“
Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.
”
”
Graham Greene (The Quiet American)
“
Every relationship has at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day. That day is always in your possession. That's the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day. It happened once. You think all the variables might just line up again. But they don't. Not always. I once talked to a woman who said, "Yeah, that's the day we had an angel around.
”
”
Charles Baxter (The Feast of Love)
“
I long to come home, but now, I will always come home to my family as a visitor, and that weighs on me, reverts me back into the teenager I was, but instead of insisting that I want everyone to leave me alone, what I want now is for someone to beg me to stay.
”
”
Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart)
“
Maybe we would grow apart, he would develop a personality that I would know nothing about, we would start our families, have children of our own, and there would come a point when in thinking about 'family' we would think of the ones we made, not the ones we were from.
”
”
Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart)
“
Most relationships I’ve been in were like a carton of milk reaching its expiration date. It gets to a certain point and just sours, not inducing sickness but enough to notice a change in flavor. Maybe instead of wondering about Jake, I should be questioning my ability to experience passion. This could all be my fault.
”
”
Iain Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things)
“
The binders hinted at the reasons past relationships had gone sour. SEEKING A 28- TO 34-YEAR-OLD WITH AN OPEN PERSONALITY WHO DOESN'T GAMBLE. SEEKING A CULTIVATED PERSON NOT ADDICTED TO WINE AND WOMEN. An occasional brave soul would throw caution to the winds: SEEKING A 35- TO 45-YEAR-OLD. THE REST IS UP TO DESTINY.
”
”
Leslie T. Chang (Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China)
“
Most relationships come with expiration dates just like milk and bread. Some go sour before you can taste them,
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Shout)
“
The apple of my eye, had turned into an empty core.
”
”
Anthony Liccione
“
So where does the name Adam's apple come from? Most people say that it is from the notion that this bump was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in the throat of Adam in the Garden of Eden. There is a problem with this theory because some Hebrew scholars believe that the forbidden fruit was the pomegranate. The Koran claims that the forbidden fruit was a banana. So take your pick---Adam's apple, Adam's pomegranate, Adam's banana. Eve clearly chewed before swallowing.
”
”
Mark Leyner (Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? More Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour)
“
The 46-year-old recipient of the Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart was actively window shopping in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ fashionable Harvard Square when a transvestite purse snatcher, a drug addict with a criminal record all too well known to public officials, bizarrely outfitted in a strapless cocktail dress, spike heels, tattered feather boa, and auburn wig, brutally tore the life sustaining purse from the woman’s unwitting grasp.
The active, alert woman gave chase to the purse snatching ‘woman’ for as long as she could, plaintively shouting to passers by the words ‘Stop her! She stole my heart!’ on the fashionable sidewalk crowded with shoppers, reportedly shouting repeatedly, ‘She stole my heart, stop her!’ In response to her plaintive calls, tragically, misunderstanding shoppers and passers by merely shook their heads at one another, smiling knowingly at what they ignorantly presumed to be yet another alternative lifestyle’s relationship gone sour. A duo of Cambridge, Massachusetts, patrolmen, whose names are being withheld from Moment’s dogged queries, were publicly heard to passively quip, ‘Happens all the time,’ as the victimized woman staggered frantically past in the wake of the fleet transvestite, shouting for help for her stolen heart.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
You are deep inside the jungle of Space and Time. Your job, relationships, physical well-being hobbies, adventures etc. are like sweet and sour fruits, vegetables and leaves. You are not able to enjoy them because you are thirsty of water, i.e. nothingness.
”
”
Shunya
“
i deem her insecurities
insufferable turn-offs
as if the male standard for sexiness
is a gospel
that demands she stop starving herself
because i like something to grab onto
and how dare she not forfeit
her fetish for a fading frame
to be my performance piece
”
”
Britt Greifeld (Sour)
“
You’re very lucky you had such a good relationship with him. My father loathes me.”
“Why?”
“You know, to be honest, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m too much like him.” His expression sours. “He probably doesn’t like being reminded of his own worst traits. Can’t blame him for that, I suppose.
”
”
Jessica S. Olson (A Forgery of Roses)
“
It was not her way to make a conspicuous entry into anyone’s life, but towards the end of that week Sebastian said rather sourly: “You and mummy seem very thick,” and I realized that in fact I was being drawn into intimacy by swift, imperceptible stages, for she was impatient of any human relationship that fell short of it.
”
”
Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited)
“
Studies have shown that people who make sour facial expressions when their spouses talk are likely to be separated within four years.[10]
”
”
Alison Poulsen (So... what I REALLY meant...: Better Communication Better Relationships)
“
Betrayal is very sour. Moreso when the one you've been trusting turns out to be the one you should be fearing.
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
you say
we were never
meant for this vowed life,
golden bands of only us, and death
do us part. you
say love like it's held in quotation marks,
that this union soured before
it started.
”
”
Beth Morey (Night Cycles: Poetry for a Dark Night of the Soul)
“
The Slabs functions as the seasonal capital of a teeming itinerant society—a tolerant, rubber-tired culture comprising the retired, the exiled, the destitute, the perpetually unemployed. Its constituents are men and women and children of all ages, folks on the dodge from collection agencies, relationships gone sour, the law or the IRS, Ohio winters, the middle-class grind.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
“
The grapes that my hands wouldn’t reach were undoubtedly sour.
But I didn’t need sweet fruits that were like a lie. I didn’t need things like a fake understanding and a deceptive relationship.
What I wanted was that sour grape.
Even if it’s sour, even if it’s bitter, even if it’s disgusting, even if it’s full of poison, even if it didn’t exist, even if I couldn’t lay my hands on it, even if I wasn’t allowed to wish for it.
”
”
Wataru Watari
“
Where we were once laser-focused on our partner and how to make him or her happy, we are now more focused on ourselves and how we can protect our turf, nurse our wounds, and blame our partners when things turn sour.
”
”
S.J. Scott (Mindful Relationship Habits: 25 Practices for Couples to Enhance Intimacy, Nurture Closeness, and Grow a Deeper Connection)
“
Consider your own life. When the relationship goes sour, when the feelings of futility come flooding in, when it feels like life is passing us by, when it seems that our one shot at significance has slipped through our fingers, when we can’t sort out our emotions, when the longtime friend lets us down, when a family member betrays us, when we feel deeply misunderstood, when we are laughed at by the impressive—in short, when the fallenness of the world closes in on us and makes us want to throw in the towel—there, right there, we have a Friend who knows exactly what such testing feels like, and sits close to us, embraces us. With us. Solidarity. Our
”
”
Dane C. Ortlund (Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers)
“
It’s in that moment that pity is the overwhelming thing I feel. I feel sorry for this troglodyte because he has no idea that love doesn’t have to sour over time. I don’t need to be whisked away in a horse-drawn carriage, and I fully believe both partners are responsible for making a relationship romantic, if that’s what they want. Not whatever heteronormative bullshit that tells us guys are supposed to make the first move and pay for dinner and get down on one knee.
But I do want something big and wild, something that fills my heart completely. I want a fraction of what Emma and Charlie or Lindley and Josef or Trisha and Rose have, even though they’re fictional. I’m convinced that when you’re with the right person, every date, every day feels that way.
”
”
Rachel Lynn Solomon (Today Tonight Tomorrow (Rowan & Neil, #1))
“
You often hear it said that people have bad marriages, but in fact, this is not true. Marriage is a God instituted covenant between a man and a woman, and it is good. That has never changed.
"The institution hasn’t failed – people are failing to work out their problems. Couples are simply giving up and walking away, or simply have no idea what they can try next. The good news is that even “soured” relationships can be healed. Things can change. People can change. Marriages can be better than they ever were before.
”
”
Karen M. Gray (Save Your Marriage: A Guide to Restoring & Rebuilding Christian Marriages on the Precipice of Divorce)
“
of the problem was that Chaos got a little creation-happy. It thought to its misty, gloomy self: Hey, Earth and Sky. That was fun! I wonder what else I can make. Soon it created all sorts of other problems—and by that I mean gods. Water collected out of the mist of Chaos, pooled in the deepest parts of the earth, and formed the first seas, which naturally developed a consciousness—the god Pontus. Then Chaos really went nuts and thought: I know! How about a dome like the sky, but at the bottom of the earth! That would be awesome! So another dome came into being beneath the earth, but it was dark and murky and generally not very nice, since it was always hidden from the light of the sky. This was Tartarus, the Pit of Evil; and as you can guess from the name, when he developed a godly personality, he didn't win any popularity contests. The problem was, both Pontus and Tartarus liked Gaea, which put some pressure on her relationship with Ouranos. A bunch of other primordial gods popped up, but if I tried to name them all we’d be here for weeks. Chaos and Tartarus had a kid together (don’t ask how; I don’t know) called Nyx, who was the embodiment of night. Then Nyx, somehow all by herself, had a daughter named Hemera, who was Day. Those two never got along because they were as different as…well, you know. According to some stories, Chaos also created Eros, the god of procreation... in other words, mommy gods and daddy gods having lots of little baby gods. Other stories claim Eros was the son of Aphrodite. We’ll get to her later. I don’t know which version is true, but I do know Gaea and Ouranos started having kids—with very mixed results. First, they had a batch of twelve—six girls and six boys called the Titans. These kids looked human, but they were much taller and more powerful. You’d figure twelve kids would be enough for anybody, right? I mean, with a family that big, you’ve basically got your own reality TV show. Plus, once the Titans were born, things started to go sour with Ouranos and Gaea’s marriage. Ouranos spent a lot more time hanging out in the sky. He didn't visit. He didn't help with the kids. Gaea got resentful. The two of them started fighting. As the kids grew older, Ouranos would yell at them and basically act like a horrible dad. A few times, Gaea and Ouranos tried to patch things up. Gaea decided maybe if they had another set of kids, it would bring them closer…. I know, right? Bad idea. She gave birth to triplets. The problem: these new kids defined the word UGLY. They were as big and strong as Titans, except hulking and brutish and in desperate need of a body wax. Worst of all, each kid had a single eye in the middle of his forehead. Talk about a face only a mother could love. Well, Gaea loved these guys. She named them the Elder Cyclopes, and eventually they would spawn a whole race of other, lesser Cyclopes. But that was much later. When Ouranos saw the Cyclops triplets, he freaked. “These cannot be my kids! They don’t even look like me!” “They are your children, you deadbeat!” Gaea screamed back. “Don’t you dare leave me to raise them on my own!
”
”
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson's Greek Gods)
“
To lovers out there ...
Some people in a relationship, lose their partners by substituting Instead of adding to what they have. Once they have fame, money, car, house, beauty, job, friends . They substitute respect , treatment, love and care in relationship with those things. That is why ? The relationship becomes sour and dies.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
The technology has proven so valuable that SpaceX’s competitors have started to copy it and have tried to poach some of the company’s experts in the field. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s secretive rocket company, has been particularly aggressive, hiring away Ray Miryekta, one of the world’s foremost friction stir welding experts and igniting a major rift with Musk. “Blue Origin does these surgical strikes on specialized talent* offering like double their salaries. I think it’s unnecessary and a bit rude,” Musk said. Within SpaceX, Blue Origin is mockingly referred to as BO and at one point the company created an e-mail filter to detect messages with “blue” and “origin” to block the poaching. The relationship between Musk and Bezos has soured, and they no longer chat about their shared ambition of getting to Mars. “I do think Bezos has an insatiable desire to be King Bezos,” Musk said. “He has a relentless work ethic and wants to kill everything in e-commerce. But he’s not the most fun guy, honestly.
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Inventing the Future)
“
Look ahead
It’s tempting to go through life looking in the rearview mirror. When you are always looking back, you become focused on what didn’t work out, on who hurt you, and on the mistakes you’ve made, such as:
“If only I would have finished college.”
“If only I’d spent more time with my children.”
“If only I’d been raised in a better environment.”
As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures.
You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now. Whether it happened twenty minutes ago or twenty years ago, let go of the hurts and failures and move forward. If you keep bringing the negative baggage from yesterday into today, your future will be poisoned.
You can’t change what’s happened to you. You may have had an unfair past, but you don’t have to have an unfair future. You may have had a rough start, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.
Don’t let a hurtful relationship sour your life. Don’t let a bad break, a betrayal, a divorce, or a bad childhood cause you to settle for less in life. Move forward and God will pay you back.
Move forward and God will vindicate you. Move forward and you’ll come into a new beginning. Nothing that’s happened to you is a surprise to God. The loss of a loved one didn’t catch God off guard. God’s plan for your life did not end just because your business didn’t make it, or a relationship failed, or you had a difficult child.
Here’s the question: Will you become stuck and bitter, fall into self-pity, blame others, and let the past poison your future? Or will you shake it off and move forward, knowing your best days are still ahead?
The next time you are in your car, notice that there’s a big windshield in the front and a very small rearview mirror. The reason the front windshield is so big and the rearview mirror is so small is that what’s happened in the past is not nearly as important as what is in your future. Where you’re going is a lot more important than where you’ve been.
”
”
Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
“
The initial disappointment for the misogynist usually occurs early in the relationship. However, because there is so much excitement and romance going on, the moment of flare-up is easily swept under the rug. If there is a sense of shock for the woman, it is only a small sour note in a symphony of good feelings. The early indications of the misogynist's quick temper are sporadic. The explosions don't become a way of life until some kind of commitment has been made. This can be a verbal commitment, moving in together, an engagement, or a marriage. Then, once he's sure he "has" her, the situation changes rapidly.
”
”
Susan Forward (Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why)
“
…for only someone who has lived in a totalitarian state can appreciate the true character of paranoia. In 1937, when my father returned to Kiev from Luhansk, the whole country was bathed in a miasma of paranoia.
It seeped everywhere, into the most intimate crevices of people's lives: it soured the relationship between friends and colleagues, between teachers and students, between parents and children, husbands and wives. Enemies were everywhere. If you didn't like the way someone has sold you a piglet, or looked at your girlfriend, or asked for money you owned, or given you a low mark in an exam, a quick word to the NKVD would sort them out...
”
”
Marina Lewycka (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian)
“
Falling in love is an amazingly transcendental adventure. It is a great blessing to experience something so pure and sacred. So how can such an experience become corrupted? The answer is that our motivations sully the experience – but these motivations are usually entirely unconscious (that is, below our conscious awareness). When finding love is used as a way of escaping ourselves, it becomes more like a drug to numb our pain, rather than a spiritual journey. The experience is cheapened as conditions are placed upon the relationship for it to work. The dominant unspoken condition is: “You must make me happy and distract me enough from my pain and emptiness for this to work.” When this condition isn’t met consistently, the relationship begins to sour, decompose, and break apart.
”
”
Aletheia Luna (Twin Flames and Soul Mates: How to Find, Create, and Sustain Awakened Relationships)
“
It’s not that I want us to understand one another, be friends, talk, or be together. I don’t need them to understand me. I know they won’t, and I don’t wish them to. What I’m looking for is something harsher and more severe. I want to know. I want to understand. I want to know so I can feel relief. I want peace of mind, because ignorance is absolutely terrifying. Complete understanding is such a self-righteous, selfish, and arrogant thing to wish for. It’s despicable and repulsive, really. I’m beyond disgusted with myself for wanting it.
But if—if we could feel the same way…
If we could impose that ugly self-satisfaction on one another, if there’s some sort of relationship that could permit that arrogance…
I know something like that is absolutely impossible. I bet I’ll never attain something like that.
I’m sure the grapes out of my reach are sour.
But I don’t need fruit sweet like lies. I don’t need false understanding or phony relationships.
What I want is those sour grapes.
Even if it’s sour, even if it’s bitter, even if it tastes bad, even if it’s pure poison, even if it doesn’t exist, even if I can’t acquire it, even if what I want cannot be allowed…
“Still…” The word came out of me unbidden, and even I could hear it trembling.
“Still, I…” I fought down the sob that nearly escaped and tried to swallow the sound along with the rest of the sentence, but they both came out in fragments. My teeth rattled, and my throat was tight as the words left my mouth anyway.
“I want…something real.
”
”
Wataru Watari (やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。9)
“
As the Puritans’ relationship with the new king soured, John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer, began to pursue seriously the prospect of a Puritan colony in New England. In March 1629 Winthrop obtained a royal charter to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in 1630 he was joined by 700 colonists on eleven ships to set sail for New England. While on board the Arbella, Winthrop preached a sermon in which he declared to his fellow travelers, “We shall be as a city upon a hill [and] the eyes of all people are upon us.
”
”
John D. Woodbridge (Church History, Volume Two: From Pre-Reformation to the Present Day: The Rise and Growth of the Church in Its Cultural, Intellectual, and Political Context)
“
Everything is going wrong with my relationship. I know that it’s all my fault. I try everything I know to fix it, but it doesn’t work. I’m not even sure if I love him/her. Maybe I don’t know what love is. I’m so confused.” Sound familiar? It should. It is almost verbatim the story I hear when an Adult Child of an Alcoholic enters therapy because an intimate relationship is souring.
”
”
Janet Geringer Woititz (Struggle for Intimacy)
“
Wherever I looked, I saw waste. Yet people thought nothing of throwing out food that could feed thousands upon thousands. They took me to see dog races, which are the most nonsensical type of sports. When the mechanical dog fell over, every racing dog stopped and went its own way. That visit to Florida was a lovely change and a pleasant time, away from books, the subway and the real problems, which did not go away; they were just disregarded for a little while, put on the back burner. Although I had no real clashes with Eli, yet little incidents, of trivial importance, soured our relationship.
”
”
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
“
Justice, like love, is a matter of right relationships, and the most important relationship in our lives as creatures of God is our relationship to God. If that is in place, everything else has a chance of working itself out in justice and love. When that relationship is ignored or suppressed, inevitably every other relationship goes sour, as history itself bears witness in the examples of officially atheistic states.
”
”
Francis George
“
Thomas Bowman had a contentious relationship with both his daughters, alternately ignoring them and subjecting them to harsh criticisms. The older daughter Lillian responded to Bowman with surly impudence. But Daisy, the fifteen year-old, regarded her father in a speculative, rather cheerful way that seemed to annoy him beyond his ability to bear.
She had made Matthew want to smile. With her luminous skin, her exotic cinnamon-colored eyes and quicksilver expressions, Daisy Bowman seemed to have come from an enchanted forest populated with mythical creatures. It had immediately become apparent to Matthew that any conversation Daisy took part in was apt to veer into unexpected and charming directions.
He had been secretly amused when Thomas Bowman had chastised Daisy in front of everyone for her latest mischief.
It seemed that the Bowman household had lately become overrun with mice because all the traps they set had failed.
One of the servants had reported that Daisy had been sneaking around the house at night, deliberately tripping all the traps to keep the mice from being killed.
“Is this true, daughter?” Thomas Bowman had rumbled, his gaze filled with ire as he stared at Daisy.
“It could be,” she had allowed. “But there is another explanation.”
“And what is that?” Bowman had asked sourly.
Her tone turned congratulatory. “I think we are hosting the most intelligent mice in New York!”
From that moment on Matthew had never refused an invitation to the Bowman mansion, not just because it pleased the old man but because it gave him the chance to see Daisy. He had collected as many stolen glances as possible, knowing it was all he would ever have of her. And the moments he had spent in her company, regardless of her cool politeness, had been the only times in his life he had come close to happiness.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Scandal in Spring (Wallflowers, #4))
“
home only to pine over an ex-girlfriend, so he stopped. He apologized, saying a few more things that Catherine once again just nodded her head to, smiling, and before she knew it, she had plans to go see a movie with Dickie the following Friday. It was a date, the first of many. It went like this for two months: Friday night dates. Rides home from school while other girls looked on in jealousy. Long nights parked up at The Point, the low rumble of his car idling away while they made out with the heat blowing on her legs. Him sliding his hands up her skirt. Under her shirt. Her moaning. Her face flushing red. Her toes curling. The Rolling Stones on the radio. Why did he taste so good? Never sex, though. Even when he begged for it, she would refuse. She knew what their relationship really was. It was great and fun and wild and exciting, but she knew it wouldn’t last; he was off to college soon, and she remembered how he felt about being tethered to something familiar. That conversation never left her mind for the duration of their relationship, always reminding her to be ready to lose him. At the time, she was still a virgin, and as much as she loved Dickie she did not wish to give herself fully to someone who would more than likely forget about her within months, if not weeks, of leaving. Catherine was young, but never stupid or naive. She knew how the world worked… even Dickie’s world. What she felt and experienced with him may have been real by her definition, but she understood that that did not make the relationship everlasting or meant-to-be. Their time together had been great and fun and had changed her in ways she would never be able to put into words. She would forever cherish their moments together. Or at least, that’s what she’d thought at the time, before these cherished memories soured. Everything changed the night of the dance. The night he changed. The night she changed, too. It was Dickie’s senior prom. He invited her to go and she happily accepted. She even bought a new dress with the money she’d saved working shifts down at Woolworth’s. The dance was fine and good. They had a blast. They’d even kissed in the middle of the gymnasium during the last slow dance. It had been so romantic. But afterward was a different sort of time. Dickie and some of his friends rented a few rooms at the Heartsridge Motel for a place to hang out after the dance. But it was more than just a place to hang out. It was a place to party, a place to drink alcohol purchased illegally, a place for some of the looser girls to sleep with their dates. She had been to parties with Dickie before, parties with drinking and drugs and where there were rooms dedicated to fooling around. She wasn’t a square. But this was different. This place made her skin crawl. There was a raw energy in the air. She remembered feeling it on her skin. And the fact that it was a motel made the whole scene seem depraved. It just felt off, and she wanted to beg him to go somewhere else. But instead she held her tongue and went along with Dickie. He was leaving soon, after all. Why not appease him? He seemed excited about going. A few of them—all friends of Dickie’s—ended up together in one room, drinking Schnapps, smoking cigarettes, having
”
”
Christian Galacar (Cicada Spring)
“
Narcissistic Legends are blissfully unaware that anyone could see them as less than perfect. Once the relationship is certain, they stop making an effort. The Narcissist expects other people to be so thrilled by even a little attention that they will happily give anything for the pleasure of associating with such a superior person. Victims do little to discourage the idea. In the beginning, both vampire and victim see each other as bargains. For a while, their relationship seems to be a very sweet deal. Then it slowly goes sour. No matter how hard victims work, Narcissistic Legends feel very little gratitude. They expect their victims to be grateful to them. After a while, even the most caring victims get sick of having their needs ignored. Then they create their own hypnotic bind. Either they keep on giving, and thereby continue to be good but exploited people, or they nag or leave or otherwise act in ways that they themselves consider selfish and hurtful. They can’t win, so most often they do nothing but hurt inside.
”
”
Albert J. Bernstein (Emotional Vampires: Dealing With People Who Drain You Dry)
“
But the innovation that would most transform the subcontinent—and its economic relationship to the rest of the world—did not involve separating the seeds from their fibers; every society that domesticated cotton for textile use ultimately developed some kind of mechanical gin. What made Indian cotton unique was not the threads themselves, but rather their color. Making cotton fiber receptive to vibrant dyes like madder, henna, or turmeric was less a matter of inventing mechanical contraptions as it was dreaming up chemistry experiments. The waxy cellulose of the cotton fiber naturally repels vegetable dyes. (Only the deep blue of indigo—which itself takes its name from the Indus Valley where it was first employed as a dye—affixes itself to cotton without additional catalysts.) The process of transforming cotton into a fabric that can be dyed with shades other than indigo is known as “animalizing” the fiber, presumably because so much of it involves excretions from ordinary farm animals. First, dyers would bleach the fiber with sour milk; then they attacked it with a range of protein-heavy substances: goat urine, camel dung, blood. Metallic salts were then combined with the dyes to create a mordant that permeated the core of the fiber. The result was a fabric that could both display brilliant patterns of color and retain that color after multiple washings.
”
”
Steven Johnson (Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt)
“
You have fallen victim to this fallacy if you have ever followed through with plans to go to the theater just because you already purchased the tickets (even though the weather is foul and the play has received poor reviews). Or you hold on to a bad investment (or even worse, put in additional money) because you had already made the investment. Or you continue a personal relationship, though the relationship has soured, just because the relationship has persisted many years.
”
”
Dan Levy (Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser)
“
Because our external relationships are almost always a reflection of our internal relationship with Jesus. A soul at war will sour relationships.
”
”
Whitney Capps (Sick of Me: from Transparency to Transformation)
“
Most relationships come with expiration dates
just like milk and bread. Some go sour
before you can taste them.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Shout)
“
Instead of souring on life, flip your script. Tell yourself you intend to do good and to serve. That you intend to create a thriving business and have money in the bank. You intend to treat the people around you with care and are worthy of a loving and caring relationship. Apply good intentions to all parts of your life, and then watch what happens.
”
”
Ed Mylett (The Power of One More: The Ultimate Guide to Happiness and Success)
“
When the relationship goes sour, when the feelings of futility come flooding in, when it feels like life is passing us by, when it seems that our one shot at significance has slipped through our fingers, when we can’t sort out our emotions, when the longtime friend lets us down, when a family member betrays us, when we feel deeply misunderstood, when we are laughed at by the impressive—in short, when the fallenness of the world closes in on us and makes us want to throw in the towel—there, right there, we have a Friend who knows exactly what such testing feels like, and sits close to us, embraces
”
”
Dane C. Ortlund (Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers)
“
The relationship had gone sour, not dramatically or over any one thing. Slowly and steadily over nothing in particular, everything in general, strangled by two different prescriptions for living.
”
”
Joe Joyce (Off The Record)
“
There’s no need to bow to their authoritative dictates or consult them before everything you do unless it impacts them in an important way. I have a co-worker who sought his girlfriend’s permission before going for a coffee break or out to lunch. The way she treated him and tried to control his every move is ridiculous. Predictably, the relationship ended on a sour note.
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Christopher Kingler (Masters of Emotional Blackmail: Disarm the Hidden Techniques of the Blackmailer, Set Boundaries and Free Yourself from Feelings of Fear, Obligation, Guilt and Anxiety)
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Parenting is like a fruit salad.
We need a bit of every ingredient. Children go through all feelings: sweet, salty, sour and bitter, so as parents we have to know how to balance that palate.
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Janna Cachola
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God is daily employing the brokenness of this present world to clarify your values. Why do you need this? You need it because you struggle in this life to remember what is truly important, that is, what God says is important. You and I place much more importance on things than they truly possess, and when we do so, these things begin to claim our heart allegiance. So God ordains for us to experience that physical things get old and break. The people in our lives fail us. Relationships sour and become painful. Our physical bodies weaken. Flowers die and food spoils. All of this is meant to teach us that these things are beautiful and enjoyable, but they cannot give us what we all long for—life.
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Paul David Tripp (New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional)
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The depth of their relationship was indicated by how Tayven pulled a sour face at him. They were like brothers.
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Storm Constantine (The Crown of Silence (The Chronicles of Magravandias, #2))
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9. A woman who smiles and takes care of herself and is generally happy with her life is a keeper; a woman who doesn’t take care of herself and is sour all the time, has an attitude wider than all the ocean, and doesn’t hesitate to lay somebody out for the slightest transgression is a throwback.
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Steve Harvey (Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Expanded Edition: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment)
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We believe a major reason change efforts so often fail is that successful implementation eventually requires people to have difficult conversations — and they are not prepared to manage them skillfully. People inevitably have different views on priorities, levels of investment, measures of success, and exactly what correct implementation should entail. With everyone taking for granted that their own view is right, and readily assuming that others’ opposition is self-interested, progress quickly grinds to a halt. Decisions are delayed, and when finally made they are often imposed without buy-in from those who have to implement them. Relationships sour. Eventually people give up in frustration, and those driving the effort get distracted by new challenges or the next next big thing. The ability to manage difficult conversations effectively is foundational, then, to achieving almost any significant change.
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Douglas Stone (Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most)
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Some say that Dian’s relationship with the gorillas, her feeling of oneness with them, bespoke a kind of psychological sickness. “A lot, I think, of her inexplicable sourness and unhappiness was accelerated [by the fact that] all the touchy-feely stuff with the gorillas was a need to substitute gorillas for the people in her life,” said one American conservation official who knew her. Again the voice of the skeptic: Dian had lost touch with reality, the world of people, rather than attaining a new reality, the world of nonhuman minds. “I think she entertained the thought that gorillas cared for her and were more worth her love than human beings were,” this person said. “The gorillas certainly tolerated her, but they certainly had no positive emotions with her. They were complete in their gorillahood, they had their own relationships. They had no need for her. They didn’t need her.”
Another scientist, one of Dian’s former students, said, “Some of the gorillas may have real affection for us; nonetheless they don’t like us as much as we like them, and they don’t understand us as well as we understand them.”
But perhaps, in a world “older and more complete” than ours, there is a love that does not demand a reciprocal debt of need. Certainly Dian needed the gorillas. But perhaps the gorillas understood Dian better than any human ever did.
Ian Redmond told a story at the National Geographic memorial benefit for Dian. He hadn’t planned to tell it; it was prompted by a question: how did the gorillas react to Dian’s death?
“This goes beyond the bounds of strict science,” Ian said. “Just after Dian’s death, three gorilla groups who had been at some distance from Visoke suddenly homed in on the mountain. One group traveled almost continually for two days to arrive in the vicinity.” Ian is a scientist and would not want to volunteer the interpretation implicit in the gorillas’ sudden, purposeful movement toward the mountain that was Dian’s home: that they had come, in her hour of death, to be near to her.
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Sy Montgomery (Walking with the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas)
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When the tough things happen—parents get sick, relationships go sour, careers stall—we might ask ourselves if the situation is a prison or a school: a place to escape or one in which to learn.
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Ada Calhoun (Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis)
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She wished she could. It was real love, unlike her mother’s marriage to Floyd. It was real because they were honest with one another, and the core of their bond was so solid they could argue without hurting each other. Arguments are the leaves, and the relationship is the trunk, Archie liked to say. One comes and goes, and the other doesn’t change, except to get stronger. He would know, because even when Florence was around, there had been a lot of arguments. Archie had openly soured on their covert arrangement, and had been trying to convince Floyd to move with him to Chicago. He claimed he had friends in Old Town who would welcome them, and they could live how they wanted. Floyd never had much to say about it when Florence was present. He was probably hoping it would blow over. Instead, it picked up more force each passing year.
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J. Ryan Stradal (Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club)
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All trials and tests we go through in life, do one or two things; either to make us bitter soul or better Individual. The determination that helps one be better, is making the right choices, and willingness to change.
The choice to stay a victim or become a victor, totally lies in your hands.
ACT LIKE YOU ALREADY WON-The Mindset of Successful People. (When Relationships Turn Sour-Turn Lemons Into Lemonade 17/pg185)
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MILLICENT OLAGHERE (ACT LIKE YOU ALREADY WON: The Mindset of Successful People; Diminish Your Fears Now.)
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On 14 August, Gandhi met B.R. Ambedkar in Bombay. This was the first meeting between the two men, one for more than a decade the most important political leader in India, the other, younger by twenty-two years, and seeking to represent his own, desperately disadvantaged community of so-called ‘untouchables’. Both men knew of each other, of course; Ambedkar had been inspired by Gandhian ideas during his ‘Mahad Satyagraha’ of 1927, which Gandhi had praised in the columns of Young India.
Remarkably, Gandhi did not know that Ambedkar was born in an ‘untouchable’ home. In Maharashtra, people of all castes took surnames after their village of origin, so ‘Ambedkar’ could merely mean ‘from the village of Ambed’. (Indeed, this was not Ambedkar’s original surname; he had been given it by a Brahmin teacher in his school.) Gandhi seems to have thought that—like Gokhale and Tilak before him—B.R. Ambedkar was an upper-caste reformer who took an interest in the uplift of the ‘untouchables’. Having worked for decades for the same cause, Gandhi was patronizing towards someone he saw as a fresh convert, a johnny-come-lately, whereas Ambedkar was in fact an ‘untouchable’ who had experienced acute discrimination himself. Gandhi’s tone offended Ambedkar, souring the relationship at the start.
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Ramachandra Guha (Gandhi 1915-1948: The Years That Changed the World)
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Most relationships I’ve been in were like a carton of milk reaching its expiration date. It gets to a certain point and just sours, not inducing sickness but enough to notice a change in flavor.
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Iain Reid (I'm Thinking of Ending Things)
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[T]here are no illnesses in nature, only relationships. There are, of course, naturally occurring events, including infectious viruses, malignant growths, ruptures of tissues, and unusual chromosome constellations, but these are not ipso facto illnesses. Without the social meaning that humans attach to them they do not constitute illness or disease:
The fracture of a septuagenarian's femur has, within the world of nature, so more significance than the snapping of an autumn leaf from its twig; and the invasion of a human organism by cholera germs carries with it no more the stamp of "illness" than the souring of milk by other forms of bacteria. (Sedgwick, 1972, p. 211)
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Peter Conrad (Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness)
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You should focus on what you can change, not what you cannot change. What’s done is done. If somebody offended you, mistreated you, or disappointed you, the hurts can’t be undone. You can get bitter--pack it in a bag and carry it around and let it weigh you down--or you can forgive those who hurt you and go on.
If you lost your temper yesterday, you can beat yourself up--put the guilt and condemnation in a bag--or you can ask for forgiveness, receive God’s mercy, and do better today.
If you didn’t get a promotion you wanted, you can get sour and go around with a chip on your shoulder, or you can shake it off, knowing that God has something better in store.
No matter what happens, big or small, if you make the choice to let it go and move forward, you won’t let the past poison your future.
A woman I know went through a divorce years ago. We prayed several times in our services, asking God to bring a good man into her life. One day she met a fine Godly man, who was very successful. She was so happy, but she made the mistake of carrying all her negative baggage from her divorce into the new relationship. She was constantly talking about what she had been through and how she was so mistreated.
She had a victim mentality. The man told me later that she was so focused on her past and so caught up in what she had been through that he just couldn’t deal with it. He moved on. That’s what happens when we hold on to the hurts and pains of the past. It will poison you wherever you go. You can’t drag around all the personal baggage from yesterday and expect to have good relationships. You’ve got to let it go.
Quit looking at the little rearview mirror and start looking out the great big windshield in front of you. You may have had some bad breaks, but that didn’t stop God’s plan for your life. He still has amazing things in your future.
When one door closes, stay in faith and God will open another door. If a dream dies, don’t sit around in self-pity talking about what you lost, move forward and dream another dream. Your life is not over because you lost a loved one, went through a divorce, lost a job, or didn’t get the house you wanted. You would not be alive unless God had another victory in front of you.
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Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
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I wish I could also understand
Why relationships sour
Why friends turn hostile
Why emotions die
Why efforts to save them prove futile?
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Balroop Singh (Sublime Shadows Of Life)
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Still, we've attempted to argue when necessary; you've got to be able to let loose and even lose your temper a bit if you're finding it hard to breathe. Closeness has to be like running water; it mustn't stagnate and sour.
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Oddný Eir
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Is it possible to be friendly and engaging every day? Of course not. Everyone has their moments. I once read a quote from an anonymous author who said, “It’s okay to have a bad day— just don’t unpack and live there.” I love that. As an example, imagine waking up and stubbing your toe as you get out of bed. You can respond in one of two ways. You can allow it to start your day off on the wrong foot and go through the rest of your day in a bad mood—souring everything and everyone in your path.
OR . . . you can say, “Oh great—sh*t happens, the day’s got to get better from here!” Then set your intention to look for the good things that head your way for the rest of the day. You have the power to pick.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Connection: 8 Ways to Enrich Rapport & Kinship for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #6))
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The clear-cuts soured all of us,
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Joanna Burger (The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship)
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Consider your own life. When the relationship goes sour, when the feelings of futility come flooding in, when it feels like life is passing us by, when it seems that our one shot at significance has slipped through our fingers, when we can’t sort out our emotions, when the longtime friend lets us down, when a family member betrays us, when we feel deeply misunderstood, when we are laughed at by the impressive—in short, when the fallenness of the world closes in on us and makes us want to throw in the towel—there, right there, we have a Friend who knows exactly what such testing feels like, and sits close to us, embraces us. With us. Solidarity.
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Dane C. Ortlund (Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers)
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There was nothing physical happening between them yet. She was still of that naive age where you actually believe that it would only happen after marriage. I didn't want to tell her how hand-holding turned into kissing, that turns into something else and then bam you're fucking. That relationships sour over time is a lesson that comes with age, so who was I to burst her youthful bubble? [69]
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Tendai Huchu (The Hairdresser of Harare)
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You and I place much more importance on things than they truly possess, and when we do so, these things begin to claim our heart allegiance. So God ordains for us to experience that physical things get old and break. The people in our lives fail us. Relationships sour and become painful. Our physical bodies weaken. Flowers die and food spoils. All of this is meant to teach us that these things are beautiful and enjoyable, but they cannot give us what we all long for—life. In this world that is groaning, God is protecting our hearts. He is protecting us from us. Our hearts can be so fickle. We can worship God one day, only to turn and give the worship of our hearts to something else the next. So, in love, God lets pieces of the creation die in our hands so that increasingly we are freed from asking earth to give us what only he can give. He works through loss to protect us from giving our allegiance to things that will never, ever deliver what our hearts seek. This is all designed to deepen our love and worship of him. It is all crafted to propel the joy that we have in him. And in so doing, he is preparing us for that moment when we will be freed from this present travail and give all of our being to the worship of him forever and ever.
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Paul David Tripp (New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional)
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Whatever variant of freedom is espoused, a basic income would enhance it. However, in the liberal tradition a basic income would be both necessary and sufficient, if judged high enough to meet basic needs. In the republican tradition, however, basic income would be necessary but not sufficient; other institutions and policies would be needed properly to advance freedom. A basic income would strengthen the following prosaic or day-to-day freedoms: — the freedom to refuse a job that is onerous, boring, low-paying or just nasty; — the freedom to accept a job that is none of the above but which could not be accepted if financial necessity dictated; — the freedom to stay in a job that pays less than previously or that has become more financially insecure; — the freedom to start a small-scale business venture, which is risky but potentially rewarding; — the freedom to do care work for a relative or friend, or voluntary work in and for the community, that might not be feasible if financial necessity required long hours of paid labour; — the freedom to do creative work and activities of all kinds; — the freedom to risk learning new skills or competences; — the freedom from bureaucratic interference, prying and coercion; — the freedom to form relationships and perhaps set up ‘home’ with someone, often precluded today by financial insecurity; — the freedom to leave a relationship that has turned sour or abusive; — the freedom to have a child; — the freedom to be lazy once in a while, a vital freedom to which we will return. Would alternative social policies do as well on any of these counts? At the very least, a social protection policy should be neutral on behavioural freedom, not moralistic, directive, coercive or punitive. The
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Guy Standing (Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen)
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The reality of social networking sites is that they provide platforms for online personae to interact with other online personae. Importantly, such relationships can be ended with a click of an 'unfriend,' 'unfollow,' or 'block' button. Breaking up like this constitutes a morally lightweight action. Certainly it flies in the face of Cicero's advice that a friendship 'should seem to fade away rather than to be stamped out.' The respect that Cicero demanded that we pay to a friendship, even one that has turned sour, did not anticipate the tenuous connection inherent in being a facebook friend.
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Marilyn Yalom (The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship)
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God is saying when you stay full of joy, when you learn to offer up the sacrifice of praise, God will turn things in your favor. He will reverse negative situations. He will return, or restore, what’s been stolen.
But notice that restoration doesn’t come from complaining, being negative, or being sour. Restoration takes place when you have the voice of gladness, the voice of joy. That means you get up in the morning with a song in your heart. You go out each day with a smile on your face. Things may not always go your way, but you don’t become discouraged. You shake it off and count it all joy.
When you live that way, you might as well get ready. God will be reversing and restoring. He will reverse finances that have been down. He will reverse a struggling business. He will reverse a legal situation in your favor. He will reverse a health issue to heal you.
Not only that, God will restore what should have been yours. He will restore the years you lost because somebody did you wrong. He will restore a relationship that’s on the rocks. Restoration will occur because you have the voice of joy, the voice of gladness, and you keep offering up that sacrifice of praise.
Learn to count it all joy. Don’t be determined to never have problems. Be determined to stay full of joy in the midst of your problems. Arrange your mind in the right direction.
And no matter what comes your way, don’t lose your joy. Learn to offer up that sacrifice of praise. If you keep the voice of gladness, the voice of joy, you cannot stay down and defeated. God has promised He will reverse and restore. Not only that, but because you have joy, you will find the strength to outlast every attack, to overcome every obstacle, to defeat every enemy. You will become everything God created you to be, and you will have everything God intended for you to have.
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Joel Osteen (Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week)
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The relationship between Musk and Bezos has soured, and they no longer chat about their shared ambition of getting to Mars. “I do think Bezos has an insatiable desire to be King Bezos,” Musk said. “He has a relentless work ethic and wants to kill everything in e-commerce. But he’s not the most fun guy, honestly.”fn3 In
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Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
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It is important to build a little stress in your life by trusting new people, making new friends and nurturing new relationships. It is possible that some of them would turn sour over a period of time and some of the people whom you trusted would betray your trust. However, many relationships would turn out to be much better than expected and they are enough to compensate for the loss of the ones that did not work out.
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Awdhesh Singh (31 Ways to Happiness)
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a reenactment of the outrage over the kowtow incident that soured early Chinese-British relationships, the British expressed their anger over the fact that, in the Viceroy’s letters, the empress’s name was written in larger letters than Queen Victoria’s.[li]
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Charles River Editors (The Boxer Rebellion: The History and Legacy of the Anti-Imperialist Uprising in China at the End of the 19th Century)
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It is far easier to strengthen a strong relationship even more than to strengthen a relationship that has soured. Better to prevent ruining a relationship than trying to repair it.
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Sushil Rungta
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tasting the four elements (yoruba) In a ritual adapted from a Yoruba tradition, the bride and groom taste four flavors that represent different emotions within a relationship: sour (lemon), bitter (vinegar), hot (cayenne), and sweet (honey). By tasting each of the flavors, the couple symbolically demonstrates that they will be able to get through the hard times in life and, in the end, enjoy the sweetness of their marriage.
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Carley Roney (The Knot Guide to Wedding Vows and Traditions [Revised Edition]: Readings, Rituals, Music, Dances, and Toasts)
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The world seemed so full of warnings about the fact that love could never endure—time flying by, relationships turning sour—but the warnings were like a DANGER: FALLING ROCKS sign on a dark highway at night. You were already there in the middle of it. What were you going to do now, stop driving?
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J. Courtney Sullivan
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When any relationship begins to sour, the details are different but the emotions are much the same: betrayal, disappointment, shattered dreams, and deadly silence.
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Daniel Gottlieb (Letters to Sam: A Grandfather's Lessons on Love, Loss, and the Gifts of Life)
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A good way to think about it is when you deal with a psychopath you are really interacting with their ‘Mask of Sanity or Normalcy,’ as it has been called. They can keep relationships up for years if the circumstances support it. But most of their relationships sour and fail because people eventually do see through the mask to their real core: which is pure selfishness and, many times, evil.
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Alexa Steele (The Forgotten Girls (Suburban Murder, #1))
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Everyday sunk cost fallacy examples can run from less consequential decisions, such as finishing a movie or book that you don’t like, to larger ones, such as investing more money into a failing business or staying in a career or relationship that is turning sour. You need to avoid thinking, We’ve come too far to stop now. Instead, take a realistic look at your chances of success and evaluate from an opportunity cost perspective whether your limited resources are best used continuing what you are doing or persuing another opportunity.
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Gabriel Weinberg (Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models)
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What is it you want of me?” “Direct as always. I admire that. So different from the demon realm, with its endless scheming and intrigue.” “There’s plenty of that here too. I can’t stand it. So what do you want?” My tone was more sour than I’d intended, but he just smiled again and turned away. He stepped to the cold and unlit fireplace. I sure as hell wasn’t going to light a fire in the middle of summer in south Louisiana. He trailed a hand over the back of the armchair, then looked back at me. “I wish you to be mine,” he said. I stared at him, skin tingling as the memory of the last time he’d been in the basement rushed through me. Best sex ever—no doubt. And he wants me to be his …? He wants me? I tried to remain rational. He wanted me, but as what? Wife? Girlfriend? What the hell kind of relationship did one have with a demonic lord? And was that something I wanted? I took another couple of seconds to work some moisture back into my mouth. “Yours? Like, how? Marriage? Adoption? Lease with option to buy?
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Diana Rowland (Blood of the Demon (Kara Gillian, #2))
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Hi, honey, I’m home!” she shouted. The furniture stared at her. Her own sour little joke ever since the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships had decided it was best for her to annul her five-year relationship with Dario Sanducci, a yulp counselor in the Department of Housing and Welfare.
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Ian McDonald (Out on Blue Six)
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Peach Cobbler
You stirred the pot.
Taking parts of you.
Parts of me.
The good, the bad.
Even the things that aren’t
So pretty to look at.
And poured them into
The pan.
It’s easy to forget about
The hurt until you come
Face to face with it.
Sour peaches aren’t the end
Of the world.
No matter how we layer it.
These are the things we’ve
Come to love about each other.
Even the hurt becomes mixed
In a sugar glaze with enough time.
No matter how bitter.
The brown of my skin
Mixed with yours.
A recipe that’s been done
And passed down before our time.
No matter how much of a mess
We think that things are,
No matter how bruised a peach
We accidentally pick up.
Nothing can replace the warmth
Of a cobbler.
Straight from the oven.
Soon we’ll both be fast asleep.
Your head rising and falling on my chest
With each breath I take.
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Kewayne Wadley