Shrink Your Circle Quotes

If you're new, then perhaps you've seen it. Have you seen it, by chance?” I frowned. “It?” “Yes. It.” “It...what?” I asked cautiously, facing the old faery again. “What are you looking for?” “I don't know.” She sighed heavily, seeming to shrink in on herself. “I don't remember. I just know I lost it. You haven't seen it, have you?” “No,” I told her firmly. “I haven't seen it.” “Oh.” The old creature sighed again, shrinking down a little more. “Are you sure? I thought you might have seen it.” “So, anyway,” Puck broke in, before the conversation could go in another circle.

If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” —Mario Andretti, race-car driver

Worthy Andronicus, ill art thou repaid For that good hand thou sent’st the Emperor. Here are the heads of thy two noble sons, And here’s thy hand in scorn to thee sent back. Thy grief their sports! thy resolution mock'd, That woe is me to think upon thy woes More than remembrance of my father’s death. [Exit.] Marc. Now let hot Aetna cool in Sicily, And be my heart an ever-burning hell! These miseries are more than may be borne. To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal, But sorrow flouted at is double death. Luc. Ah, that this sight should make so deep a wound And yet detested life not shrink thereat! That ever death should let life bear his name, Where life hath no more interest but to breathe. [Lavinia kisses Titus.] Marc. Alas, poor heart, that kiss is comfortless As frozen water to a starvèd snake. Tit. When will this fearful slumber have an end? Marc. Now farewell, flatt’ry; die, Andronicus. Thou dost not slumber. See thy two sons’ heads, Thy warlike hand, thy mangled daughter here, Thy other banished son with this dear sight Struck pale and bloodless; and thy brother, I, Even like a stony image cold and numb. Ah, now no more will I control thy griefs. Rent off thy silver hair, thy other hand, Gnawing with thy teeth, and be this dismal sight The closing up of our most wretched eyes. Now is a time to storm. Why art thou still? Tit. Ha, ha, ha! Marc. Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour. Tit. Why, I have not another tear to shed. Besides, this sorrow is an enemy And would usurp upon my wat’ry eyes And make them blind with tributary tears. Then which way shall I find Revenge’s cave? For these two heads do seem to speak to me And threat me I shall never come to bliss Till all these mischiefs be returned again Even in their throats that hath committed them. Come, let me see what task I have to do. You heavy people, circle me about That I may turn me to each one of you And swear unto my soul to right your wrongs. The vow is made. Come, brother, take a head, And in this hand the other will I bear. And, Lavinia, thou shalt be employed in these arms. Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth. As for thee, boy, go get thee from my sight. Thou art an exile, and thou must not stay. Hie to the Goths and raise an army there. And if you love me, as I think you do, Let’s kiss and part, for we have much to do. Exeunt.

We shrink therefore from God, knowing that He wants to enrich our being, rather than our having—that He wishes to elevate our nature, not to submerge and lose it in trifles. He has called us to the superior vocation of being His children, of partaking of His nature, and of being related to Him as branches to a vine. Few of us completely want that elevation; it is our petty desire to have more,not to share the glory of being more.We want the poor shadows, not the light—the sparks, and not the sun—the arc, and not the circle. As the desire for the world and things increases in us, God makes less and less appeal. We hold back, our fists closed about our few pennies, and thus lose the fortune He holds out to us. That is why the initial step of coming to God is so hard. We cling to our nursery toys and lose the pearl of great price.

The whole reason I’d written about him so freely was that I never expected to face him in person and could therefore imagine him in ways that gratified my conception of who he should be: a white trash savant imbued with junkyard political savvy. In truth, I found the magazine completely disgusting—as I was meant to, obviously: it had long been the most reviled instance of mass-circulation pornography around and used people like me (shame-ridden bourgeois feminists and other elites) for target practice, with excremental grossness among its weapons of choice. It was also particularly nasty to academics who in its imagination are invariably prissy and uptight—sadly I’m one of this breed too. (A cartoon academic to his wife: “Eat your pussy? You forget, Gladys, I have a Ph.D.”)1 Maybe I yearned to be rescued from my primness, though Flynt was obviously no one’s idea of a white knight. (Of course, being attracted to what you’re also repelled by is not exactly unknown in human history.) For some reason, I tend to be drawn to excess: to men who laugh too loud and drink too much, who are temperamentally and romantically immoderate, have off-kilter politics and ideas. Aside from that, it also happened that in the period during which my ideas about things were being formed, the bawdy French satirist Rabelais was enjoying an intellectual revival in my sorts of circles, along with the idea of the “carnivalesque”: the realm of subversion and sacrilege—the grotesque, the unruly, the profane—where the lower bodily stratum and everything that emerges from it is celebrated for supposedly subverting established pieties and hierarchies. I was intrigued by these kinds of ideas, despite—or more likely because of—my aforementioned primness. Contemplating where one might locate these carnivalesque impulses in our own time I’d immediately thought of Hustler, even though back then I had only the vaguest idea what bodily abhorrences awaited me within its shrink-wrapped covers (as if a thin sheet of plastic were sufficient to prevent seepage from the filth within). In fact, the first time I peeled away the protective casing and tried to actually read a copy, I was so disgusted I threw it away, I didn’t even want it in the house.

This is how you break down the wall: Start with two beings. They can be human if you like, but that's hardly a prerequisite. All that matters is that they know how to talk among themselves. Separate them. Let them see each other, let them speak. Perhaps a window between their cages. Perhaps an audio feed. Let them practice the art of conversation in their own chosen way. Hurt them. It may take a while to figure out how. Some may shrink from fire, others from toxic gas or liquid. Some creatures may be invulnerable to blowtorches and grenades, but shriek in terror at the threat of ultrasonic sound. You have to experiment; and when you discover just the right stimulus, the optimum balance between pain and injury, you must inflict it without the remorse. You leave them an escape hatch, of course. That's the very point of the exercise: give one of your subjects the means to end the pain, but give the other the information required to use it. To one you might present a single shape, while showing the other a whole selection. The pain will stop when the being with the menu chooses the item its partner has seen. So let the games begin. Watch your subjects squirm. If—when—they trip the off switch, you'll know at least some of the information they exchanged; and if you record everything that passed between them, you'll start to get some idea of how they exchanged it. When they solve one puzzle, give them a new one. Mix things up. Switch their roles. See how they do at circles versus squares. Try them out on factorials and Fibonnaccis. Continue until Rosetta Stone results. This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

Theology becomes therapy…. The biblical interest in righteousness is replaced by a search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, truth by feeling, ethics by feeling good about one’s self. The world shrinks to the range of personal circumstances; the community of faith shrinks to a circle of personal friends. The past recedes. The Church recedes. The world recedes. All that remains is the self.25

Theology becomes therapy…. The biblical interest in righteousness is replaced by a search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, truth by feeling, ethics by feeling good about one’s self. The world shrinks to the range of personal circumstances; the community of faith shrinks to a circle of personal friends. The past recedes. The Church recedes. The world recedes. All that remains is the self.

No, they weren't fucking. At least not yet, although I'm sure that's where it was leading. Alex was pleasuring Chase." Jasmine was no shrinking violet, but she had no clue as to why she'd suddenly begun to speak in euphemisms. "You can't see me right now, but I'm giving you the side eye at your Victorian turn of phrase." Stephanie's comment made her laugh. "Not the dreaded side eye." "Hell, yes, and you know what that means, right?" "Yes. You think I'm being a big goober." "For lack of a better word. But moving on, I have a question. How is it you saw all this and they didn't see you?" "I think they were too involved in each other to notice me at the door." "You think?" Stephanie paused for a moment. "Or you know?" "I didn't ask and they haven't brought it up, not really." "Not really?" "Chase made a kind of weird comment this morning, but it was nothing." "Why do I have the feeling you're deluding yourself?

If you eat healthily most of the time you can afford to indulge yourself occasionally, but if you eat nothing but junk, you’ll end up not being able to run for a bus without huffing like a steam train. (The only drawback to being super-fit is that centring your life around your quinoa intake and yoga classes often results in an overdose of smugness which may cause your social circle to shrink.)

Sitting in your favorite position and closing your eyes, you tiptoe over the threshold of experience and into the mystery. You drop into the heart of the universe. You’re there. The cascade of SONDANoBe floods your brain. You’re hooked, drawn up into the light. When you emerge from meditation, you’re more compassionate, emotionally balanced, mentally coherent, effective, kind, creative, healthy, and productive. The effects ripple through the whole community around you. At the center of that circle is a great-feeling you. The Gregs of this world go for heroin, weed, or alcohol to make themselves feel good. That’s simply because they don’t realize that a far better drug is available. SONDANoBe is what addicts are really craving. They want to feel good, but they’re looking for exogenous chemicals to meet their needs. They don’t understand that what they’re searching for is right inside their own brains. The only reason those drugs feel good to the Gregs of this world is that they’re facsimiles of the substances that their own brains produce. Bliss Brain is a formula, just like the World’s Best Cocktail. It’s the World’s Best High, and it’s just as addictive. The brain that experiences SONDANoBe once can never go back to its old state. By remodeling neural tissue, SONDANoBe consolidates learning and hardwires bliss. While street drugs shrink and damage vital brain regions, SONDANoBe does the opposite. It grows your brain. It expands the brain regions that regulate your emotions, synthesize great ideas, stimulate your creativity, acquire new skills, heal your body, extend your longevity, improve your memory, and boost your happiness. The next chapter shows how a brain bathed in the chemicals of ecstasy starts to change its fundamental structure, as the software of mind becomes the hardware of brain.

He should have placed Shea in a trance and demanded that she sleep while he did this thing, but the truth was, he simply couldn’t bear their separation, and he wanted her close, where he could protect her. And he wanted her happy. Women! Shea heard his disgruntled complaint clearly in her mind. A small smile tugged at the corners of her reluctant mouth. “Am I complicating your life, Jacques?” she asked sweetly, hopefully. He stopped so abruptly that she was jerked to a halt. Jacques caught her wet hair in his fist and pulled her head back so that the rain ran along her soft skin like honey. “The truth is, Shea, you make me feel so much, I do not know if I can stand it sometimes.” His mouth found hers almost blindly, desperately, feeding voraciously as if he might devour her, take her into his body forever. Nothing can ever happen to you! His hands were biting into her skin, his body taut with tension, his mind a whirling confusion of fear and determination and so much hunger. Almost without thought Shea reacted instinctively, her slender arms circling his neck, her body soft and pliant against the aggression in his, her mind calm and loving, a warm, safe haven for his fragmented, tortured mind. She kissed him without reservation, pouring every ounce of love and support she could into her response. He lifted his head reluctantly and rested his forehead on hers. “Nothing is going to happen to me, Jacques. I think you’re having anxiety attacks.” She tousled his hair as if he were a small boy, gave him a teasing grin. “Do Carpathians have shrinks, too?” He laughed softly, astonished that he could do so when he had been so terrified only moments earlier. “You are as disrespectful as a woman can get.” “I’m not just any woman, silly, I’m a doctor and terribly brilliant. Everybody says so.” “Do they now?” He held her tight against his hard frame, thinking to take her into his very body, his arms protectively sheltering her.

What’s the matter,’ she asks, shakes you and the numbness from your limbs, pulls the towel away and bows. Once upon a time the child would clap at the end of the pantomime, now you stare into the trees, wish you could go back under the umbrella with her again, into the warm towel-cover where the world would shrink back into a trusty, old feeling. There you would tell her everything you’ve learnt about the lifecycle of dragonflies from books and observations in the moor over the last few years. With the rhythm of the drumming and dripping rain and in long sentences that would pearl out of your mouth like the beads of water from the umbrella, you would initiate her into the secret of the insect which lives a long and boring childhood on the bottom of the pond until the strange and the most dangerous moment of its life when in the early morning hours it has climbed up a reed, shed its old skin and stands defenceless before its enemies. The act of metamorphosis can go wrong if the young dragonfly’s still-awkward wings get caught in its skin or hung up on a thorn. Its first attempt at flight, the maiden flight, is clumsy, the insect a new-found snack for birds, for in this phase the adolescent dragonfly, called an imago, is completely concentrated on trying out its new body which is still somewhat familiar to it. But the higher it rises into the air, the more confident and elegant its circles become and soon enough it is able to get around the birds’ beaks and fly off into the moor from where, you say in the final line of your presentation, it comes and where it belongs.

A veritable circle jerk,” Susan said. “Wow,” I said, “you shrinks have a technical language all your own, don’t you?” “Bet your ass,” Susan said. “Do you know the identity of the third snoop?