are so possessed by overindulgence that you are a person owned by indiscretions, and those who provide them. That is the trap. You lose your self, one sin at a time, until those who specialize in sin can make you serve them and do most anything they require you to do to further their own aims. It is at that point many wealthy or famous individuals decide there is no going back, though they are unwilling to continue. They help fill the news and star magazines with the regretful obituaries of people who gave so much, and who were so dearly loved it seemed unthinkable that they took their own lives. They will always be remembered. There will always be gratitude.

Among skilled workers, much value is placed on the ability to reinvent yourself, to align yourself with short-term corporate objectives, to be good at forgetting old skills and learning new ones, to be a networker and above all to live the dream of the firm you work for. These qualities, which would have attracted the word ‘scab’ in a Toronto print shop in 1890, are since the 1990s obligatory – if you want to stay in the core. For

Around a hundred Texans faced 3,000 Mexican Government troops. According to the account that long filled patriotic Americans’ schoolbooks, Crockett died a hero defiantly swinging the butt of his rifle, Old Betsy, at oncoming Mexicans after running out of ammunition. A Different Story Surfaces In 1975, a previously untranslated diary written by José Enrique de la Peña, senior Mexican officer at the battle, revealed that Crockett and six other survivors had actually surrendered. According to this account, they were executed shortly afterwards. The revelation did not come without controversy. Historians still dispute whether the diary is genuine, pointing to the unclear circumstances of its emergence in the mid-1950s in Mexico, just at the height of Disney’s fictionalisation of Crockett’s story across the border in the United States. Advocates cite a supporting pamphlet that was lodged in the archives of Yale University long before the Crockett fad began, which they suggest point to the diary being genuine. A crude Mexican attempt at Party pooping? Or bursting the bubble of a fabled tale? The truth may never be known, but the episode once more demonstrates Oscar Wilde’s observation of the truth being rarely pure and never simple.

We were still quite short of material, and one extra encore found us with nearly nothing more to play: we plumped for ‘Echoes’. We were not that familiar with performing the song, and the piece sounded a little stilted – it was the last time we ever played the number. David now observes that one of the reasons we couldn’t quite recapture the feel of the original was that the younger musicians we were now working with were so technically proficient they were not able to unlearn their technique and just noodle around as we had in the early Seventies.

Giving her a second, I stood up and walked into my room, threw a pair of sweatpants over my shorts, and shrugged into a sweatshirt. God, how was she shivering? I was already sweating with this on. But if I couldn’t comfort her in the way I wanted to, I was going to do it in the only other way I knew how. I’d just be there for her. When I walked back through the living room, her sobs had quieted, but she was still in a ball. Heading into the kitchen, I grabbed two bottled waters, a spoon, and the pint of Ben and Jerry’s she always made sure I had in the freezer. I put everything on the coffee table, grabbed the remote, and searched the DVR until I found Bridesmaids. I didn’t give a shit about the two hundred dollars or breakfasts I would owe her for this. Sitting down next to her this time, I picked up the water and ice cream, balanced them on my legs, and turned the volume up. When the movie started, she brought her red face up and glanced at the TV with a furrowed brow before looking over at me. Her eyebrows shot straight up when she saw me. “What are you wearing?” Her voice was hoarse from crying and I handed her the bottle of water. “Well, you came over in sweats. I figured I missed the memo or something and had to get in on the party.” She looked at the TV and back to me, and a small smile cracked when she took the ice cream and spoon from me. I’d pushed her enough today. I hated knowing what I knew and vowed to one day find out who this guy was. Hopefully now that she knew she could talk to me, she’d open up more when she was ready. But anything more today would be too much. So I settled into the couch and pretended to watch the movie instead of her every move. After a while, she handed me back the half-empty container and leaned against my shoulder. My arm automatically went around her and I pulled her close to my side. “Thank you, Kash,” she whispered a couple minutes later. “Anything for you, Rach. I’m here whenever you need to talk.” Pressing my lips to her forehead, I kept them there as I said, “And I will always protect you.” We were still sitting there watching the movie when Mason came back from his run. He nodded at us, and when he came back out of his room after a shower, he was dressed in sweats as well. He grabbed the melting ice cream and tried to squeeze himself onto the couch on the other side of Rachel. She laughed and curled closer into my side. “You guys are the best.” “You think we’re going to let you veg on the couch alone?” Mason said, scoffing. “Sweetheart, you obviously don’t know us that well. I mean, it’s gonna be a hundred degrees today. How else would I spend the day than in sweats?” Rachel kicked at his leg and he squeezed her knee. After a few minutes of watching the movie, Mason caught my gaze over Rachel’s head. He quickly looked down at her and raised an eyebrow, the question clear in his eyes. I nodded once and the color drained from his face. He swallowed hard and grabbed one of Rachel’s hands. She laughed lightly at something from the movie and his eyes came back to mine. They were determined, and he looked like he was struggling at relaxing his now-murderous expression. I knew exactly how he felt. He didn’t have to say anything to me. We’d worked together long enough to know that we’d both just agreed to find the bastard. And make him pay.

Life’s too short to spend time with books that bore us. If

Tony looked me up and down appraisingly. I have to say he didn’t look disappointed or anything. He actually looked a little intrigued. “You gotta be Mason, the guy who called from the library.” “How can you tell?” He shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t get many Mr. Rogers sweaters in here.” “Oh,” I held up my brand spanking new gym bag to prove I belonged there in that temple of testosterone, “I brought shorts and a T-shirt.

When we see people as gifts, rather than possessions, we learn to hold them rather than cling to them. My own experience has taught me that if you love people and let them be themselves in your presence, you’ll never be short of friends.

He broke into loud barks when someone knocked on the front door shortly after. “Turbo,” she said, trying to shush him.

Every person has a different battle they must fight. One person may have to break covenants with the spirit husband/wife, another must break evil covenants with Masonic groups; but first you have to go before God for direction in the route YOU must take. Do not be short changed by only praying what has been written in this book. You should now have better understanding to the battles you must make preparation for. Deliverance is an ongoing process; it is like peeling an onion one layer at a time.

She changed the locks on my condo... packed all my stuff up and threatened to throw it out… And she's holding my dog hostage.

To be perfectly candid, our supply of talent was at a critical low. Ours was a postindustrial or service-based economy, so complex and highly specialized that each individual could only function within the confines of its narrow, compartmentalized structure. You should have seen some of the “careers” listed on our first employment census; everyone was some version of an “executive,” a “representative,” an “analyst,” or a “consultant,” all perfectly suited to the prewar world, but all totally inadequate for the present crisis. We needed carpenters, masons, machinists, gunsmiths. We had those people, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were necessary. The first labor survey stated clearly that over 65 percent of the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation. We required a massive job retraining program. In short, we needed to get a lot of white collars dirty.

I never kept a journal, but over a ten-year period, I realized that Barbara’s moods occurred in six-week cycles. It went like this: Explosive, violent raging that lasted from ten minutes to several hours Silence that lasted for two to five days Friendly, cheerful, affectionate behavior that would last three or four days. (When things were going well, Barbara would apologize and even ask me to find out what might be causing her “crazy behavior.”) A long deterioration that lasted four to ten weeks. Barbara became increasingly more critical, condemning, and short-tempered. She would deny her earlier apologetic remarks. Finally, there would be an angry explosion and the cycle would repeat anew.

In the car on the way to collect Syd, someone said ‘Shall we pick up Syd?’ and the response was ‘No, fuck it, let’s not bother’. To recount it as baldly as this sounds hardhearted to the point of being cruel – it’s true. The decision was, and we were, completely callous. In the blinkered sense of what we were doing, I thought Syd was simply being bloody-minded and was so exasperated with him that I could only see the short-term impact he was having on our desire to be a successful band.

This remarkable transformation can be seen in patterns of congressional representation, then and now. When the 91st Congress was seated in 1969, after Nixon defeated Humphrey, eighteen of the twenty-two senators from the South—the prototypical John Wayne region of the country—were Democrats. In the states stretching from Maine to the Mason-Dixon Line, Jane Fonda country, twelve of the eighteen senators were Republicans. These proportions are hard to conceive of today. In contrast, at the beginning of the 115th Congress, which began shortly after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in late 2016, John Wayne’s South was represented by nineteen Republicans and only three Democrats; New England and the Middle Atlantic states, meanwhile, had two lonely Republicans among their eighteen senators.

But seeing that his life seemed to have a very short shelf life at the moment, David decided to spin a tale to try to drag out any time he had left, hoping that somehow their inattention or focus on this treasure would present him an opportunity to escape.

Staring at the man, Mason saw the white space press against his awareness. The tiny black dot.  Behind Mason, Watt yelped with recall and gave a little Oh-Shit hop. Remembering something dire, he’d turned and was rushing like hell for … for …  Mason wanted to rub his eyes.  … for a small elderly woman behind a walker. Watt barreled headlong, rushing for her as if she were a live grenade. He stopped short, weapon inches from her face. She hadn’t gotten down. From where Mason stood, that seemed to be the problem. But it shouldn’t matter. The woman was frail, couldn’t swat a fly.  “GET DOWN!” Watt screeched.  After Mason made sure his remaining guard hadn’t moved, he turned. “Easy,” he told Watt.  “I SAID GET DOWN!”  “And I said EASY!” Watt’s gun shook in his hand. His eyes were

What kind of girl would invite ‘some guy from the beach she sat and talked to for a minute’ to sleep down the hall from her for two weeks?” My lungs fill, and I turn to him. “The kind that remembers a topic from her freshman orientation.” His brows snap together. “That… that was after she left for the summer. Weeks after.” A small smile pulls at my lips, and I nod. “I know.” With that, I move toward my truck, leaving Mason to explain why I don’t have to run home to grab some things before we make the short trip. I already packed.

I come from the lower orders, that is understood by all. Not the lowest; you’d have to go back to my grandfather for the lowest. He was a night-soil remover, did you know that, Sam? One shilling per stinking cesspit. Did you know that they set me to working with him when I was a boy? One summer I chucked it, ran to the countryside, hid in a hay mow. Farmer found me in the morning, took pity, let me stay. Let me work with him and his dogs, tending his sheep. It was bliss. I never loved anything like I loved them dogs. Then my father showed up and dragged me home. Why? He didn’t want me. “Never mind. You could say my father’s rise to running his own public house was nothing short of a miracle, really. And then I went and edged up a rung from him, didn’t I, when I became a constable. Promoted to detective. Then chief of detectives. Still and all, I got about as high as I could possibly go, given what I come from. And that ain’t particular high. Just ask Sir Richard Mayne, commissioner of the Metropolitan, if you’re unsure of that.” Llewellyn sighed deeply and shook his head. “You seem impatient, Mr. Llewellyn. Am I keeping you?” Field poured the last of the whiskey into his glass. “Now, forget my old man. Forget the night-soil remover. Start over. Say I come from a monkey. And so did you. And Commissioner Mayne—him, too.” He looked around the tavern. “And so did every bleeding body on the whole earth come from monkeys, and those monkeys come from God knows what—fish? Worms? Who benefits, Sam? Who gets hurt? Who likes it, and who don’t?” Llewellyn shrugged. “I’ll tell you who don’t like it: the merchants who run the bleeding empire don’t like it, not one bit. It puts every man on the same level as them, see? The rich, the poor, the light-skinned, and the dark. The bishops don’t like it, nor the lords, because if Mr. Darwin has his way, where’s the control? Who’s in charge, who’s on top and who’s not? Bad for business, Mr. Darwin’s notions are. But for blokes like me and you? Well, even a policeman can dream, can’t he? It’s not flattering, perhaps, having an orangutan as your forefather, but there’s a kind of hope in it, don’t you see? Last I checked, there weren’t no quality monkeys, nor were there lower-class ones.” “And?” “Crash, boom, Mr. Darwin brings it all down. Rule Britannia and the lot. Brings it down harder and more thorough than Mr. Marx ever dreamt in his darkest revolutionary dream.

Life is short and uncertain,.... make the time.

I never kept a journal, but over a ten-year period, I realized that Barbara’s moods occurred in six-week cycles. It went like this: Explosive, violent raging that lasted from ten minutes to several hours Silence that lasted for two to five days Friendly, cheerful, affectionate behavior that would last three or four days. (When things were going well, Barbara would apologize and even ask me to find out what might be causing her “crazy behavior.”) A long deterioration that lasted four to ten weeks. Barbara became increasingly more critical, condemning, and short-tempered. She would deny her earlier apologetic remarks. Finally, there would be an angry explosion and the cycle would repeat anew. Once I recognized the patterns, I knew what to expect. This made things feel more manageable for me.

I don’t think two blokes having the same fucking argument for 16 years over and over is the stuff of opera. Oasis: the Opera would be very short. The fat lady would refuse to sing it.

Migration is the story of America. It is foundational. From Pilgrims fleeing oppression in Europe, to the millions who took advantage of the Homestead Act to “go West,” to the erection of the Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbor, all the way up to the U.S. Congress tying Most Favored Nation status to the human right of Soviet Jews to emigrate, the movement of people fleeing tyranny, violence, and withered opportunities is sacrosanct to Americans. In fact, “freedom of movement” is a treasured right in the nation’s political lexicon. Yet, when more than 1.5 million African Americans left the land below the Mason-Dixon Line, white Southern elites raged with cool, calculated efficiency. This was no lynch mob seeking vengeance; rather, these were mayors, governors, legislators, business leaders, and police chiefs who bristled at “the first step … the nation’s servant class ever took without asking.”12 In the wood-paneled rooms of city halls, in the chambers of city councils, in the marbled state legislatures, and in sheriffs’ offices, white government officials, working hand in hand with plantation, lumber mill, and mine owners, devised an array of obstacles and laws to stop African Americans, as U.S. citizens, from exercising the right to find better jobs, to search for good schools, indeed simply to escape the ever-present terror of lynch mobs. In short, the powerful, respectable elements of the white South rose up, in the words of then-secretary of labor William B. Wilson, to stop the Great Migration and interfere with “the natural right of workers to move from place to place at their own discretion.

FBI agents mostly keep haircuts short and no facial hair. In other words, they don't stand out so no one pays them attention. Exceptions are undercover agents.

The short story is a piece of work. The novel is a way of life.

Coming from where we do, it’s a rough adjustment—living here.” He put a hesitant hand on her shoulder, his calluses scratching against the fabric of her dress. “It’s true what they say about life in the dark ages, you know: nasty, brutish, and short. You and I once took it for granted we would die as old people in our beds, but we have no such assurance now. I’ll help you how I can, Isabella; but I can’t guarantee that either of us will live even to see tomorrow. Life is worth fighting for, young lady. But don’t feel it is something you’re owed.

We are rapidly reducing the beauty of being made in God’s image to our own definition of comfort, pleasure, and self-fulfillment—which repeatedly fail to bring about the life offered by God.