Spur Of The Moment Quotes

[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.

I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.

I don't have an evil plan!" said Peril, panicking. "All my evil is spur of the moment! Turtle, tell them how bad I am at planning.

Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.

Falling in love is not a spur of the moment thing. There wasn't love at first sight as I always believed there to be. It crept and overpowered me. Once I was in its power, it was the most amazing feeling in the world.

We all have heard about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. They act courageously or responsibly, and their efforts are described as if they opted to act that way on the spur of the moment... I believe many people in those situations actually have made descisions years before.

Always be careful, my boy, what you make up. Life's more full of things made up on the Spur of the Moment than most people realize. Beware of the Spur of the Moment. It may turn and rend you.

I open the refrigerator. I decide against the half a lemon and jar of Gulden’s mustard and on the spur of the moment choose instead to have breakfast out. I guess that’s just the kind of girl I am—whimsical. 5:10

If I want to be the best, I have to take risks others would avoid, always optimizing the learning potential of the moment and turning adversity to my advantage. That said, there are times when the body needs to heal, but those are ripe opportunities to deepen the mental, technical, internal side of my game. When aiming for the top, your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve. You should always come off an injury or a loss better than when you went down.

Perhaps courage is simply this spur-of-the-moment acts when your head screams don't, but your body does it anyway.

What are we calling that, exactly?” I ask. Arthur ponders this for a moment. “Hmm. How about … Haphazard Medley Inspired By Radio on the Drive Over, Messrs. McCartney, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr, The Most Hideous Preteen Holiday Monstrosity Ever Inflicted Upon The Ears Of Longsuffering Parents, The Smiths Because I Know You Like Them, And A Great Deal Of Nonsense Made Up Spur Of The Moment, All For The Beautiful Boy Who Is Sitting Next To Me, Because Somehow, Amidst The Recent Chaos, Dissatisfaction, And Mediocrity Of My Existence, Lord Knows How, I Seem To Have Done Something Very Right.” Oh, this guy. “You’re never going to fit that on any album sleeves,” I say, leaning in to rest my forehead against his. “Just the beautiful boy part, then,” he compromises, starting to smile.

We don't have a choice in how or when our bad days will blindside us. But what we do choose is how we allow them to leave us once they're gone. You can use those moments as a catalyst to spur you on to greater things or you can let it be the event that breaks you and leaves you shattered and forever lost in darkness.

Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?" Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!" And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

That's what we're all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand. We might just as well let the res tof it go, join the party, and dance our hearts out.

I made sure to pay attention to everything I was doing. To be fully in the moment. Because that's all life is, really, a string of moments that you knot together and carry with you. Hopefully most of those moments are wonderful, but of course they won't all be. The trick is to recognize an important one when it happens. Even if you share the moment with someone else, it is still yours. Your string is different from anyone else's. It is something no one can ever take away from you. It will protect you and guide you, because it IS you. What you hold here, in your hand, in this box, this is my string. "Until recently, I thought it was death that gave meaning to life--that having an endpoint is what spurred us on to embrace life while we had it. But I was wrong. It isn't death that gives meaning to life. Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question. "What matters is holding tight to that string, and not letting anyone tell us our goals aren't big enough or our interests are silly. But the voices of others aren't the only ones we need to worry about. We tend to be our own worst critics. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: 'Most of the shadows in this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.' ... Wisdom is found in the least expected places. Always keep your eyes open. Don't block your own sunshine. Be filled with wonder.

When people use statistics, in 72% of cases, they've made them up on the spur of the moment. Katrine Bratt

I want to talk about creating your life. There’s a quote I love, from the poet Mary Oliver, that goes: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? I so clearly remember what it was like, being young and always in the grip of some big fat daydream. I wanted to be a writer always, but more than that, I wanted to have an extraordinary life. I’m sure I dreamed it a million different ways, and that plenty of them were ridiculous, but I think the daydreams were training for writing, and I also think they spurred me to pursue my dreams for real. Daydreaming, however awesome it is, is passive. It happens in your head. Learning to make dreams real is another matter, and I think it should be the work of your life. Everyone’s life, whatever their dream (unless their dream is to be an axe murderer or something.) It took me a while to finish a book. Too long. And you know, it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are unless you finish what you start! I think this is the hardest part for most people who want to write. I was in my mid-30s before I figured it out. The brain plays tricks. You can be convinced you’re following your dream, or that you’re going to start tomorrow, and years can pass like that. Years. The thing is, there will be pressure to adjust your expectations, always shrinking them, shrinking, shrinking, until they fit in your pocket like a folded slip of paper, and you know what happens to folded slips of paper in your pocket. They go through the wash and get ruined. Don’t ever put your dream in your pocket. If you have to put it somewhere, get one of those holsters for your belt, like my dad has for his phone, so you can whip it out at any moment. Hello there, dream. Also, don’t be realistic. The word “realistic” is poison. Who decides? And “backup plan” is code for, “Give up on your dreams,” and everyone I know who put any energy into a backup plan is now living that backup plan instead of their dream. Put all your energy into your dream. That’s the only way it will ever become real. The world at large has this attitude, “What makes you so special that you think you deserve an extraordinary life?” Personally, I think the passion for an extraordinary life, and the courage to pursue it, is what makes us special. And I don’t even think of it as an “extraordinary life” anymore so much as simple happiness. It’s rarer than it should be, and I believe it comes from creating a life that fits you perfectly, not taking what’s already there, but making your own from scratch. You can let life happen to you, or you can happen to life. It’s harder, but so much better.

So many had burned opportunities in the name of postponement, believing that another opportunity will arise. They fail to seize the spur of the moment, without thinking that maybe, that could be their last chance to actualize their long nurtured dreams. Achieving your heart desires in this century requires your alertness, diligence, and overcoming the hindrances that procrastination brings.

What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words "see you tomorrow," and the horse's shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone. Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never get much farther that that. Let be, let be.

It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.

And of course she enjoyed life immensely. It was her nature to enjoy. Anyhow there was no bitterness in her; none of that sense of moral virtue which is so repulsive in good women. She enjoyed practically everything. If you walked with her in Hyde Park now it was a bed of tulips, now a child in a perambulator, now some absurd little drama she made up on the spur of the moment.

Then suddenly he beheld his sister Éowyn as she lay, and he knew her. He stood a moment as a man who is pierced in the midst of a cry by an arrow through the heart; and then his face went deathly white; and a cold fury rose in him, so that all speech failed him for a while. A fey mood took him. 'Éowyn, Éowyn!' he cried at last: 'Éowyn, how come you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!' Then without taking counsel or waiting for the approach of the men of the City, he spurred headlong back to the front of the great host, and blew a horn, and cried aloud for the onset. Over the field rang his clear voice calling: 'Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world's ending!' And with that the host began to move. But the Rohirrim sang no more. Death they cried with one voice loud and terrible, and gathering speed like a great tide their battle swept about their fallen king and passed, roaring away southwards.

Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the cab. Every now and then her thinly daubed, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as if she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation that I was feeling could be. It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had come to Santa Fe to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlor, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset. Everything was soaked in brilliant red—my hand, the plate, the table, the world—as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing that had always remained—and would forever remain—unfulfilled. I had forgotten the existence of such innocent, all-but-seared-in longing: forgotten for years to remember what such feelings had ever existed inside of me. What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something—anything—to save her. But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in her life and decided—almost on the spur of the moment—to end it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade. It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: “Hatsumi’s death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me.” I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again.

H. H. Munro. Also known as Saki. The story is called ‘The Open Window.’ Look it up. When it comes to the art of creating bullshit on the spur of the moment, it’s very instructive.

Haven’t you ever gotten carried away and done something totally spur of the moment like that?” “Everybody gets carried away from time to time,” Tracy told the boy who had carried him away.

All his life he had had a horror of definite appointments. An invitation to tea a week ahead had been enough to poison life for him. He was one of those young men whose souls revolt at the thought of planning out any definite step. He could do things on the spur of the moment, but plans made him lose his nerve.

Baby, it’s not spur of the moment, and I’m thinking just fine. I’ve loved you since the first time I laid eyes on you. We’ve already wasted too much time. Jace Montgomery, be mine forever. Marry me on our terms before we leave this island.Just say yes. If I could move, I’d hold you, kiss you, beg you to say yes. Please, go find the chaplain and let’s do this thing, right now. I don’t want to destroy that marriage certificate. I want it to be real. I want to marry you. I want to say the words ‘I do’ in front of witnesses.

We don't have a choice in how or when our bad days will blindside us. But what we do choose is how we allow them to leave us once they're gone. You can use those moments as a catalyst to spur you on to greater things or you can let it be the event that breaks you and leaves you shattered and forever lost in darkness. That, my friend, is the curse of free will. You can blame it all on fate and the universe, but in the end you alone decide if you're going to lie down and let hell take you under, or if you're going to stand strong in defiance of it all with your middle finger raised. ~ Caleb

It occurred to her, sadly, and not for the first time, that as you grew older you became busier, and time went faster and faster, the months pushing each other rudely out of the way, and the years slipping off the calendar and into the past. Once, there had been time. Time to stand, or sit, and just look at daffodils. Or to abandon housekeeping, on the spur of the moment, walk out of the back door and up the hill, into the lark-song emptiness of a summer morning.

Life and dreams are leaves of one and the same book. The systematic reading is real life, but when the actual reading hour (the day) has come to an end, and we have the period of recreation, we often continue idly to thumb over the leaves, and turn to a page here and there without method or connexion. We sometimes turn up a page we have already read, at others one still unknown to us, but always from the same book. Such an isolated page is, of course, not connected with a consistent reading and study of the book, yet it is not so very inferior thereto, if we note that the whole of the consistent perusal begins and ends also on the spur of the moment, and can therefore be regarded merely as a larger single page.

nothing like that. it had more to do with his face. which, although presentable, gave me the feeling that his every expression had been thrown together on the spur of the moment. like mismatched dishes set out in make-do fashion on a party table.

They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act — and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment — are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.

By all appearances, the shooting had been self-defense or, at worst, a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion. Matters like these were traditionally settled quietly, especially when the accused was a highly respected, affluent individual with no criminal record. Savannahians were well aware of past killings in which well-connected suspects were never charged, no matter how obvious their guilt.

We made a successful, last-minute effort to get the French Open many years ago, when the USA network bailed on it. I remember, four of us jumped on a plane on the spur of the moment to cover it. I think we had someone draw up a sign (by hand) that we could hold up in front of the camera to tell viewers that it was ESPN coverage.

Being born with power, as a boy, doesn’t necessarily spur innovation. But being born entirely without it forces innovation in women, who must learn to survive almost from the moment they are born. Afghan women do not need much well-intentioned training on that.

Minimalism had to be born, not out of a mere spur-of-the-moment idea or yearning for a new lifestyle, but from an earnest desire and fervent need to rethink our lives.

It was one of those occasions. Those big not-thought-through/spur-of-the-moment/more-intuition-than-rational-analysis occasions. The occasions that make us who we are.

The mind fabricates and believes in whatever it wants to conclude is true because of what occurs on the spur of the moment to the child.

Half the pleasure of a feeling lies in being able to express it on the spur of the moment, and I let out mine.

How do you write a letter on the spur of the moment? And then post it? On the spur of the moment?

My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.

And of course she enjoyed life immensely. It was her nature to enjoy. Anyhow there was not bitterness in her; none of that sense of moral virtue which is so repulsive in good women. She enjoyed practically everything. If you walked with her in Hyde Park now it was a bed of tulips, now a child in a perambulator, now some absurd little drama she made up on the spur of the moment.

Wei WuXian pressed three fingers into the air—one for the Heaven, one for the earth, one for his heart. “And I want to sleep with you everyday. I swear to you that it’s not a spur of the moment thing and it’s not me teasing or playing with you. It’s not out of gratitude either. Basically it’s not for any other bullshit reasons apart from the fact that I just really like you, so much so that I want to get into bed with you. I don’t want anyone else except you. It has to be you, no one else will do. You can do anything you want to me—whatever and however you want, and I’ll be happy—as long as you are willing to do it with me……” Right as he finished, a gush of fierce wind roared into the Guanyin Temple, extinguishing rows after rows of candlelight within.

The party was a spur-of-the-moment thing for the kids Robert and I hang out with together. That's all. Is that such a big deal? I don't invite them to every BSC event, do I? They don't get insulted.

Maturity has never been about age, built or possession: It is rather about having the capacity to conceal or reveal your feelings and thoughts in pursuit of positive targets; not on the whims of mundane impulses or spur of the moment.

When did he ever do something on the spur of the moment? He'd spent all his life focusing on something in the future, trying to attain it... He never thought about anything in the here and now, and enjoyed what he had at this exact moment in time.

The advantages of a propaganda that constantly “adds the power of organization” to the feeble and unreliable voice of argument, and thereby realizes, so to speak, on the spur of the moment, whatever it says, are obvious beyond demonstration. Foolproof against arguments based on a reality which the movements promised to change, against a counterpropaganda disqualified by the mere fact that it belongs to or defends a world which the shiftless masses cannot and will not accept, it can be disproved only by another, a stronger or better, reality. It is in the moment of defeat that the inherent weakness of totalitarian propaganda becomes visible. Without the force of the movement, its members cease at once to believe in the dogma for which yesterday they still were ready to sacrifice their lives. The moment the movement, that is, the fictitious world which sheltered them, is destroyed, the masses revert to their old status of isolated individuals who either happily accept a new function in a changed world or sink back into their old desperate superfluousness. The members of totalitarian movements, utterly fanatical as long as the movement exists, will not follow the example of religious fanatics and die the death of martyrs (even though they were only too willing to die the death of robots). Rather they will quietly give up the movement as a bad bet and look around for another promising fiction or wait until the former fiction regains enough strength to establish another mass movement.

Improvisation comedy is a wonderful example of the kind of thinking that Blink is about. It involves make very sophisticated decisions on the spur of the moment without the benefit of any kind of script or plot. That's what makes it so compelling and — to be frank — terrifying.

It was a dashed tricky thing, of course, to have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven’t the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right.

Life had already taught Stephen one thing, and that was that never must human beings be allowed to suspect that a creature fears them. The fear of the one is a spur to the many, for the primitive hunting instinct dies hard -- it is better to face a hostile world than to turn one's back for a moment.

Strong as that repugnance became, I had an even stronger feeling that we were embarking on an important enterprise far too much upon the spur of the moment. The latter qualm I had the temerity to confess to Raffles; nor have I often loved him more than when he freely admitted it to be the most natural feeling in the world.

Procrastination is when you walk by the loose screw in the door hinge 87 times and each time think about it, say to yourself that you’re going to fix it, kick yourself that you don’t do it, even tell your wife that you’ll do it, still don’t do it, then finally, one day, seemingly spur of the moment, you fix it on the 88th time.

No sir," said Mr Molloy. "I'm mighty sorry I can't meet you in any way, but the fact is I'm all fixed up in Oil. Oil's my dish. I began in Oil and I'll end up in Oil. I wouldn't be happy outside of Oil." "Oh?" said Mr Carmody, regarding this Human Sardine with as little open hostility as he could manage on the spur of the moment.

The betrayal of Jesus by Judas wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment mistake. He betrayed Jesus each and every time he pilfered the money pot. And while most of us can’t imagine pickpocketing Jesus, we shortchange Him in a thousand different ways. We rob God of the glory He demands and deserves by not living up to our full, God-given potential.

On the spur of the moment she decided to go and view the blossoms by herself in the dark night. It was a strange decision for a timid and unadventurous young woman, but then she was in a strange state of mind and she dreaded the return home. That evening all sorts of unsettling fancies had burst open in her mind. ("Swaddling Clothes")

The results from these experiments are, obviously, quite disturbing. They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act—and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment—are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize. But

have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found

so evenly was strained their war and battle, till the moment when Zeus gave the greater renown to Hector, son of Priam, who was the first to leap within the wall of the Achaians. In a piercing voice he cried aloud to the Trojans: "Rise, ye horse-taming Trojans, break the wall of the Argives, and cast among the ships fierce blazing fire." So spake he, spurring them on, and they all heard him with their ears, and in one mass rushed straight against the wall, and with sharp spears in their hands climbed upon the machicolations of the towers. And Hector seized and carried a stone that lay in front of the gates, thick in the hinder part, but sharp at point: a stone that not the two best men of the people, such as mortals now are, could lightly lift from the ground on to a wain, but easily he wielded it alone, for the son of crooked-counselling Kronos made it light for him. And as when a shepherd lightly beareth the fleece of a ram, taking it in one hand, and little doth it burden him, so Hector lifted the stone, and bare it straight against the doors that closely guarded the stubborn-set portals, double gates and tall, and two cross bars held them within, and one bolt fastened them. And he came, and stood hard by, and firmly planted himself, and smote them in the midst, setting his legs well apart, that his cast might lack no strength. And he brake both the hinges, and the stone fell within by reason of its weight, and the gates rang loud around, and the bars held not, and the doors burst this way and that beneath the rush of the stone. Then glorious Hector leaped in, with face like the sudden night, shining in wondrous mail that was clad about his body, and with two spears in his hands. No man that met him could have held him back when once he leaped within the gates: none but the gods, and his eyes shone with fire. Turning towards the throng he cried to the Trojans to overleap the wall, and they obeyed his summons, and speedily some overleaped the wall, and some poured into the fair-wrought gateways, and the Danaans fled in fear among the hollow ships, and a ceaseless clamour arose.

No, not my dog. I was walking down the street, saw this golden retriever, and decided to name her Saskya and bring her home with me. It's not like I planned it or anything. It was just a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Believing that, in alliance with the proletariat, they have singled out in capitalism the common enemy, the young abandon their own ground, that of the struggle against the patriarchal system. They put all their faith in the proletariat as the bearer of the revolutionary moment. They may want to spur the workers if they seem too pacified by the successes of trade unions, or by the tactical considerations of party politics; but there is no doubt in their minds that the proletariat is the historical force of the future. By fighting someone else’s battle, the young once again allow themselves to become subordinated, which is, of course, what has always been desired of them.

It was foolish to feel like a girl getting ready for a date. Gennie told herself that as she unlocked the door to the cottage.She'd told herself the same thing as she'd driven away from town...as she'd turned down the quiet lane. It was a spur of the moment cookout-two adults,a steak,and a bottle of burgundy that may or may not have been worth the price. A person would have to look hard to find any romance in charcoal, lighter fluid and some freshly picked greens from a patch in the backyard. Not for the first time, Gennie thought it a pity her imagination was so expansive. It had undoubtedly been imagination that had brought on that rush of feeling in the churhcyard. A little unexpected tenderness, a soft breeze and she heard bells. Silly. Gennie set the bags on the kitchen counter and wished she'd bought candles. Candlelight would make even that tidy,practical little kitchen seem romantic.And if she had a radio, there could be music...

Then the devil took him into a high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world and said that he would give them to him if he would fall down and worship him. But Jesus said: Get thee hence, Satan. That’s the end of the story according to the good simple Matthew. But it wasn’t. The devil was sly and he came to Jesus once more and said: If thou wilt accept shame and disgrace, scourging, a crown of thorns and death on the cross, thou shalt save the human race, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Jesus fell. The devil laughed till his sides ached, for he knew the evil men would commit in the name of their redeemer.” Isabel looked at me indignantly. “Where on earth did you get that?” “Nowhere. I’ve invented it on the spur of the moment.” “I think it’s idiotic and blasphemous.” “I only wanted to suggest to you that self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling.

In our desire to be real we start thinking that authenticity is another word for spontaneity, as if everything we say at the spur of the moment is more true, more sincere than words we craft carefully. For many, the Freudian slip is considered more authentic than the measured reply. Indeed, sometimes what we blurt out thoughtlessly is actually what we mean and feel. But more often than not, what we blurt out is ill-considered and something we either need to qualify or apologize for

Strange things happen on this earth: you can live a long while with someone and be on the friendliest of terms, and yet you’ll never once talk openly with him, from the depths of your soul; while with someone else you may scarcely have met, at one glance, whether you to him or he to you, just as in a confessional, you’ll blurt out the story of your life. I don’t know what made me deserve the confidence of my new friend, save that, on the spur of the moment, he ‘took to me’, as they say….

Mrs. Visser has invited me in for a cup of tea tomorrow afternoon. I should have declined, if only because of how she smells, but I said I would love to stop by for a minute. There goes my afternoon. What a stupid wimp I am. On the spur of the moment I couldn’t think of a good excuse, so I’ll have to endure the mindless jabbering and the dry sponge cake. How she manages to turn the moistest of cakes into dusty cardboard is beyond me. You need three cups of tea per slice to wash it down. Tomorrow I will take a bold stand and turn down the second helping. Start a new life.    A

the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others’ faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it is true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it. He plays at it until he dies, except for the moments when he is alone and without a mirror. For the dandy, to be alone is not to exist. The romantics talked so grandly about solitude only because it was their real horror, the one thing they could not bear.

Don't you want to preserve old things? But you can't, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year - then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants. So you think that just as time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too? Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamorous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stars to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop-skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these - these animals - get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses - bound for dust - mortal-

A wide diversity of treatment and social support models needs to be made available to drug users, ranging from one-strike-you’re-out abstinence to harm reduction, methadone maintenance, buprenorphine detox, heroin prescription, and subsidized employment initiatives. Treatment programs also need to take advantage of the moments of life crisis that drive long-term injectors to seek treatment. Most of the spur of the moment, crisis-driven windows of opportunity for changing the lives of street addicts are missed because underfunding, exacerbated by neoliberal audit culture, forces treatment programs to exclude risky patients.

After these numerous passages from the poets, I may now be permitted to express myself by a metaphor. Life and dreams are leaves of one and the same book. The systematic reading is real life, but when the actual reading hour (the day) has come to an end, and we have the period of recreation, we often continue idly to thumb over the leaves, and turn to a page here and there without method or connexion. We sometimes turn up a page we have already read, at others one still unknown to us, but always from the same book. Such an isolated page is, of course, not connected with a consistent reading and study of the book, yet it is not so very inferior thereto, if we note that the whole of the consistent perusal begins and ends also on the spur of the moment, and can therefore be regarded merely as a larger single page. Thus, although individual dreams are marked off from real life by the fact that they do not fit into the continuity of experience that runs constantly through life, and waking up indicates this difference, yet that very continuity of experience belongs to real life as its form, and the dream can likewise point to a continuity in itself. Now if we assume a standpoint of judgement external to both, we find no distinct difference in their nature, and are forced to concede to the poets that life is a long dream.

Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!” He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. “Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?” “I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.

Crosby’s name was mentioned, and Peyton got on the telephone. He tracked Crosby to the set of The Bells of St. Mary’s, where Crosby was working on the role, ironically, of a priest. On the spur of the moment, Crosby agreed to do the show. Francis Cardinal Spellman also appeared, and the Mother’s Day broadcast was such a success that Peyton pushed ahead with plans for a regular series. Mutual donated the time, under four conditions: that the show be of top quality; that it be strictly nonsectarian; that a major film star be involved each week; and that Peyton pay production costs himself. He met Loretta Young, who advised him how to approach the stars and became the “first lady” of Family Theater

According to research, dopamine influences how people choose between immediate rewards versus things that might occur in the future (Schultz, 2004). In other words, it forces individuals to focus on the here and now rather than how their spur-of-the-moment decisions may influence them in the future. This can lead them toward making unhealthy choices.

Make the Leader Occasionally Disappear: Several leaders of successful groups have the habit of leaving the group alone at key moments. One of the best at this is Gregg Popovich. Most NBA teams run time-outs according to a choreographed protocol: First the coaches huddle as a group for a few seconds to settle on a message, then they walk over to the bench to deliver that message to the players. However, during about one time-out a month, the Spurs coaches huddle for a time-out…and then never walk over to the players. The players sit on the bench, waiting for Popovich to show up. Then, as they belatedly realize he isn’t coming, they take charge, start talking among themselves, and figure out a plan.

Even with the questions and worries that flooded her, Lillian was overcome with sudden exhaustion. The waking nightmare had come to a precipitate end, and it seemed that for now there was nothing more she could do. She waited docilely, her cheek resting against the steady support of Marcus’s shoulder, only half hearing the conversation that ensued. “… have to find St. Vincent…” Marcus was saying. “No,” Simon Hunt said emphatically, “I’ll find St. Vincent. You take care of Miss Bowman.” “We need privacy.” “I believe there is a small room nearby— more of a vestibule, actually…” But Hunt’s voice trailed away, and Lillian became aware of a new, ferocious tension in Marcus’s body. With a lethal shift of his muscles, he turned to glance in the direction of the staircase. St. Vincent was descending, having entered the rented room from the other side of the inn and found it empty. Stopping midway down the stairs, St. Vincent took in the curious tableau before him… the clusters of bewildered onlookers, the affronted innkeeper… and the Earl of Westcliff, who stared at him with avid bloodlust. The entire inn fell silent during that chilling moment, so that Westcliff’s quiet snarl was clearly audible. “By God, I’m going to butcher you.” Dazedly Lillian murmured, “Marcus, wait—” She was shoved unceremoniously at Simon Hunt, who caught her reflexively as Marcus ran full-bore toward the stairs. Instead of skirting around the banister, Marcus vaulted the railings and landed on the steps like a cat. There was a blur of movement as St. Vincent attempted a strategic retreat, but Marcus flung himself upward, catching his legs and dragging him down. They grappled, cursed, and exchanged punishing blows, until St. Vincent aimed a kick at Marcus’s head. Rolling to avoid the blow of his heavy boot, Marcus was forced to release him temporarily. The viscount lurched up the stairs, and Marcus sprang after him. Soon they were both out of sight. A crowd of enthusiastic men followed, shouting advice, exchanging odds, and exclaiming in excitement over the spectacle of a pair of noblemen fighting like spurred roosters. White-faced, Lillian glanced at Simon Hunt, who wore a faint smile. “Aren’t you going to help him?” she demanded. “Oh no. Westcliff would never forgive me for interrupting. It’s his first tavern brawl.” Hunt’s gaze flickered over Lillian in friendly assessment. She swayed a little, and he placed a large hand on the center of her back and guided her to the nearby grouping of chairs. A cacophony of noise drifted from upstairs. There were heavy thudding sounds that caused the entire building to shake, followed by the noises of furniture breaking and glass shattering. “Now,” Hunt said, ignoring the tumult, “if I may have a look at that remaining handcuff, I may be able to do something about it.

I began to think of school as a prison camp, and my duty was to disrupt, subvert and/or escape. But, of course, there was no escape. I felt I should make some kind of statement. I decided to deliver two tons of horseshit to my housemaster. Just one of those spur-of-the-moment ideas that comes with no logic in tow, but a great deal of emotional momentum.

hesitated, thinking of all the ways I could change the subject, then made a spur-of-the-moment decision that I was finished with small talk and surface conversation and diversions and lies of any kind, no matter how small. At least for right now, as I sat at my parents’ dining room table, with a kind man who had once loved me, and who still prayed to God before supper.

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug." "Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew. "What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!

He looked into my face innocently searching with his clear eyes. He was waiting apparently for me to tell him what it was about. But nothing suitable occurred to me on the spur of the moment, and besides I had something against telling him any more lies than were necessary. So I said nothing. “Then I will pray for help in trouble for someone unknown,” said he at last. “Yes,” I replied, “if you would do that. And I thank you very much.” He smiled. “You don’t need to thank me. We are every one of us in God’s hands.” He looked at me a moment, his head bowed a little to one side, and it seemed as if something passed over his face. “Only trust,” said he. “The Heavenly Father helps. He always helps, even when sometimes we do not understand.” Then he nodded to me and went.

He saw his enemies stealthily darting from rock to tree, and tree to bush, creeping through the brush, and slipping closer and closer every moment. On three sides were his hated foes and on the remaining side—the abyss. Without a moment's hesitation the intrepid Major spurred his horse at the precipice. Never shall I forget that thrilling moment. The three hundred savages were silent as they realized the Major's intention. Those in the fort watched with staring eyes. A few bounds and the noble steed reared high on his hind legs. Outlined by the clear blue sky the magnificent animal stood for one brief instant, his black mane flying in the wind, his head thrown up and his front hoofs pawing the air like Marcus Curtius' mailed steed of old, and then down with a crash, a cloud of dust, and the crackling of pine limbs.

When people gather together in unexpected ways, it inevitably spurs innovation—the third goal driving our programs. Amazon lists 54,950 books on innovation for sale, presenting many competing and often conflicting theories. Google, of course, has a number of approaches, but the most salient one is the way we use our benefits and also our environment to increase the number of “moments of serendipity” that spark creativity.

I believe the perception of what people think about DID is I might be crazy, unstable, and low functioning. After my diagnosis, I took a risk by sharing my story with a few friends. It was quite upsetting to lose a long term relationship with a friend because she could not accept my diagnosis. But it spurred me to take action. I wanted people to be informed that anyone can have DID and achieve highly functioning lives. I was successful in a career, I was married with children, and very active in numerous activities. I was highly functioning because I could dissociate the trauma from my life through my alters. Essentially, I survived because of DID. That's not to say I didn't fall down along the way. There were long term therapy visits, and plenty of hospitalizations for depression, medication adjustments, and suicide attempts. After a year, it became evident I was truly a patient with the diagnosis of DID from my therapist and psychiatrist. I had two choices. First, I could accept it and make choices about how I was going to deal with it. My therapist told me when faced with DID, a patient can learn to live with the live with the alters and make them part of one's life. Or, perhaps, the patient would like to have the alters integrate into one person, the host, so there are no more alters. Everyone is different. The patient and the therapist need to decide which is best for the patient. Secondly, the other choice was to resist having alters all together and be miserable, stuck in an existence that would continue to be crippling. Most people with DID are cognizant something is not right with themselves even if they are not properly diagnosed. My therapist was trustworthy, honest, and compassionate. Never for a moment did I believe she would steer me in the wrong direction. With her help and guidance, I chose to learn and understand my disorder. It was a turning point.

Third, theology is being done today by ordinary people. Like the character in Moliere's play who was surprised to learn that he was speaking prose all the time, the serious but non-clergy Christian may be surprised to find he or she is doing theology much of the time.J3 This `people' theology proliferates in films and books, as well as private conversations: vernacular theology, spur-of-the-moment theology, off-the-cuff theology and indigenous theology. For example, my young granddaughter was told by her `atheist' friend that there is no God and no heaven. `Well', she said, `if there's no heaven, then what's the point of dying?' - pure theology!

With his free hand, Thomas produces a small key. It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos that don’t seem to have a reason for being except in an elevator, a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them. Where do we get this shit? Bridal shower and wedding gifts, stocking stuffers, spur-of-the-moment purchases at Ikea. They’re all so goddamned useless, hidden in the backs of kitchen drawers, taken for granted and never taken out. This is what goes through my mind as Thomas frees me with the high-tech equivalent of a can opener.

Two hours later, Revere trotted into Lexington, his mount thoroughly lathered after outgalloping a pair of Gage’s equestrian sentinels near Charlestown. Veering north toward the Mystic River to avoid further trouble, Revere had alerted almost every farmstead and minute captain within shouting distance. Popular lore later credited him with a stirring battle cry—“The British are coming!”—but a witness quoted him as warning, more prosaically, “The regulars are coming out.” Now he carried the alarm to the Reverend Jonas Clarke’s parsonage, just up the road from Lexington Common. Here Clarke had written three thousand sermons in twenty years; here he called up the stairs each morning to rouse his ten children—“Polly, Betsey, Lucy, Liddy, Patty, Sally, Thomas, Jonas, William, Peter, get up!” And here he had given sanctuary, in a bedroom to the left of the front door, to the renegades Hancock and Samuel Adams. A squad of militiamen stood guard at the house as Revere dismounted, spurs clanking. Two warnings had already come from the east: as many as nine mounted British officers had been seen patrolling the Middlesex roads, perhaps “upon some evil design.” At the door, a suspicious orderly sergeant challenged Revere, and Clarke blocked his path until Hancock reportedly called out, “Come in, Revere, we’re not afraid of you.” The herald delivered his message: British regulars by the hundreds were coming out, first by boat, then on foot. There was not a moment to lose.

My thanks for your hospitality, Roran Stronghammer,” he said, raising his voice so that his entire troop could hear. “Mayhap I will soon have the honor of entertaining you within the walls of Aroughs. If so, I promise to serve you the finest wines from my family’s estate, and perhaps with them I will be able to wean you off such barbaric milk as you have there. I think you will find our wine has much to recommend it. We let it age in oaken casks for months or sometimes even years. It would be a pity if all that work were wasted and the casks were knocked open and the wine were allowed to run out into the streets and paint them red with the blood of our grapes.” “That would indeed be a shame,” Roran replied, “but sometimes you cannot avoid spilling a bit of wine when cleaning your table.” Holding the horn out to one side, he tipped it over and poured what little mead remained onto the grass below. Tharos was utterly still for a moment--even the feathers on his helm were motionless--then, with an angry snarl, he yanked his horse around and shouted at his men, “Form up! Form up, I say…Yah!” And with that final yell, he spurred his horse away from Roran, and the rest of the soldiers followed, urging their steeds to a gallop as they retraced their steps to Aroughs. Roran maintained his pretense of arrogance and indifference until the soldiers were well away, then he slowly released his breath and rested his elbows on his knees. His hands were trembling slightly. It worked, he thought, amazed.

Sometimes, between the moment when such pleasures have entered our mind and the moment when we too can withdraw into it, so many hours have elapsed, and we have seen so many people in the meantime, that we fear they may not have waited. But they are patient, they do not weary, and when the last visitor has gone, there they are looking at us. And sometimes it is we who are so tired out that we feel we cannot find the strength in our weary mind to entertain these memories, these impressions for which our feeble self is the only habitable place, the sole medium of their realization. But this we would regret, for almost the only interest in existence lies in those days when a pinch of magic sand is mixed with the dust of reality, when a trite incident can become the spur of romance.

To prove to an indignant questioner on the spur of the moment that the work I do was useful seemed a thankless task and I gave it up. I turned to him with a smile and finished, 'To tell you the truth we don't do it because it is useful but because it's amusing.' The answer was thought of and given in a moment: it came from deep down in my mind, and the results were as admirable from my point of view as unexpected. My audience was clearly on my side. Prolonged and hearty applause greeted my confession. My questioner retired shaking his head over my wickedness and the newspapers next day, with obvious approval, came out with headlines 'Scientist Does It Because It's Amusing!' And if that is not the best reason why a scientist should do his work, I want to know what is. Would it be any good to ask a mother what practical use her baby is? That, as I say, was the first evening I ever spent in the United States and from that moment I felt at home. I realised that all talk about science purely for its practical and wealth-producing results is as idle in this country as in England. Practical results will follow right enough. No real knowledge is sterile. The most useless investigation may prove to have the most startling practical importance: Wireless telegraphy might not yet have come if Clerk Maxwell had been drawn away from his obviously 'useless' equations to do something of more practical importance. Large branches of chemistry would have remained obscure had Willard Gibbs not spent his time at mathematical calculations which only about two men of his generation could understand. With this trust in the ultimate usefulness of all real knowledge a man may proceed to devote himself to a study of first causes without apology, and without hope of immediate return.

I was visiting Marcus and his wife when a friend asked if she could talk to me alone. Teresa was the spouse of a Team member who’d served with Chris. We hadn’t spent a lot of time together, but we’d always had a connection. “I have something I want to give you,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s going to seem corny to you or what, but I kind of want to do it for me.” She pressed a medal into my hand. I looked at it--it was the medal she’d received for completing the Boston Marathon. “You and Chris kept me going,” she explained. “It was almost eerie how, when my legs were tired and I wanted to quit, Randy Travis’s song came on the iPod. It was the one he played at the memorial. My iPod was on random shuffle but it was always at just the right moment. I would hear that song and it would spur me on.” Maybe Chris was somehow behind that. People have told me of other inspirational incidents; each one, from simple to grand, has touched me with its beauty.

The loud ring of my car phone disrupted my introspection. Startled, I picked up the phone, certain it would be J calling from the airport after, probably, persistently calling all night. Another phone confrontation. But at least this time I’d be ready. I’d just had a four-hour dose of Marlboro Man. I could handle anything. “Hello?” I said, readying myself. “Hey, you,” the voice said. The voice. That voice. The one that had infiltrated my dreams. It was Marlboro Man, calling to say he missed me, a mere five minutes after I’d pulled away from his house. And his words weren’t scripted or canned, like the obligatory roses sent after a date. They were impulsive, spur-of-the-moment--the words of a man who’d had a thought and acted on it within seconds. A man who, in his busy life on the ranch, had neither the time nor the inclination to wait to call a girl or play it cool. A man who liked a woman and called her just as she left his house, simply to tell her he wished she hadn’t.

And the young man takes pity on him — pity, you fool, why do you take pity on him? I thought — and in his eagerness to help he actually bends down and sets the old man on his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion. But this apparently helpless old man is a djinn, an evil spirit, a scoundrelly magician, and no sooner is he seated on the young man’s shoulders than he clamps his hairy, naked thighs round his benefactor’s throat in a vice-like grip and cannot be dislodged. Mercilessly he makes of the young man who has taken pity on him a beast of burden, spurs him on and on, pitilessly, relentlessly, never granting him a moment’s rest. The luckless young man is obliged to carry him wherever he asks, and from now on has no will of his own. He has become the beast of burden, the slave, of the old rascal: no matter if his knees give and his lips are parched with thirst, he is compelled, foolish victim of his own pity, to trot on and on, is fated to drag the wicked, infamous, cunning old man along for ever on his back.

Did they have all the ingredients for the seed cake, Miss Sophia? The caraway and rye, and the currants for the top?" "Yes," Sophia replied as the cook-maid disappeared into the larder. "But we could find no red currants, and-" Suddenly her words were smothered into silence as Sir Ross pulled her into his arms. His lips descended to hers in a kiss so tender and carnal that she could not help responding. Stunned, she struggled to retain her hatred of him, to remember the wrongs of the past, but his lips were utterly warm and compelling, and her thoughts scattered crazily. The pink rose dropped from her nerveless fingers. Sophia swayed against him, groping for his hard shoulders in a futile bid for balance. His tongue searched her mouth... delicious... sweetly intimate. Sophia inhaled sharply and tilted her head back in utter surrender, her entire existence distilled to this one burning moment. Through the pounding heartbeat in her ears she dimly heard Eliza's concerned voice echoing from the larder. "No red currants? But what will we top the seed cake with?" Sir Ross released Sophia's mouth, leaving her lips moist and kiss-softened. His face remained close to hers, and Sophia felt as if she were drowning in the silver pools of his eyes. His hand came to the side of her face, his fingers curving over her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. Somehow Sophia managed to answer Eliza. "We f-found golden currants instead-" As soon as the words left her mouth, Sir Ross kissed her again, his tongue exploring, teasing. Her groping fingers touched the back of his neck, where the thick black hair curled against his nape. Sensation rustled through her, spurring her pulse to an intemperate pace. Taking advantage of her surrender, he kissed her more aggressively, hunting for the deepest, sweetest taste of her. As her knees weakened, his arms wrapped securely around her, supporting her body as he continued to ravish her mouth. "Golden currants?" came Eliza's dissatisfied voice. "Well, the flavor won't be quite the same, but they will be better than nothing." Sir Ross released Sophia and steadied her with his hands at her waist. While she stared at him blankly, he gave her a brief smile and left the kitchen just as Eliza reemerged from the larder.

Doan be scared, bébé,” he rasped with a brief kiss to my lips. “I’m goan to take care of you.” Staring down into my eyes, he began prodding deeper. “I’ve wanted you for so long.” And deeper. “My God, woman!” When he was all the way in, a strangled groan burst from his chest. Pain. I just stifled a wince, far from enamored with this. Voice gone hoarse, he said, “You’re mine now, Evangeline. No one else’s.” He must be right—because Death’s presence had disappeared completely. Jack held himself still, murmuring, “Doan hurt, doan hurt.” “It’s getting better.” “Ready for more?” I nodded. Then regretted it. Pain. Between gritted teeth, he said, “Evie, I got to touch you, got to kiss you. Or you woan like this.” A bead of sweat dropped from his forehead onto my neck, tickling its way down to my collarbone. “O-okay.” Still inside me, he raised himself up on his knees, his damp chest flexing. His hands covered me, cupped, kneaded, his thumbs rubbing. When I started arching my back for more, his body moved. And it was . . . Rapture. “Jack! Yes!” In a strained tone, he said, “God almighty—I am home, Evangeline.” Another thrust had me soaring. “Finally found the place . . . I’m supposed to be.” He leaned down, delivering scorching kisses up my neck and down to my br**sts, bringing me closer and closer to a just-out-of-reach peak. Each time he rocked over me, I sensed a barely harnessed aggression in him. Between panting breaths, I said, “Don’t hold back! You don’t have to with me.” I lightly grazed my nails over his back, spurring him until he was taking me with all his might—growling with need as I moaned. Pleasure built and built . . . broke free . . . wicked bliss seized me, seized him. As I cried out uncontrollably, he yelled, “À moi, Evangeline!” Mine. “Yes, Jack, yes. . . .” Then after-shudders. A final moan. A last groan. As his weight sank heavily over me, I ran my hands up and down his back, wanting him to know how much I loved that. How much I loved him. He raised himself up on his forearms, cheeks flushed, lids heavy with satisfaction. “I knew it would be like this.” His voice was even more hoarse. “I knew from the first moment I saw you.” Stroking my hair, he started kissing my face, pressing his lips to my jaw, my forehead, the tip of my nose. “I am home, Evie Greene,” he repeated between kisses. I never wanted him to stop. He’d been an amazing lover, but his afterplay? He was adoring. “The first priest I find, I’m goan to marry you. I’m all in, peekôn.” His kisses grew more and more heated. Against my lips, he rasped, “How come I can’t ever get enough of you?

Rider's head snapped up at the sound of gravel crunching under Willow's boots. The sight of the girl in boy's garb birthed an oath. Beneath her cotton shirt, her breasts bounced freely with each step. And within the tight mannish pants, her hips swung in an unconscious rhythm, clearly proclaiming her all woman. Hell, she might as well be naked! His body's reaction was immediate. Cursing his lack of control, he turned sideways, facing her horse, and pretended to adjust the saddle straps. Willow took Sugar's reins and waited for Rider to move aside. He didn't budge an inch. Instead, he tipped his hat back on his head, revealing undisguised disapproval. "Is that the way you always dress?" he bit out. Willow stiffened, immediately defensive. Criticizing herself was one thing; putting up with Sinclair's disdain was another! "If you were expecting a dress, you're crazy!" she snapped. "It would be suicide in this country." "Haven't you ever heard of riding skirts?" "Yes. I'm not as dumb as you seem to think. But fancy riding skirts cost money I don't have. 'Sides, pants are a hell of a lot more useful on the ranch than some damn riding skirt! Now, if you're done jawing about my clothes, I'd like to get a move on before dark." "Somebody ought to wash that barnyard mouth of yours,woman." Willow rested her hand on her gun. "You can try, if you dare." As if I'd draw on a woman, Rider cursed silently, stepping out of her way. As she hoisted herself into the saddle, he was perversely captivated by the way the faded demin stretched over her round bottom. He imagined her long slender legs wrapped around him and how her perfect heart-shaped buttocks would fill his hands and...Oh,hell, what was he doing standing here, gaping like some callow youth? Maybe the girl was right.Maybe he was crazy. One moment he was giving the little witch hell for wearing men's pants; the next he was ogling her in them. He started to turn away, then reached out and gave her booted ankle an angry jerk. "Now what?" Icy turquoise eyes met his, dark and searing. "Do you have any idea what you look like in that get-up? No self-respecting lady would dress like that. It's an open invitation to a man. And if you think that gun you're wearing is going to protect you, you're badly mistaken." Willow gritted her teeth in mounting ire. "So what's it to you, Sinclair? You ain't my pa and you ain't my brother. Hell,my clothes cover me just as good as yours cover you!" She slapped his hand from her ankle, jerked Sugar around, and spurred the mare into a brisk gallop. Before the fine red dust settled, Rider was on his horse, racing after her. Dammit, she's right.Why should I care how she dresses? Heaven knows it certainly has no bearing on my mission. No, agreed a little voice in his head, but it sure is distacting as hell! He'd always prided himself on his cool control; it had saved his backside more than once. But staying in any kind of control around Willow Vaughn was like trying to tame a whimsical March wind-impossible!

Only the History of William Marshal described this encounter in close terms, though the broad details of its account were confirmed in other contemporary sources. One thing seems certain. This was to be no fair fight. So intent had Richard been upon hunting down his father, that he had begun his chase wearing only a doublet and light helm. This added speed to his pursuit, but left him dreadfully exposed to attack. Worse still, the Lionheart was armed with only a sword. Marshal, by contrast, had a shield and lance. The biographer described how: [William] spurred straight on to meet the advancing [Duke] Richard. When the [duke] saw him coming he shouted at the top of his voice: ‘God’s legs, Marshal! Don’t kill me. That would be a wicked thing to do, since you find me here completely unarmed.’ In that instant, Marshal could have slain Richard, skewering his body with the same lethal force that dispatched Patrick of Salisbury in 1168. Had there been more than a split second to ponder the choice, William might perhaps have reacted differently. As it was, instinct took over. Marshal simply could not bring himself to kill an un-armoured opponent, let alone the heir-apparent to the Angevin realm, King Henry II’s eldest surviving son. Instead, he was said to have shouted in reply: ‘Indeed I won’t. Let the Devil kill you! I shall not be the one to do it’, and at the last moment, lowering his lance fractionally, he drove it into Richard’s mount. With that ‘the horse died instantly; it never took another step forward’ and, as it fell, the Lionheart was thrown to the ground and his pursuit of the king brought to an end.

Ella.” The sound was so quiet, I barely heard it through the blood-rush in my ears. I turned to look down the hallway. A man was coming toward me, his lean form clad in a pair of baggy scrub pants and a loose T-shirt. His arm was bandaged with silver-gray burn wrap. I knew the set of those shoulders, the way he moved. Jack. My eyes blurred, and I felt my pulse escalate to a painful throbbing. I began to shake from the effects of trying to encompass too much feeling, too fast. “Is it you?” I choked. “Yes. Yes. God, Ella . . .” I was breaking down, every breath shattering. I gripped my elbows with my hands, crying harder as Jack drew closer. I couldn’t move. I was terrified that I was hallucinating, conjuring an image of what I wanted most, that if I reached out I would find nothing but empty space. But Jack was there, solid and real, reaching around me with hard, strong arms. The contact with him was electrifying. I flattened against him, unable to get close enough. He murmured as I sobbed against his chest. “Ella . . . sweetheart, it’s all right. Don’t cry. Don’t . . .” But the relief of touching him, being close to him, had caused me to unravel. Not too late. The thought spurred a rush of euphoria. Jack was alive, and whole, and I would take nothing for granted ever again. I fumbled beneath the hem of his T-shirt and found the warm skin of his back. My fingertips encountered the edge of another bandage. He kept his arms firmly around me as if he understood that I needed the confining pressure, the feel of him surrounding me as our bodies relayed silent messages. Don’t let go. I’m right here. Tremors kept running along my entire frame. My teeth chattered, making it hard to talk. “I th-thought you might not come back.” Jack’s mouth, usually so soft, was rough and chapped against my cheek, his jaw scratchy with bristle. “I’ll always come back to you.” His voice was hoarse. I hid my face against his neck, breathing him in. His familiar scent had been obliterated by the antiseptic pungency of antiseptic burn dressings, and heavy saltwater brine. “Where are you hurt?” Sniffling, I reached farther over his back, investigating the extent of the bandage. His fingers tangled in the smooth, soft locks of my hair. “Just a few burns and scrapes. Nothing to worry about.” I felt his cheek tauten with a smile. “All your favorite parts are still there.” We were both quiet for a moment. I realized he was trembling, too. “I love you, Jack,” I said, and that started a whole new rush of tears, because I was so unholy glad to be able to say it to him. “I thought it was too late . . . I thought you’d never know, because I was a coward, and I’m so—” “I knew.” Jack sounded shaken. He drew back to look down at me with glittering bloodshot eyes. “You did?” I sniffled. He nodded. “I figured I couldn’t love you as much as I do, without you feeling something for me, too.” He kissed me roughly, the contact between our mouths too hard for pleasure. I put my fingers to Jack’s bristled jaw and eased his face away to look at him. He was battered and scraped and sun-scorched. I couldn’t begin to imagine how dehydrated he was. I pointed an unsteady finger at the waiting room. “Your family’s in there. Why are you in the hallway?” My bewildered gaze swept down his body to his bare feet. “They’re . . . they’re letting you walk around like this?” Jack shook his head. “They parked me in a room around the corner to wait for a couple more tests. I asked if anyone had told you I was okay, and nobody knew for sure. So I came to find you.” “You just left when you’re supposed to be having more tests?” “I had to find you.” His voice was quiet but unyielding.

Let me suggest some possible parallels between ourselves and the disciples maundering over their one loaf—with the Bread of Life at their side in the boat. We too dull our understandings with trifles, fill the heavenly spaces with phantoms, waste the heavenly time with hurry. To those who possess their souls in patience come the heavenly visions. When I trouble myself over a trifle, even a trifle confessed—the loss of some little article, say—spurring my memory, and hunting the house, not from immediate need, but from dislike of loss; when a book has been borrowed of me and not returned, and I have forgotten the borrower, and fret over the missing volume, while there are thousands on my shelves from which the moments thus lost might gather treasure holding relation with neither moth, nor rust, nor thief; am I not like the disciples? Am I not a fool whenever loss troubles me more than recovery would gladden? God would have me wise, and smile at the trifle. Is it not time I lost a few things when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is of the mercy of God; it comes to teach us to let them go. Or have I forgotten a thought that came to me, which seemed of the truth, and a revealment to my heart? I wanted to keep it, to have it, to use it by and by, and it is gone! I keep trying and trying to call it back, feeling a poor man till that thought be recovered—to be far more lost, perhaps, in a note-book, into which I shall never look again to find it! I forget that it is live things God cares about—live truths, not things set down in a book, or in a memory, or embalmed in the joy of knowledge, but things lifting up the heart, things active in an active will. True, my lost thought might have so worked; but had I faith in God, the maker of thought and memory, I should know that, if the thought was a truth, and so alone worth anything, it must come again; for it is in God—so, like the dead, not beyond my reach: kept for me, I shall have it again.

Sehr oft werde ich nach meinem Lieblingskomponisten gefragt - eine typische Frage von Laien an Musiker, eine, die wir Musiker uns gegenseitig wohl eher selten stellen. Vielleicht weil wir sie vordergründig als banal empfinden. Vielleicht auch, weil eine direkte Antwort darauf, ehrlich gesagt, unmöglich ist. Musik ist zu meinem Leben geworden. Nichts von dem, was ich tue, hat nicht irgendwas mit Musik zu tun. Ich habe Werke berühmter und weniger bekannter Komponisten einstudiert und dirigiert, aus ganz unterschiedlichen Epochen. Ich habe versucht, sie zu verstehen. Unzählige Stunden habe ich darüber nachgedacht, wie die Orchester, die ich dirigiere, die Werke spielen könnten, um dem Publikum die darin liegenden Aussagen nahe zubringen. Ich habe mich bemüht, bis zum Kern der Kompositionen vorzudringen und so mancher Rätselhaftigkeit auf die Spur zu kommen. Ich tue es heute noch. So sind mir meist die Komponisten, mit deren Werken ich mich gerade intensiv beschäftige, am präsentesten und vielleicht in dem Moment auch am nächsten. Aber sind sie mir dann auch die liebsten ? Ich weiß es nicht. Meine Entdeckungsreise durch die Welt der klassischen Musik, die vor sechzig Jahren an der Westküste Kaliforniens in einem Fischerdorf begann, ist längst nicht zu Ende. Im Gegenteil : Meine künstlerische Neugier treibt mich täglich weiter in diese faszinierte Welt hinein, deren Umfang immer größer wird, je tiefer ich in sie vordringe. Die Welt der Musik gleicht unserem expandierenden Universum. Je mehr ich mich mit Musik befasse, desto weniger meine ich über sie zu wissen. Wie also sollte ich diese offenbar gar nicht so banale Frage nach meinem Lieblingskomponisten beantworten ? Vielleicht, indem ich sie anders formuliere : "In deiner freien Zeit, in Stunden, die nicht verplant sind und ganz dir gehören - welche Musik würdest du dann für dich spielen ?" Die Antwort darauf ist viel einfacher. Es ist die Musik von Johann Sebastian Bach. Das sage ich ohne den Hauch eines Zweifels. Von frühester Kindheit an hat mich Bach verfolgt und ich ihn. Bis heute. Seine Musik lässt mich nicht los. Ihre Tiefe ist unendlich. Sie vereint alles, was klassische Musik ausmacht. Und bis heute bin ich auf der Suche nach dem Warum.

They'd eaten dinner in bed, and Lindsay had accidentally dropped an edamame bean down her towel dress, which he'd needed to fish out. With his mouth, naturally. "Ohhh," she moaned again. Was she trying to kill him? "My dick is hard enough to hammer nails," he said, gritting his teeth. 'I could be a proper handyman now." She didn't seem to hear him. She was too busy moaning as he rubbed her foot, using one of the techniques he'd discovered using Google. This would be the end of him. When she shimmied a little to adjust her position, her towel dress split apart, and fuck, it was a beautiful view. Her skin was so dewy, but her nipples were tight buds... He could be a fairly patient man at times, but this was testing his limits. "That's it," he growled. "I'll do the other foot afterward." "After...?" A moment later, he was on top of her. He slipped his hand down her body, cupping her mound as his middle finger slid inside her. She made some noises that were even better than the ones she'd made earlier, and she certainly squirmed more than she had during the foot massage. He grinned down at her. "How does that feel? Am I hitting the right spot?" "Yeah, that's a good...spot," she said in a strangled voice. He thrust a finger inside her before bending down and bringing the peak of her nipple into his mouth. She jerked beneath him. "What about that spot?" he asked, raising his head. In response, she cupped the back of his head and brought it down to her other breast. He tugged the brownish pink tip into his mouth as he continued to pleasure her between her legs. "Ryan," she moaned, raking her nails over his back. He didn't care about anything but making her feel good right now. He slid down her body and circled his tongue over her clit before feasting on her. "Is that the right spot?" Her inarticulate response was certainly gratifying, and when he looked up, she shoved his head back down. He chuckled. It didn't take long before she was coming apart, bucking against his face, twisting the sheets in her hands. He moved up her body and kissed her slowly, reverently on the lips as he fumbled for a condom. When he finally managed to roll it on, his hands shaking, he positioned his erection at her entrance and pushed inside. Sex was different with her than with other women. Not that sex had been bad for him before, and not that his partners hadn't enjoyed themselves---he always made sure of it. But. This. This was something else entirely. She ran her foot over the back of his leg, and he groaned as he pumped inside her. Her lips were parted, and he needed to kiss them. So, he did. She met him greedily, and that spurred him on. He didn't move faster; rather, he moved deeper. Filling her up, pulling back... again and again... When he stopped kissing her, he watched every little change in her expression, and then her face contorted in the loveliest way, and she cried out.

Sophia counted six clangs of the bell before Mr. Grayson jolted fully awake. He looked up at her, startled and flushed. As though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. She smiled. Rubbing his eyes, he rose to his feet. “Will I shock you, Miss Turner, if I remove my coat?” Sophia felt a twinge of disappointment. When would he stop treating her with this forced politesse, maintaining this distance between them? How many tales of passionate encounters must she spin before he finally understood that she was no less wicked than he, only less experienced? Perhaps it was time to take more aggressive measures. “By all means, remove your coat.” She tilted her eyes to cast him a saucy look. “Mr. Grayson, I’m not an innocent schoolgirl. You will have to try harder than that to shock me.” His lips curved in a subtle smile. “I’ll take that under advisement.” She watched as he shook the heavy topcoat from his shoulders and peeled it down his arms. He draped the coat over the back of a chair before sitting back down. The damp lawn of his shirt clung to his shoulders and arms. A pleasant shiver rippled down to Sophia’s toes. “It doesn’t suit you anyway,” she said, loading her brush with paint. He gave her a bemused look as he unknotted his cravat and pulled it loose. She inwardly rejoiced. Now, if only she could convince him to do away with his waistcoat…” “The coat,” she explained, when his eyebrows remained raised. “It doesn’t suit you.” “Why not? Is the color wrong?” The sudden seriousness in his tone surprised her. “No, the color is perfectly fine. It’s the cut that’s unflattering. That style is tailored to gentlemen of leisure, lean and slender. But as you are so fond of telling me, Mr. Grayson, you are no gentleman. Your shoulders are too broad for fashion.” “Is that so?” He chuckled as he undid his cuffs. Sophia stared as he turned up his sleeves, baring one tanned muscled forearm, then the other. “What style of garments would best suit me, then?” “Other than a toga?” He rewarded her jest with an easy smile. Sophia dabbed at her canvas, pleased to be making progress at last. “I think you need something less restrictive. Something like a sailor’s garb. Or perhaps a captain’s.” “Truly?” His gaze became thoughtful, then searching. “And even dressed in plain seaman’s clothes, would you still find me handsome enough? In my own way?” “No.” She allowed his brow to crease a moment before continuing. “I should find you surpassingly handsome. In every way.” She mixed paint slowly on her palette and gave him a coy look. “And what of my attire? If you had your way, how would you dress me?” “If I had my way…I wouldn’t.” A thrill raced through Sophia’s body. Her cheeks burned, and her eyes dropped to her lap. She forced her gave back up to meet his. Now was not the moment to lose courage. Nothing held sway over a man’s intentions like jealousy. “Gervais once kept me naked for an entire day so he could paint me.” He blinked. “He painted a nude study of you?” “No. He painted me. I took off my clothes and stretched out on the bed while he dressed me in pigment. Gervais called me his perfect, blank canvas. He painted lavender orchids here”-she traced a small circle just above her breast-“and little vines twining down…” She slid her hand down and noted with delight how his eyes followed its path. “I feigned the grippe and refused to bathe for a week.” Desire and jealous rage warred in his countenance, yet he remained as immobile as one of Lord Elgin’s marble sculptures. What would it take to spur the man into action?

Lions and goats are friends. There are hard working jabbering animals who are slaves to the tiny disgusting rats. The fruits are larger than the parent trees...the mighty illusions are in every single thing...flowers are burning to touch and there are no nights in this amazing world...and now this amazing labyrinth...Where are we...What is this place?” Rosalina blurted out, getting the consistently mouthing soul of Palatablo on the spur of the moment.