Square Deal Quotes

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense."... "We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.""The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.

The increase of knowledge has forced the thinker to specialise, with the result that there is nobody capable to deal with civilisation as a whole. We are playing a game of chess in which nobody can see more than two or three squares at once, and so it has become impossible to form a coherent plan.

Finns squares his shoulders—which have gotten a good deal sturdier since I last saw him. Or paid attention, at any rate. How long has it been since I actually looked? He's gotten awfully handsome; it can't have happened overnight.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be heany colour of the rainbow, but people have way to carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

Bruno Bettelheim, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, argues that the root of our failure to deal with violence lies in our refusal to face up to it. We deny our fascination with the “dark beauty of violence,” and we condemn aggression and repress it rather than look at it squarely and try to understand and control it.

There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that created and are deepening the crisis.

Believing in your standards for a square deal, even when there's no way to get it, is what allows you to create boundaries and take independent action.

Life never guarantees you a square deal, but you can be a good, realistic dealer in an unfairly chaotic marketplace if you assume that no one necessarily sees things the way you do, no matter how obvious the truth appears, and that getting what you deserve is a lucky event, not a right. You

[I]t seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn't Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn't it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help; they didn't look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line--something limited to the neighbors.

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent. Whereas other cities flaunt there history - their presumed glory - in vividly placed monuments, squares, parks, plaques, and boulevards, such history as New York has been unable entirely to obliterate is to be found, mainly, in the backwaters of Wall Street, in the goat tracks of Old and West Broadway, in and around Washington Square, and, for the relentless searcher, in grimly inaccessible regions of The Bronx.

We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

I feel compressed. I’m folding my emotions like a piece of paper—a tiny square, into a tiny square, into a tiny square. When they’re folded up enough I can leave them in a corner of my mind somewhere, to be forgotten. That’s how I deal, isn’t it? And sometimes, on a day like today, I imagine that my brain is littered with hundreds of bastard feelings I won’t claim.

And much addicted to speaking the truth. In her younger years she was a good deal of a romp, and, though it is an awkward confession to make about one's heroine, I must add that she was something of a glutton.

I’m the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There’s no competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he’d have my address inside of two minutes. There isn’t big money in it, but it’s a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.

By the way, I’ve heard what Simon has been saying.” Heat swept over my face. Another problem, but less important in the grand scheme of things. “Yeah, he’s being a douche. I think it’s his friends. He actually apologized to me, and then when his friends showed up, he told them I was trying to get with him.” Daemon’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not okey.” I sighed. “It’s no big deal.” “Maybe not to you, but it is to me.” He paused, his shoulders squaring. “I’ll take care of it.

I'll put you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy book—"Honesty is the Best Policy"? That's it. I'm working honesty for a graft. I'm the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There's no competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he'd have my address inside of two minutes. There isn't big money in it, but it's a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.

I'm going to say 'Amen' now. This is a deal now. We are square on this. You will sort this out. Violet will not rat on us. Amen.

The time has come, it seems to me, when Christian men and women all over the world, should begin to look this evil (race prejudice) squarely in the face, and to set themselves earnestly to combat it, to deal with it as Christian men and women ought to deal with it; as Jesus Christ would have it dealt with.

Check it out." Jonah removed the bubble wrap and held up the picture for his three cousins. Dan took a step backward. The shock was almost as powerful as it had been the day before at the Uffizi. "It's perfect! It's every bit as disgusting as the real one!" Amy nodded. "And so fast. We only called you yesterday." Jonah shrugged. "Even the Janus take a short cut every now and then. You can do a lot with digitization these days. You break the picture down to squares and reproduce them one at a time. The other two are just as fly." "You mean, hog ugly," Hamilton amended. "The serpents don't help," Dan put in critically. "Live fat spaghetti. Lady, if you're thinking of a modeling career, forget it!" The rapper clucked sympathetically. "You guys just don't appreciate the power of the visual image. The Wiz used to be like that–until Gangsta Kronikles. When you're in film industry, you understand the whole picture's-worth-a-thousand-words deal." Hamilton rolled his eyes. "Here we go again.

​​The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be he any colour of the rainbow, but people have way to carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be he any colour of the rainbow, but people have way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

We make a pretty good team, huh?" "The best. In fact, I was planning to do this when we got back to the Fairmont, but suddenly I don't want to wait." "For what?" Reaching into the pocket of his black pinstripe suit coat, he retrieved a huge square-cut diamond ring and slid it onto her left hand. "What do you say we make this partnership official?" Tears flooded her eyes. "Do you promise to love me forever?" His blue eyes went dark with desire and love as he nodded. "Forever and ever." "Pinky swear?" He smiled and wrapped his little finger around hers. "Pinky swear" She leaned in to kiss him. "Then you've got yourself a deal.

Didn’t Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn’t it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help; they didn’t look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line—something limited to the neighbors.

I die. I breathe in and breahe in and cannot exhale. I explode all over my friends. They forget my name and pretend it is dung. They wash off in the square and the well becomes polluted. All die. O the embarrassment.

The older you grow the more of it you’ll see. The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As

All of a sudden, he said, ‘You know, there’s something to your game. Republicans are always calling for a return to normalcy, contentment, the status quo. And we’re always pushing forward with our square deals and new deals and fair Americas.

In all human endeavors that deal with what is unthinkable, too terrible to be dealt with squarely, we turn to what is familiar and regimented: funerals, wakes, and even wars. Now, in this trial, we had gone beyond our empathy with the pain of the victims and our niggling realization that the defendant was a fragmented personality. He knew the rules, he even knew a great deal about the law, but he did not seem to be cognizant of what was about to happen to him. He seemed to consider himself irrefragable. And what was about to happen to him was vital for the good of society. I could not refute that. It had to be, but it seemed hollow that none of us understood that his ego, our egos and the rituals of the courtroom itself, the jokes and the nervous laughter were veiling the gut reactions that we should all be facing. We were all on “this railroad train running …

Sir, to deal with foreign rulers is to deal with lies and deceits. All the time. A French king, a Spanish emperor - any one of them - will swear he is your friend, while in truth he has his own agenda that he is pursuing mercilessly, behind your back. It is the way the world works. The key is to recognise that, accept it, and keep moving. Keep stepping lightly as the squares on a chequerboard shift beneath your feet

Each life is a kind of assignment, I believe," Eliza told her. "You're given this one assigned slot each time you come to earth, this little square of experience to work through. So even if your life has been troubled, I believe, it's what you're meant to deal with on this particular go-round.

I stand for the square deal," Roosevelt said. "But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit.

facts matter a great deal. What a patient does for a living, what his background is, what level of education he has achieved…all of these issues must be addressed in great detail in order to put his complaints and his disease in the proper context. If I ask a man to take the square root of 100 and he cannot, I might take this as proof of a left-hemispheric brain tumor, unless I know that he has worked on a farm since childhood and never attended school. Likewise, I might find it normal that a patient could not tell me the current exchange rate of the pound in Japanese yen. But if I knew that person was a merchant banker, on the other hand, ignorance of this fact would indicate a grave illness indeed! Americans have grown so dependent upon their scanning toys that they fail to view the patient as a multidimensional person. To have the audacity to cut into a person’s brain without the slightest clue of his life, his occupation…I find that most simply appalling.” These

for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man, nor did men always square their dealings by the obligations they had received so much as they did by the advantages they expected.

If she is to have a fall,” said Mrs. Almond, with a gentle laugh, “we must spread as many carpets as we can.” And she carried out this idea by showing a great deal of motherly kindness to the girl.

In my dreams, I entered a world where success was based on ethics and proper dealings, not bribes and scams. My vision of sucess including marrying Sophia, having joyful children, unassuming friends, and warmhearted neighbors. I aspired for an environment where I would be valued for my good character, not the strength of my aggression. I wanted to leave West Beirut, the four square miles of a lesser world.

The only two approaches to dealing with uncertainty are design and default. When you operate by default, your biology, which is wired for comfort, wins out and you almost always end up squarely in the gray zone.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be he any colour of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you‘ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don‘t you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

She must, above all things, be just, not truckling to the strong and warring on or plundering the weak; she must act on the square with all nations, and the feeblest tribes; always keeping her faith, honest in her legislation, upright in all her dealings. Whenever such a Republic exists, it will be immortal: for rashness, injustice, intemperance and luxury in prosperity, and despair and disorder in adversity, are the causes of the decay and dilapidation of nations.

If you drive the same car as me, and have been in a fender bender, I’ll think, “Boy, that’s what my car could look like.” Same with clones. If one of my clones got beat up, I’ll think, “Boy, that could have been me. Better me squared than me.

She would own herself, Lenia Serrana thought, walking through the market square of Sorenica. Herself and her sorrows. Nor, in truth, was she at all distinctive in having to deal with those. Everyone had different griefs, but everyone had griefs.

When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wanders a little from the truth. I have not been altogether honest in what I have told you about the lamplighters. And I realize that I run the risk of giving a false idea of our planet to those who do not know it. Men occupy a very small place upon the Earth. If the two billion inhabitants who people its surface were all to stand upright and somewhat crowded together, as they do for some big public assembly, they could easily be put into one public square twenty miles long and twenty miles wide. All humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific islet. The grown-ups, to be sure, will not believe you when you tell them that. They imagine that they fill a great deal of space. They fancy themselves as important as the baobabs. You should advise them, then, to make their own calculations. They adore figures, and that will please them. But do not waste your time on this extra task. It is unnecessary. You have, I know, confidence in me.

Listen to my last words anywhere. Listen to my last words any world. Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever - "Don't let them see us. Don't tell them what we are doing -" Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? "For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out - " "Not The Cancer Deal with The Venusians - " "Not The Green Deal - Don't show them that - " "Not The Orgasm Death - " "Not the ovens - " Listen: I call you all. Show your cards all players. Pay it all pay it all pay it all back. Play it all pay it all play it all back. For all to see. In Times Square. In Picadilly. "Premature. Premature. Give us a little more time." Time for what? More lies? Premature? Premature for who? I say to all these words are not premature. These words may be too late. Minutes to go. Minutes to foe goal - "Top Secret - Classified - For The Board - The Elite - The Initiates - Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies. Cowards who can not face your "dogs" your "gooks" your "errand boys" your "human animals" with the truth. Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere. You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn? What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you; "the word." Alien Word "the." "The" word of Alien Enemy imprisons "thee" in Time, In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open.

Throughout his political career, Roosevelt’s conception of leadership had been built upon a narrative of the embattled hero (armed with courage, spunk, honor, and truth) who sets out into the world to prove himself. It was a dragon-slaying notion of the hero-leader, and Roosevelt had the good fortune to strike the historical moment in which he could prove his mettle. Under the banner of “the Square Deal,” he would lead his country in a different kind of war, a progressive battle designed to restore fairness to America’s economic and social life.

ROOSEVELT’S SUDDEN INTEREST in modern art, on a day when he could have stayed home and read accounts of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, caused much editorial hilarity. A cartoon by Kemble90 in the Baltimore Evening Sun showed the new President contemplating a portrait of his toothy predecessor in the Oval Office and musing, “I wonder if that’s a futurist? It can’t be a cubist.” The New York World argued that the “Square Deal”91 of 1903 had been a proto-Cubist conceit, doing to the Constitution what Braque and Picasso would do to color and form ten years later.

-"You just can't convict a man on evidence like that - you can't" - "You couldn't, but they could and did. The older you grow the more of it you'll see. The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

Go to dinner with me?” His voice whispers against my ear. I start to shake my head when his fingertip lightly traces the birdcage tattoo on my arm. My eyes shut at the sensation. His touch. “I dream about you almost every night.” Join the club, buddy, I want to tell him. I dream about me every night, too… well, until I met him. Now I dream too damn much about him. “Just one date and I will leave you alone if you never want to see me again. Deal?” I open my eyes to gaze into his. There are too many things happening at once. Everything within me says to tell him no. Nothing good can come of this. I know what I have to tell him. “Dinner, not a date,” I say, looking him square in the eyes. Holy hell! What did you just do, Keller? Really? Seriously? He grins, not hiding his happiness at my words. I step away, allowing him time to button his shirt up. “Dinner then dessert, and, Keller, it will definitely be a date,” he says,

I just . . . didn’t know we were the only ones.” “Well, you are,” I say. “And I don’t feel like I have to make that big a deal of it, or—or ‘come out’ in some big way or anything. I don’t want to.” “No, I get that. I’ve never had the urge to stand in a public square and say, ‘I wanna do the dirty with menfolk.’ ” “Exactly.

From a policy perspective, the Democratic Party faced a dilemma that it could not solve: finding ways to maintain support within the white blue-collar base that came of age during the New Deal and World War II era, while at the same time servicing the pressing demands for racial and gender equity arising from the sixties. Both had to be achieved in the midst of two massive oil shocks, record inflation and unemployment, and a business community retooling to assert greater control over the political process. Placing affirmative action onto a world of declining occupational opportunity risked a zero-sum game: a post-scarcity politics without post-scarcity conditions. Despite the many forms of solidarity evident in the discontent in the factories, mines, and mills, without a shared economic vision to hold things together, issues like busing forced black and white residents to square off in what columnist Jimmy Breslin called “a Battle Royal” between “two groups of people who are poor and doomed and who have been thrown in the ring with each other.”10

Philips was setting up a new ‘underground’ label called Vertigo when we were looking for a deal. We were a perfect fit. But the funny thing was that Vertigo wasn’t even up and running in time for our first single, ‘Evil Woman’, so it was originally released on another Philips label, Fontana, before being reissued on Vertigo a few weeks later. Not that it made any f**king difference: the song went down like a concrete turd both times. But we didn’t care, because the BBC played it on Radio 1. Once. At six o’clock in the morning. I was so nervous, I got up at five and drank about eight cups of tea. ‘They won’t play it,’ I kept telling myself, ‘They won’t play it...’ But then: BLAM...BLAM... Dow-doww... BLAM... Dow-dow-d-d-dow, dooooow... D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d DUH-DA! Do-doo-do DUH-DA! Do-doo-do... It’s impossible to describe what it feels like to hear yourself on Radio 1 for the first time. It was magic, squared. I ran around the house screaming, ‘I’m on the radio! I’m on the f**king radio!’ until my mum stomped downstairs in her nightie and told me to shut up.

You can't just-' The snake inside Alex stopped twitching and uncoiled. She curled her hand into the sleeve of her coat and slammed it through the glass case where they kept their little trinkets. Salome and Dawes shrieked. They both took another step back. 'I know you're used to dealing with people who can't just, but I can, so give me the key to the temple room and let's get square so we can forget all about this.

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides? Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one of my own Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of the temperature has been too much for his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions. For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson's Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that many of the highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" or "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believed that these names represented real existences, and that a human Figure is really capable of choosing between them.

He became known for breaking in wild horses for local farmers, a sight that drew admiring spectators to the village square. He tamed even the most refractory horses through a fine sensitivity to their nature rather than by his physical prowess. “If people knew how much more they could get out of a horse by gentleness than by harshness,” Grant once observed, “they would save a great deal of trouble both to the horse and the man.

There is nothing essentially vile in the human body, for God created it, even with its desires and appetites. There is nothing evil in a hungry man’s desire for a square meal, or a healthy woman’s longing for a husband, children and a home of her own. It is not the way of the Spirit to repress these natural instincts, but to control them and keep them within the bounds prescribed by God. We do not need to extinguish the fire in the grate; only to prevent the coals from falling out and setting the place on fire. The physical is not to be ruthlessly suppressed but firmly disciplined and subordinated to the spiritual. When asceticism becomes a thing of form enforced by man-made rules, it is incapable of dealing effectively with the bodily lusts. Self-control on the other hand is the fruit of the Spirit, springing from divine life within, cultivated by the habit of a disciplined life.

As fascinating and just plain weird as the deep-sea geothermal vent ecosystems are, they have a great deal less diversity than we find in ecosystems that receive direct sunlight. At deep-sea vents we’ve counted about 1,300 species so far. In the Amazon rain forest, we can find 40,000 species of insects, just insects, in a typical square kilometer. Couple that with trees, monkeys, spiders, and snakes, and the rain forest has thousandfold the diversity.

And you?' 'Ah. I'm coping.' He said it simply, but it caused something in my heart to crack a little. 'It's not for ever,' I said, as we stopped. 'I know.' 'And we're going to do loads of fun stuff while you're here.' 'What have you got planned?' 'Um, basically it's You Getting Naked. Followed by supper. Followed by more You Getting Naked. Maybe a walk around Central Park, some corny tourist stuff, like the Staten Island ferry and Times Square, and some shopping in the East Village and some really good food with added You Getting Naked.' He grinned. 'Do I get You Getting Naked too?' 'Oh, yes, it's a two-for-one deal.' I leant my head against him. 'Seriously, though, I'd love you to come and see where I work. Maybe meet Nathan and Ashok and all the people I go on about. Mr and Mrs Gopnik will be out of town so you probably won't meet them but you'll at least get an idea of it all in your head.

But if you could just pay her some small attention-or better yet, escort her yourself-it would be ever so helpful, and I would be grateful forever.” “Alex, if you were married to anyone but Jordan Townsende, I might consider asking you how you’d be willing to express your gratitude. However, since I haven’t any real wish to see my life brought to a premature end, I shall refrain from doing so and say instead that your smile is gratitude enough.” “Don’t joke, Roddy, I’m quite desperately in need of your help, and I would be eternally grateful for it.” “You are making me quake with trepidation, my sweet. Whoever she is, she must be in a deal of trouble if you need me.” “She’s lovely and spirited, and you will admire her tremendously.” “In that case, I shall deem it an embarrassing honor to lend my support to her. Who-“ His gaze flicked to a sudden movement in the doorway and riveted there, his eternally bland expression giving way to reverent admiration. “My God,” he whispered. Standing in the doorway like a vision from heaven was an unknown young woman clad in a shimmering silver-blue gown with a low, square neckline that offered a tantalizing view of smooth, voluptuous flesh, and a diagonally wrapped bodice that emphasized a tiny waist. Her glossy golden hair was swept back off her forehead and held in place with a sapphire clip, then left to fall artlessly about her shoulders and midway down her back, where it ended in luxurious waves and curls that gleamed brightly in the dancing candlelight. Beneath gracefully winged brows and long, curly lashes her glowing green eyes were neither jade nor emerald, but a startling color somewhere in between. In that moment of stunned silence Roddy observed her with the impartiality of a true connoisseur, looking for flaws that others would miss and finding only perfection in the delicately sculpted cheekbones, slender white throat, and soft mouth. The vision in the doorway moved imperceptibly. “Excuse me,” she said to Alexandra with a melting smile, her voice like wind chimes, “I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.” In a graceful swirl of silvery blue skirts she turned and vanished, and still Roddy stared at the empty doorway while Alexandra’s hopes soared. Never had she seen Roddy display the slightest genuine fascination for a feminine face and figure. His words sent her spirits even higher: “My God,” he said again in a reverent whisper. “Was she real?” “Very real,” Alex eagerly assured him, “and very desperately in need of your help, though she mustn’t know what I’ve asked of you. You will help, won’t you?” Dragging his gaze from the doorway, he shook his head as if to clear it. “Help?” he uttered dryly. “I’m tempted to offer her my very desirable hand in marriage!

his is exactly what I mean about rabbit holes. I love them. I don’t find them a waste of time at all. The Internet works like the subconscious - I’m sure somebody’s said that already, it’s so obvious, I just can’t think who it would have been. The point is, this is how dreamwork works: you wake up and think, “Why the hell did I dream that my 2nd grade teacher was masturbating my dental hygienist?” If you were in analysis, you’d probably be able to figure it out if you really wanted to, just like you could probably eventually figure out why YouTube thinks some SpongeBob SquarePants video is related to Natalya Makarova dancing the dying swan. I do like to understand some of the connections, and for others to remain mysterious. This is how I feel about my subconscious as well. And I never really find it a waste of time. If you think about it, you always find something out. Gray seems to be wasting a lot of time, but in his quiet way, he’s figuring out how to deal with the fact that the people we love die. I really don’t think that’s a waste of time. Also, for the record, I really don’t think looking at art (MJ, Pina, Merce) over and over and over, trying to understand what it’s trying to tell you, is a waste of time. I think it may be the most meaningful thing we do. I tell my graduate students this all the time. Don’t let anybody make you feel bad about this.

The combinatorial explosion was first recognized with the legend that the inventor of chess demanded as payment one grain of rice for the first square of the board, and twice as much for the (i + 1)st square than the ith square. The king was astonished to learn he had to cough up 6412'=265-1=36,893,488,147,419,103,231 grains of rice. In beheading the inventor, the wise king first established pruning as a technique for dealing with the combinatorial explosion.

What is soft power? It is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced. America has long had a great deal of soft power. Think of the impact of Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms in Europe at the end of World War II; of young people behind the Iron Curtain listening to American music and news on Radio Free Europe; of Chinese students symbolizing their protests in Tiananmen Square by creating a replica of the Statue of Liberty; of newly liberated Afghans in 2001 asking for a copy of the Bill of Rights; of young Iranians today surreptitiously watching banned American videos and satellite television broadcasts in the privacy of their homes. These are all examples of America’s soft power. When you can get others to admire your ideals and to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive. As General Wesley Clark put it, soft power “gave us an influence far beyond the hard edge of traditional balance-of-power politics.” But attraction can turn to repulsion if we act in an arrogant manner and destroy the real message of our deeper values.

I am very sorry to betray my master, Sir,’ said Job Trotter, applying to his eyes a pink check pocket handkerchief of about three inches square. ‘The feeling does you a great deal of honour,’ replied Mr Pickwick; ‘but it is your duty, nevertheless.’ ‘I know it is my duty, Sir,’ replied Job, with great emotion. ‘We should all try to discharge our duty, Sir, and I humbly endeavour to discharge mine, Sir; but it is a hard trial to betray a master, Sir, whose clothes you wear, and whose bread you eat, even though he is a scoundrel, Sir.

Years ago a friend of mine and I used to frequent a market in Baltimore where we would eat oysters and drink Very Large Beers from 32-ounce Styrofoam cups. One of the regulars there had the worst toupee in the world, a comical little wig taped in place on the top of his head. Looking at this man and drinking our VLBs, we developed the concept of the Soul Toupee. Each of us has a Soul Toupee. The Soul Toupee is that thing about ourselves we are most deeply embarrassed by and like to think we have cunningly concealed from the world, but which is, in fact, pitifully obvious to everybody who knows us. Contemplating one’s own Soul Toupee is not an exercise for the fainthearted. Most of the time other people don’t even get why our Soul Toupee is any big deal or a cause of such evident deep shame to us, but they can tell that it is because of our inept, transparent efforts to cover it up, which only call more attention to it and to our self-consciousness about it, and so they gently pretend not to notice it. Meanwhile we’re standing there with our little rigid spongelike square of hair pasted on our heads thinking: Heh—got ’em all fooled!

It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.

Moody was not unaware of the advantage his inscrutable grace afforded him. Like most excessively beautiful persons, he had studied his own reflection minutely and, in a way, knew himself from the outside best; he was always in some chamber of his mind perceiving himself from the exterior. He had passed a great many hours in the alcove of his private dressing room, where the mirror tripled his image into profile, half-profile, and square: Van Dyck's Charles, though a good deal more striking. It was a private practice, and one he would likely have denied--for how roundly self-examination is condemned, by the moral prophets of our age! As if the self had no relation to the self, and one only looked in mirrors to have one's arrogance confirmed; as if the act of self-regarding was not as subtle, fraught, and ever-changing as any bond between twin souls. In his fascination Moody sought less to praise his own beauty than to master it. Certainly whenever he caught his own reflection, in a window box, or in a pane of glass after nightfall, he felt a thrill of satisfaction--but as an engineer might feel, chancing upon a mechanism of his own devising and finding it splendid, flashing, properly oiled and performing exactly as he had predicted it should.

counterparts. Although the lower-SES average is higher overall, higher-SES white men have the highest reported levels of binge drinking, of any drug use, and of drug use other than marijuana, followed in each instance by lower-SES white men. In fact, within SES levels, white averages exceed the African American: 3.8 versus 2.9 for those of lower-SES origins; 3.0 versus 1.6 for those of higher origins. This pattern hardly squares with the popular perception of lower-SES African Americans as the face of urban disadvantage, fueled by the media's racialized portrayal of inner-city drug abuse, dealing, and violence (see, for example, Alexander 2010). The

Covey’s solution is to prioritise work that is important but not urgent (the blue square in the diagram). Though this is hard to do on any given day, it is the only way to ensure you are making progress towards your own goals and dreams, instead of merely reacting to what other people throw at you. And over time, the more you are dealing with important things before they become urgent, the fewer ‘urgent and important’ tasks you will have to deal with. The most obvious way to do this is to work on your own projects first every day, even if it’s only for half an hour. Whatever interruptions come along later, you will at least have the satisfaction of having made some progress towards your own goals.

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies) If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

condemn. His analysis of equality as a moral principle, his “fairness objection,” does not get beyond the schoolyard taunt that such-and-such is “not fair.” Yet if charging tolls on congested highways is “unfair to commuters of modest means” (in Sandel’s repeated formulation of the first principle), what is to stop society from concluding that charging for bread and housing and clothing and cable TV and Fritos is “unfair”?7 Nothing. The society ends in full-blown statism, a modern leviathan. The unanalyzed dictum that it’s “unfair” that Carden does not have his own 5,000-square-foot supersuite at the Bellagio in Las Vegas (he really does find it troubling) would slip down to allocation by state direction by the Communist or Nazi Party for everything. Byelorussia.

Drone warfare is more sterile. It’s neat—no infantry involvement and thus fewer American casualties. Staring one’s victims in their eyes as they die is discomforting. Thinking about casualties is unsettling. Many people, with other pressing concerns, find it best to slip into denial. Capital punishment to make it more tolerable is a medical IV to put the criminal to “sleep.” No more public square hangings, firing squads, or guillotines. Certainly no one wants to witness collateral damage while “terrorists” defend their homeland from invaders from faraway places. Who wants to be tormented by seeing children and women die at funerals and weddings at our hands? Closing one’s eyes to the destruction is easier than dealing with the reality of “preemptive” war and its ugly consequences.

He smiled and pulled the ugly white fichu from her neck. She blinked and looked down at the simple, square neckline of her bodice as if she'd never seen it. Perhaps she hadn't. Perhaps she dressed in the dark like a nun. "What are you doing?" He sighed. "I confess, I find your naïveté perplexing. How have you arrived at the advanced age of six and twenty without having anyone attempt seduction upon yourself? I'm of two minds on the matter: One, utter astonishment at my sex and their deaf disregard for your siren call. Two, glee at the thought that your innocence might signal that you are indeed innocent. Why this should excite me so, I don't know- virginity has never before been a particular whim of mine. I think perhaps it's the setting. Who knows how many virgins were deflowered here by my lusty ancestors? Or," he said as he deftly unpinned and tossed aside her apron, "maybe it's simply you." "I don't..." Her words trailed off and then, interestingly, she blushed a deep rose. Well. That question settled, then. His little maiden was really a maiden. "What?" "I think it's you," he confided, pulling the strings tying her hideous mobcap beneath her chin. She made a wild grab for it, but he was faster, snatching the bloody thing off- finally, and with a great deal of satisfaction. She might've deprived him of a wife that it'd taken him half a year and a rather large sum of money to entangle, but by God, he'd taken off her awful cap. And underneath... "Oh, Séraphine," he breathed, enchanted, for her hair was as black as coal, as black as night, as black as his own soul, save for one white streak just over her left eye. But she'd twisted and braided and tortured the strands, binding them tight to her head, and his fingers itched to let them free. "Don't!" she said, as if she knew what he wanted, her hands flying up to cover her hair. He batted them aside, laughing, pulling a pin here, a pin there, dropping them carelessly to the carpet as she squealed like a little girl and backed away from him, trying frantically to ward off his fingers. He might've taken pity on her had he not just spent an hour on a freezing moor, wondering if he was going to find her dead, neck broken, at the bottom of a hill. Her hair came down all at once, a tumbling mass, tousled and heavy and nearly down to her waist. "Wonderful," he murmured, taking it in both hands and lifting it.

pretty unspectacular place. It has no alpine peaks or broad rift valleys, no mighty gorges or thundering cataracts. It is built to really quite a modest scale. And yet with a few unassuming natural endowments, a great deal of time, and an unfailing instinct for improvement, the makers of Britain created the most superlatively park-like landscapes, the most orderly cities, the handsomest provincial towns, the jauntiest seaside resorts, the stateliest homes, the most dreamily-spired, cathedral-rich, castle-strewn, abbey-bedecked, folly-scattered, green-wooded, winding-laned, sheep-dotted, plumply-hedgerowed, well-tended, sublimely decorated 88,386 square miles the world has ever known—almost none of it undertaken with aesthetics in mind, but all of it adding up to something that is, quite often, perfect.

Here’s another interesting thought. If glaciers started reforming, they have a great deal more water now to draw on—Hudson Bay, the Great Lakes, the hundreds of thousands of lakes of Canada, none of which existed to fuel the last ice sheet—so they would grow very much quicker. And if they did start to advance again, what exactly would we do? Blast them with TNT or maybe nuclear warheads? Well, doubtless we would, but consider this. In 1964, the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America rocked Alaska with 200,000 megatons of concentrated might, the equivalent of 2,000 nuclear bombs. Almost 3,000 miles away in Texas, water sloshed out of swimming pools. A street in Anchorage fell twenty feet. The quake devastated 24,000 square miles of wilderness, much of it glaciated. And what effect did all this might have on Alaska’s glaciers? None.

The pre-Thatcher state had functioned on the understanding that there was such a thing as society. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic had tried to find a workable middle ground between the laissez-faire capitalism of the nineteenth century and the new state communism of Russia or China. They had had some success in this project, from President Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s to the establishment of the UK’s welfare state during Prime Minister Attlee’s postwar government. The results may not have been perfect, but they were better than the restricting homogeny of life in the communist East, or the poverty and inequality of Victorian Britain. They resulted in a stable society where democracy could flourish and the extremes of political totalitarianism were unable to gain a serious hold. What postwar youth culture was rebelling against may indeed have been dull, and boring, and square. It may well have been a terminal buzz kill. But politically and historically speaking, it really wasn’t the worst.

The silence lengthened, becoming strained and awkward until it was broken by the goose’s imperious honk. Swift glanced at the massive bird. “You have a companion, I see.” When Daisy explained what the two boys had been doing with the goose, Swift grinned. “Clever lads.” The remark did not strike Daisy as being especially compassionate. “I want to help him,” she said. “But when I tried to get near, he pecked me. I expected a domestic breed would have been a bit more receptive to my approach.” “Greylags are not known for their mild temperaments,” Swift informed her. “Particularly males. He was probably trying to show you who was boss.” “He proved his point,” Daisy said, rubbing her arm. Swift frowned as he saw the growing bruise on her arm. “Is that where he pecked you? Let me see.” “No, it’s all right—” she began, but he had already come forward. His long fingers encircled her wrist, the thumb of his other hand passing gently near the dark purple mark. “You bruise easily,” he murmured, his dark head bent over her arm. Daisy’s heart dispensed a series of hard thumps before settling into a fast rhythm. He smelled like the outdoors—sun, water, grassy-sweet. And deeper in the fragrance lingered the tantalizing incense of warm, sweaty male. She fought the instinct to move into his arms, against his body…to pull his hand to her breast. The mute craving shocked her. Glancing up at his downturned face, Daisy found his blue eyes staring right into hers. “I…” Nervously she pulled away from him. “What are we to do?” “About the goose?” His broad shoulders hitched in a shrug. “We could wring his neck and take him home for dinner.” The suggestion caused Daisy and the Greylag to stare at him in shared outrage. “That was a very poor joke, Mr. Swift.” “I wasn’t joking.” Daisy placed herself squarely between Swift and the goose. “I will deal with the situation on my own. You may leave now.” “I wouldn’t advise making a pet of him. You’ll eventually find him on your plate if you stay at Stony Cross Park long enough.” “I don’t care if it makes me a hypocrite,” she said. “I would rather not eat a goose I’m acquainted with.

Have you given any thought to the formula you would like me to run?" Alex nearly lost his grip on the decanter. "I beg your pardon?" "At least a few of your patrons will need to achieve moderate success, and the occasional player will need to achieve considerable success at the vingt-et-un table if you hope to attract those individuals whose pocket books match their greed and belief that the next hand will change their fortune. I will require instruction as to how you wish me to deal in order to maximize both prophets and popularity." She withdrew a small square of paper from a hidden pocket somewhere in the folds of her skirts and held it out to him. "I've run some scenarios, allowing for a margin of error that I will not be able to avoid. It's all basic accounting worked into a matrix of probabilities, but I thought you might want to review it." Alex very carefully replaced the heavy crystal on the surface of his desk struggling to draw a breath. This was not good at all. Forget his alarming charge into the fray on a white horse, he was rather afraid he had just fallen in love.

which had drawn a world of rank and fashion still in stocks and beavers, 39 Sallet Square had been The Gallery and so it was still, with a history of wealth and prestige behind it unequalled in Europe. “Well?” The old woman was persistent. “How is he behaving?” Frances hesitated. “He and Phillida are staying with me at 38, you know,” she began cautiously. “It was Meyrick’s idea. He wanted Robert to be near.” Mrs. Ivory’s narrow lips curled. The mention of the house next door to The Gallery, where she had reigned throughout her career from its heyday in the seventies right up to the fin de siecle, always stirred her. “So Phillida’s at 38, is she?” she said. “Meyrick didn’t tell me that. You’re finding it difficult to live with her, I suppose? I don’t blame you. I could never abide a fool in the house even when it was a man. A silly woman is quite insufferable. What has she done now?” “No, it’s not Phillida,” said Frances slowly. “No, darling, I only wish it were.” She turned away and glanced out across the room to the barren trees far over the heath. There was a great deal more to worry

Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

This might baffle you, but despite not being a physician, I do have some pride. Although most certainly not enough to withstand the kind of beating you're capable of dealing it. The kind of beating you've repeatedly dealt it from the first time we've met. You're right, I value honesty, so I'll tell you that I make it a practice not to find women who insult me at every opportunity attractive." Color flooded her cheeks and traveled down her neck. Finally, she stepped away from him, too, and found the back of a chair to clutch. She looked entirely devastated. Had no one ever denied her anything? He hated the hurt in her eyes. But it was done now. "How is telling you I'm attracted to you an insult?" He pressed the back of his hand into his forehead. It made him feel like a drama queen in some sort of musical farce. Which this had to be. "Telling me how unworthy I am of your attraction, that's the insulting part. And, no, that's not all it is. Even if you hadn't told me at every opportunity how inferior to you I am... all I do is cook... every assumption you've made about me is insulting. Culinary school is definitely college. And Le Cordon Bleu is one of the most competitive institutions in the world. The fact that that's so wholly incomprehensible to you... that's the insulting part. And it wasn't thrown in my overly privileged lap either. I had to work my bottom off to make it in." Ammaji had sold her dowry jewels to pay for his application, something her family would have thrown her out on the street for had they found out. Trisha squared her shoulders, the devastation draining fast from her face, leaving behind the self-possession he was so much more used to. And the speed with which she gathered herself shook something inside him. "I might not do what you see as important work, but I work hard at being a decent human being, and I would need anyone I'm with to be that first and foremost. Even if I didn't find snobbery in general incredibly unattractive, I would never go anywhere near a person as self-absorbed and arrogant as you, Dr. Raje. I would have to be insane to subject myself to your view of me and the world." "Wow." She was panting, or maybe it was him. He couldn't be sure. "You wanted honesty. I'm sorry if I hurt you." She cleared her throat. "I'm surprised you think someone as... as... self-absorbed and arrogant as me is even capable of being hurt.

I try to catch my breath and calm myself down, but it isn’t easy. I was dead. I was dead, and then I wasn’t, and why? Because of Peter? Peter? I stare at him. He still looks so innocent, despite all that he has done to prove that he is not. His hair lies smooth against his head, shiny and dark, like we didn’t just run for a mile at full speed. His round eyes scan the stairwell and then rest on my face. “What?” he says. “Why are you looking at me like that?” “How did you do it?” I say. “It wasn’t that hard,” he says. “I dyed a paralytic serum purple and switched it out with the death serum. Replaced the wire that was supposed to ready your heartbeat with a dead one. The bit with the heart monitor was harder; I had to get some Erudite help with a remote and stuff--you wouldn’t understand it if I explained it to you.” “Why did you do it?” I say. “You want me dead. You were willing to do it yourself? What changed?” He presses his lips together and doesn’t look away, not for a long time. Then he opens his mouth, hesitates, and finally says, “I can’t be in anyone’s debt. Okay? The idea that I owed you something made me sick. I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to vomit. Indebted to a Stiff? It’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I couldn’t have it.” “What are you talking about? You owed me something?” He rolls his eyes. “The Amity compound. Someone shot me--the bullet was at head level; it would have hit me right between the eyes. And you shoved me out of the way. We were even before that--I almost killed you during initiation, you almost killed me during the attack simulation; we’re square, right? But after that…” “You’re insane,” says Tobias. “That’s not the way the world works…with everyone keeping score.” “It’s not?” Peter raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know what world you live in, but in mine, people only do things for you for one of two reasons. The first is if they want something in return. And the second is if they feel like they owe you something.” “Those aren’t the only reasons people do things for you,” I say. “Sometimes they do them because they love you. Well, maybe not you, but…” Peter snorts. “That’s exactly the kind of garbage I expect a delusional stiff to say.” “I guess we just have to make sure you owe us,” says Tobias. “Or you’ll go running to whoever offers you the best deal.” “Yeah,” Peter says. “That’s pretty much how it is.

Nothing—and I mean really, absolutely nothing—is more extraordinary in Britain than the beauty of the countryside. Nowhere in the world is there a landscape that has been more intensively utilized—more mined, farmed, quarried, covered with cities and clanging factories, threaded with motorways and railroad tracks—and yet remains so comprehensively and reliably lovely over most of its extent. It is the happiest accident in history. In terms of natural wonders, you know, Britain is a pretty unspectacular place. It has no alpine peaks or broad rift valleys, no mighty gorges or thundering cataracts. It is built to really quite a modest scale. And yet with a few unassuming natural endowments, a great deal of time, and an unfailing instinct for improvement, the makers of Britain created the most superlatively park-like landscapes, the most orderly cities, the handsomest provincial towns, the jauntiest seaside resorts, the stateliest homes, the most dreamily-spired, cathedral-rich, castle-strewn, abbey-bedecked, folly-scattered, green-wooded, winding-laned, sheep-dotted, plumply-hedgerowed, well-tended, sublimely decorated 88,386 square miles the world has ever known—almost none of it undertaken with aesthetics

I'd give me two eyes for a slice of apple pie." She was brain-cracked, but spoke for them all. Then Tabby Jones joined in, holding forth on the making of the best apple pie: the particular apples, whether reinettes or pippins, the bettermost flavorings: cinnamon, cloves, or a syrup made from the peelings. Slowly, groans of vexation turned to appreciative mumblings. Someone else favored quince, another lemon. Apples, they all agreed, though the most commonplace of fruit, did produce an uncommon variety of delights: pies and puddings, creams and custards, jellies and junkets, ciders and syllabubs. The time passed a deal quicker and merrier than before. Janey, the whore who had once been famed in Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, told them, in her child's voice, that the best dish she ever tasted was a Desert Island of Flummery, at a mansion in Grosvenor Square. "It was all over jellies and candies and dainty figures, and a hut of real gold-leaf. Like eating money, it were. I fancied meself a proper duchess." She knew what Janey meant. When she had first met Aunt Charlotte she had gorged herself until her fingers were gummy with syrup and cream. There was one cake she never forgot; a puffed conceit of cream, pastry, and pink sugar comfits.

Nothing – and I mean, really, absolutely nothing – is more extraordinary in Britain than the beauty of the countryside. Nowhere in the world is there a landscape that has been more intensively utilized – more mined, farmed, quarried, covered with cities and clanging factories, threaded with motorways and railway lines – and yet remains so comprehensively and reliably lovely over most of its extent. It is the happiest accident in history. In terms of natural wonders, you know, Britain is a pretty unspectacular place. It has no alpine peaks or broad rift valleys, no mighty gorges or thundering cataracts. It is built to really quite a modest scale. And yet with a few unassuming natural endowments, a great deal of time and an unfailing instinct for improvement, the makers of Britain created the most superlatively park-like landscapes, the most orderly cities, the handsomest provincial towns, the jauntiest seaside resorts, the stateliest homes, the most dreamily spired, cathedral-rich, castle-strewn, abbey-bedecked, folly-scattered, green-wooded, winding-laned, sheep-dotted, plumply hedgerowed, well-tended, sublimely decorated 88,386 square miles the world has ever known – almost none of it undertaken with aesthetics in mind, but all of it adding up to something that is, quite often, perfect. What an achievement that is. And

But if you, like poor old Rolling Stone’s nonprofessional, have come to a point on the Trail where you’ve started fearing your own cynicism every bit as much as you fear your credulity and the salesmen who feed on it, you’re apt to find your thoughts returning again and again to a certain dark and box-sized cell in a certain Hilton half a world and three careers away, to the torture and fear and offer of reprieve and a certain Young Voter named McCain’s refusal to violate a Code. There were no techs’ cameras in that box, no aides or consultants, no paradoxes or gray areas; nothing to sell. There was just one guy and whatever in his character sustained him. This is a huge deal. In your mind, that Hoa Lo box becomes sort of a dressing room with a star on the door, the private place behind the stage where one imagines “the real John McCain” still lives. And but now the paradox here is that this box that makes McCain “real” is: impenetrable. Nobody gets in or out. That’s why, however many behind-the-scenes pencils get put on the case, be apprised that a “profile” of John McCain is going to be just that: one side, exterior, split and diffracted by so many lenses there’s way more than one man to see. Salesman or leader or neither or both: the final paradox—the really tiny central one, way down deep inside all the other campaign puzzles’ spinning cubes and squares and boxes that layer McCain—is that whether he’s “for real” depends now less on what’s in his heart than on what might be in yours. Try to stay awake.

I was, however, still very much an emotional wreck and sometimes this resulted in misdirected anger. Unfortunately, my sisters bore the brunt of that. Sometimes I would just blow up without reason or warning. Once, my sister Sara was in the room and she was just moving things around, trying to clean up, and I blew up at her. She was so stunned and upset, she just walked out of the room and into the hallway to cry. Another soldier in a wheelchair came by and asked if she was okay. Through sobs and tears she choked out a “yeah.” “Did your soldier yell at you?” he asked. She nodded yes and he said, “I don’t know why we do that. But don’t take it personally. We’re all going through it.” She calmed down and walked back in. She stood squarely in front of my bed and told me that I really pissed her off. Clearly I’d already forgotten I yelled at her because I looked at her with a bewildered expression and managed to push out through my wired jaw, “What’s wrong with you?” She glared at me and spat back, “You son of a bitch, you’re what’s wrong!” I was clueless. In fact, I pissed off my family members on a pretty regular basis until they figured out how to deal with it. They’d just control when I got to talk. My jaw was wired shut, but I could talk a little bit with some help. I’d had a tracheotomy so I had a hole in my throat. I had this little purple plastic piece that I could put in the hole that would keep the air from coming out so I could talk. Every time I woke up, the purple plastic piece was clear across the room. They didn’t keep it near me. I had to put my fingers over the hole so I could wheeze out, “Gimme…gimme…the…thing.” I think this amused them.

So, you want to improve your home like you have some knowledge and respect for the endeavor, yes? Very well. First, you need to know the basics associated with it to showcase what type of knowledge you actually have about it. If that is not enough, try reviewing the article listed below to assist you. Home improvement is often a daunting task. This is because of the time and the amounts of money required. However, it doesn't have to be so bad. If you have several projects in your house, divide them up into several smaller DIY projects. For example you may want to redo the entire living room. Start simple, by just replacing the carpet, and before you know it, your living room will be like new. One great way to make the inside of your home sparkle is to put new molding in. New molding helps create a fresh sense in your living space. You can purchase special molding with beautiful carvings on them to add a unique touch of elegance and style to your home. When it comes to home improvement, consider replacing your windows and doors. This not only has a chance of greatly improving the value of the home, but may also severely decrease the amount of money required to keep your house warm and dry. You can also add extra security with new doors and windows. Change your shower curtain once a month. Showering produces excessive humidity in a bathroom that in turn causes shower curtains to develop mold and mildew. To keep your space fresh and healthy, replace your curtains. Don't buy expensive plastic curtains with hard to find designs, and you won't feel bad about replacing it. Sprucing up your walls with art is a great improvement idea, but it doesn't have to be a painting. You can use practically anything for artwork. For instance, a three-dimensional tile works great if you contrast the colors. You can even buy some canvas and a frame and paint colored squares. Anything colorful can work as art. If you are renovating your kitchen but need to spend less money, consider using laminate flooring and countertops. These synthetic options are generally much less expensive than wood, tile, or stone. They are also easier to care for. Many of these products are designed to closely mimic the natural products, so that the difference is only visible on close inspection. New wallpaper can transform a room. Before you add wallpaper, you need to find out what type of wall is under the existing wallpaper. Usually walls are either drywall or plaster smoothed over lath. You can figure out what kind of wall you are dealing with by feeling the wall, plaster is harder, smoother, and colder than drywall. You can also try tapping the wall, drywall sounds hollow while plaster does not. Ah, you have read the aforementioned article, or you wouldn't be down here reading through the conclusion. Well done! That article should have provided you with a proper foundation of what it takes to properly and safely improve your home. If any questions still remain, try reviewing the article again.

➤➤Entry by>>>>➤➤SMMbanks >>>>> ★★★★Buy Verified Chime Accounts ★★★★ ★★★★Buy Verified Chime Accounts ★★★★ ★★★★Buy Verified Chime Accounts ★★★★ ➤➤ How to Buy Verified Chime Bank Accounts ➤➤ SMMBanks.com➤➤#SMMBanks Buy verified Chime accounts from Smmbanks– your trusted source for high-quality, fully verified U.S. Chime bank accounts. Enjoy instant access, active Chase account history, card activation, and support for international transfers. Each account is linked with verified debit/credit cards and comes with a 7-day replacement guarantee. Get secure, affordable banking solutions delivered fast and ready to use.. *************Buy verified Chime bank account?****************** In 2025, choosing to Buy Verified Chime Accounts isn’t just a shortcut—it’s a strategic move to accelerate your online business growth. These accounts offer instant access, KYC compliance, and pre-verified banking features that eliminate the usual onboarding delays. Whether you’re a digital marketer, freelancer, or entrepreneur, these accounts provide secure, scalable, and internationally friendly financial tools to power your operations. With benefits like 24/7 support, full access credentials, and compatibility with PayPal, Cash App, and Venmo, verified Chime accounts position your brand for global reach and financial efficiency. However, always remember to purchase from trusted sellers with real reviews and buyer protection to avoid scams. If you’re ready to streamline your digital banking, boost online credibility, and save valuable time, now is the moment to Buy Verified Chime Accounts and take full control of your business finances—no hassle, no delays. ➤➤➤For Instant Reply Just Knock us Now - ➤➤Telegram :smmbanks ➤➤Whatapp:+1 (424) 505-0399 ➤➤Visite : smmbanks.com ➤➤Buy Verified Square Accounts – 100% real Services Smmbanks Top 5 Reasons to Buy Verified Chime Accounts Instant account access without long wait times Fully verified with real U.S. credentials Perfect for freelancers, online banking, and digital payments Supports direct deposit and online transfers Safe, legal, and trusted seller sources ★★★★★★★ What Makes a Chime Account “Verified”? A verified Chime account includes: Real U.S. phone number Verified email and SSN (social security number) Linked debit card (optional) Active for instant use ➤➤For Instant Reply Just Knock us Now - ➤➤Telegram :smmbanks ➤➤Whatapp:+1 (424) 505-0399 ➤➤Visite : smmbanks.com To Buy Verified Chime Accounts safely, start by choosing a reputable seller with proven customer reviews and a clear service guarantee. Always check that the accounts are fully verified and include key features like card activation, transaction history, and instant access. When you Buy Verified Chime Accounts, use secure payment methods to protect your transaction. Avoid deals that seem too cheap or lack details, as they may be risky. By staying informed and careful, you can confidently Buy Verified Chime Accounts and enjoy smooth, secure digital banking. ★★★★★★★ Steps to Buy Chime Account Safely Steps to Buy Verified Chime Accounts at a Low Cost Step 1: Search for Promo Codes Use terms like “cheap Chime accounts” or “discount verified Chime account” on Google. Step 2: Compare Pricing Tiers Check whether they offer single vs. bulk account rates. Step 3: Verify Account Status Make sure accounts are verified with U.S. details—email, phone, and SSN. Step 4: Ask for Guarantee Affordable doesn’t mean risky—request a replacement policy. Step 5: Use Secure Checkout Pay via PayPal, crypto, or cards with buyer protection enabled.

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

Buy Verified Cash App Accounts If you want to more information just contact now. ➤24 Hours Reply/Contact ➤Telegram:– @usaxoom ➤Whatsapp:- +1 (920) 786-0215 ➤Email:- usaxoom@gmail.com Buy Verified Cash App Accounts-4k, 6k &10k Limits Safe Accounts Buy verified cash app accounts which are verified and ready to transact securely without hassle Our accounts are verified with email, number, SSN and Bank details for safety If you really want to get verified accounts for BTC or for others payments, you should buy BTC enable cash app account at the best seller usaxoom.com. We are selling all types of cash app accounts including 4k, 6k and 10k limits, non-BTC and BTC enabled. Our Accounts Are- ✅ Email and phone number verified ✅ PVA accounts ✅ Selfie and SSN verified ✅ Passport or driver’s license verified ✅ Billing address verified ✅ Bank attached ✅ BTC enabled accounts ✅ 4k, 6k, and 10k accounts available ✅ Superfast delivery Buy Verified CashApp Accounts With the fast-paced digital age today, security and convenience are most valuable in managing money. Cash App has revolutionized everything, providing users with an easy way to send money, pay bills, and even invest in altcoins such as Bitcoin. But what if you want full utilization of everything Cash App can offer you without the hassle of opening an account anew. Buy verified cash app accounts new or fresh at the cost-effective prices at usaxoom.com. Buy Verified CashApp Accounts That is where verified Cash App accounts come in. They result in instant business transactions and greater financial flexibility without sacrificing security for any user. If you’re considering jumping in and getting into the world of verified Cash App accounts continue reading we’ll examine why this might be one of the best things you ever do for your financial future. Buy a verified cash app account from here and transact without hassle. Buy Verified Cash App Accounts How Cash App is safe for its users? Buy BTC enable cash app account. All transactions are encrypted using cutting-edge technology to prevent unauthorized access. This means your financial information remains confidential and safe. Buy cash app accounts at usaxoom.com, we are experienced and trusted. Users have to authenticate their account using an alternate device or procedure prior to opening their account. This added level of protection allows that even when an intruder has your password, they can’t access the account with ease. Cash App also scans for unusual transactions in real-time. When something doesn’t look quite right, customers get instant notices to respond at once. Cash App also allows you to create unique identifiers like cashtags so that you can make convenient payments without sacrificing your personal details. Such top-security features form a platform where the user feels secure dealing with their money easily without any hassle. Buy Verified Cash App Accounts Is Cash App available globally? Cash App is designed primarily for US users. Users can use Cash App to send money to friends or family members who are in the U.S., as long as you both have accounts set up correctly. For international transactions, Cash App has partnered with companies like Square, so there is some leeway. But know that there are some fees that may be charged depending on where and how you’re sending money. Cash App does not yet allow sending money directly to bank accounts outside of the U.S. This limitation can become a hindrance for regular remitters of money overseas. Should you be using the Cash App during travel or living overseas, make sure to know any limitations and fees associated with your account transactions. How cash app is used for business purposes? Buy 6k limits cash app accounts. Cash App is transforming the manner in which business entities make transactions

How to Buy Verified Cash App Accounts: A Complete Guide Trusted and verified payment platform is essential. That's where Cash App comes in. But what exactly is a verified Cash App account, and why should you consider purchasing one? In this blog post, we'll explore the benefits of buy verified cash app accounts and where you can find the best deals online. So, if you're ready to take your financial transactions to the next level, read on! What is Cash App? Cash App, launched by Square Inc. in 2013, is a mobile payment service that allows users to transfer money to one another using a mobile app. Over the years, it has grown in popularity due to its ease of use, fast transactions, and additional features like the Cash Card, direct deposits, and Bitcoin trading. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ If You want to more information just contact now 24 Hours Reply/ Contact : – ↪ Telegram: @accsells1 ↪ WhatsApp: ‪‪+1 (814) 403–6336‬‬ ↪ E-mail: infoaccsells0@gmail.com ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ Key Features of Cash App: Peer-to-Peer Payments Direct Deposits Bitcoin Trading Stock Investments Cash Card (a customizable debit card) What Is Verified Cash App Account? When you sign up for Cash App, your account starts off as unverified. However, you can upgrade to a verified status by providing certain personal information such as your name, date of birth, and the last four digits of your Social Security number. This verification process helps ensure that you are a real person with legitimate intentions. Once your Cash App account is verified, you gain access to additional features and benefits. You can send and receive larger amounts of money, enabling more substantial financial transactions with ease. Verified accounts also enjoy increased protection against fraud and unauthorised activity. Having a verified Cash App account allows you to link your bank accounts or credit cards securely. This makes transferring funds between different payment sources seamless and efficient. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ If You want to more information just contact now 24 Hours Reply/ Contact : – ↪ Telegram: @accsells1 ↪ WhatsApp: ‪‪+1 (814) 403–6336‬‬ ↪ E-mail: infoaccsells0@gmail.com ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ To these perks, having a verified Cash App account opens the door to buying Bitcoin (BTC). With BTC enabled on your account, you can easily invest in this popular cryptocurrency directly within the app. Buy Verified Cash App Account Why Buy Verified Cash App Account? Enhanced Transaction Limits A verified Cash App account significantly increases your transaction limits. Unverified accounts are limited in how much money they can send and receive, which can be a hindrance for those who use the app for business or high-volume transactions. Verification removes these limits, allowing for larger and more frequent transactions. Access to Additional Features Verification opens up a host of additional features, such as the ability to use Cash App's Cash Card and access Bitcoin trading and stock investments. These features can be particularly useful for those looking to manage their finances more effectively or explore investment opportunities directly from the app. Increased Security Security is a paramount concern when dealing with financial transactions. A verified Cash App account offers enhanced security features, ensuring your transactions and personal information are better protected. This can provide peace of mind, especially for those who frequently use the app for significant transactions. Buy BTC Enable Cash app Accounts ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ If You want to more information just contact now 24 Hours Reply/ Contact : – ↪ Telegram: @accsells1 ↪ WhatsApp: ‪‪+1 (814) 403–6336‬‬ ↪ E-mail: infoaccsells0@gmail.com ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣

fit for them. Steve Jobs said it best: “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Linus wanted an apartment in Murray Hill, but I sold him a townhouse in Park Slope. This didn’t happen because I just told him where it was, when it was built, and what the square footage was; based on what I knew about Linus I believed it was the best choice for him—and that he would love it. Closing a deal is about tapping into emotions. The sooner you can learn to take off the “salesman’s hat” and get in tune with your client’s emotions and desires, the better you’ll become at working the deal. If you’re not sure how to do that, remember what makes an exceptional salesperson: a salesperson who works for The Deal.

Kurt Fischer, my mentor and colleague at Harvard, where he is the director of Harvard University’s Mind, Brain, and Education program, goes so far as to say that today’s schools essentially fail about 80 percent of students. Sure, kids get through. Yet simply surviving is not a high enough bar for our educational system—not by a long shot. Worse still, our schools are often downright damaging in the long term for children who by temperament are prone to question authority—the kinds of kids who can’t help but think differently, who like to take risks, and who represent America’s best hope to innovate its way to a better future. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on changing an obviously broken educational context, we have to date largely put the blame on our hardworking teachers—and perhaps even more so on our children, millions of whom are themselves treated as broken because our system cannot deal with natural learning variability.

I can afford it.” “I know it, darling. You’re one of the most powerful men in New York City.” She added, “It’s a good joke on New York City.” “It is.” “I concede that you’re in a position to do anything. That’s why I had to see you.” She added a small, gruntlike sound of amusement, to dilute her statement’s frankness. “Good,” he said, his voice comfortable and noncommittal. “I had to come here, because I thought it best, in this particular matter, not to be seen together in public.” “That is always wise.” “I seem to remember having been useful to you in the past.” “In the past—yes.” “I am sure that I can count on you.” “Of course—only isn’t that an old-fashioned, unphilosophical remark? How can we ever be sure of anything?” “Jim,” she snapped suddenly, “you’ve got to help me!” “My dear, I’m at your disposal, I’d do anything to help you,” he answered, the rules of their language requiring that any open statement be answered by a blatant lie. Lillian was slipping, he thought—and he experienced the pleasure of dealing with an inadequate adversary. She was neglecting, he noted, even the perfection of her particular trademark: her grooming. A few strands were escaping from the drilled waves of her hair—her nails, matching her gown, were the deep shade of coagulated blood, which made it easy to notice the chipped polish at their tips—and against the broad, smooth, creamy expanse of her skin in the low, square cut of her gown, he observed the tiny glitter of a safety pin holding the strap of her slip. “You’ve got to prevent it!” she said, in the belligerent tone of a plea disguised as a command. “You’ve got to stop it!” “Really? What?” “My divorce.

Even though Leia had already expressed her mistrust for Lando, and heard his talk of deals that would keep the Empire out of Cloud City, it was only upon seeing Lobot with the stormtroopers that she realized…Lando set us up! She looked at Lando, as did Han and Chewbacca. Lando looked Han square in the eye and said grimly, “I had no choice. They arrived right before you did. I’m sorry.

Companies don't want anyone telling them how to deal with their workers  -- they never have; they never will. Stores don't want anyone telling them how to design their entrances; how many steps they can have (or can't have); how heavy their doors can be. Yet they accept their city's building and fire codes, dictating to them how many people they can have in their restaurants, based on square footage, so that the place will not be a fire hazard. They accept that the city can inspect their electrical wiring to ensure that it "meets code" before they open for business. Yet they chafe if an individual wants an accommodation. Because, it seems, it is seen as "special for the handicapped," most of whom likely don't deserve it. Accommodation is fought doubly hard when it is seen to be a way of letting "the disabled" have a part of what we believe is for "normal" people. Although no access code, anywhere, requires them, automatic doors remain the one thing, besides flat or ramped entrances, that one hears about most from people with mobility problems: they need automatic doors as well as flat entrances. Yet no code, anywhere, includes them; mandating them would be "going too far"; giving the disabled more than they have a right to. A ramp is OK. An automatic door? That isn't reasonable. At least that's what the building lobby says. Few disability rights groups, anywhere, have tried to push for that accommodation. Some wheelchair activists are now pressing for "basic, minimal access" in all new single-family housing, so, they say, they can visit friends and attend gatherings in others' homes. This means at least one flat entrance and a bathroom they can get into. De-medicalization No large grocery or hotel firm, no home-and-garden discount supply center would consider designing an entrance that did not include automatic doors. They are standard in hotels and discount warehouses. Not, of course, for the people who literally can not open doors by themselves  -- for such people are "the disabled": them, not us. Firms that operate hotels, groceries and building supply stores fight regulations that require they accommodate "the disabled." Automatic doors that go in uncomplainingly are meant for us, the fit, the nondisabled, to ensure that we will continue to shop at the grocery or building supply center; to make it easy for us to get our grocery carts out, our lumber dollies to our truck loaded with Sheetrock for the weekend project. So the bellhops can get the luggage in and out of the hotel easily. When it is for "them," it is resisted; when it is for "us," however, it is seen as a design improvement. Same item; different purpose

Before hanging up, Claire and I made a deal to help square the circle. “If your vote’s the one that gets us to sixty,” I said, “then those kids are going to need you, Claire. But if we’re way short, there’s no point in you falling on your sword.

For some years I have been convinced that one thing which contributes much to shrouding this subject in mystery is the loose, misleading terms generally employed by those who refer to it. While such expressions are used—“Is this according to God’s will?” “Do I have the prompting of the Holy Spirit?” “Were you led of the Lord in that?”—sincere minds will continue to be perplexed and never arrive at any certainty. These expressions are so commonly used in religious circles that probably quite a few readers will be surprised at our challenging them. We certainly do not condemn these expressions as erroneous, but rather we wish to point out that they are too intangible for most people until more definitely defined. What alternative, then, have we to suggest? In connection with every decision we make, every plan we form, every action we execute, let the question be, “Is this in harmony with God’s Word?” Is it what the Scriptures enjoin? Does it square with the rule God has given us to walk by? Is it in accord with the example which Christ left us to follow? If it is in harmony with God’s Word, then it must be “according to God’s will,” for His will is revealed in His Word. If I do what the Scriptures enjoin, then I must be “prompted by the Holy Spirit,” for He never moves anyone to act contrary thereto. If my conduct squares with the rule of righteousness (the precepts and commands of the Word), then I must be “led of the Lord,” for He leads only into the “paths of righteousness” (Psalm 23:3). A great deal of mystical vagueness and puzzling uncertainty will be removed if the reader substitutes for, “Is this according to God’s will?” the simpler and more tangible, “Is this according to God’s Word?” God, in His infinite condescension and transcendent grace, has given us His Word for this very purpose, so that we need not stumble along blindly, ignorant of what pleases or displeases Him but that we might know His mind.

Liberated from this baggage, Copernicus could posit that the Earth went around the sun. This simple and daring hypothesis explained everything about the motion of the stars and planets except for why God would make the universe revolve around something other than His most precious creation. If you didn’t have to deal with that second part, you could much more easily work out an answer to the first part. A lot of nature’s puzzles were like that: they became much easier to explain if you didn’t have to square your explanation with the dictates of the faith.

Michelet has done a good deal, it is true, to make Jeanne d’Arc popular and famous; but it was as the spokesman for the national sense of the people, not as a mystic or a saint, that she interested him. “What legend is more beautiful,” he writes, “than this incontestable story? But one must be careful not to make it into a legend. One must piously preserve all its circumstances, even the most human; one must respect its touching and terrible humanity…However deeply the historian may have been moved in writing this gospel, he has kept a firm hold on the real and never yielded to the temptation of idealism.” And he insisted that Jeanne d’Arc had established the modern type of hero of action, “contrary to passive Christianity.” His approach was thus entirely rational, based squarely on the philosophy of the eighteenth century – anti-clerical, democratic. And for this reason, the History fo the Middle Ages, important as it is, and for all its acute insight and its passages of marvelous eloquence, seems to me less satisfactory than the other parts of Michelet’s history.What Michelet admires are not the virtues which the chivalrous and Christian centuries cultivated, but the heroisms of the scientist and the artist, the Protestant in religion and politics, the efforts of man to understand his situation and rationally to control his development. Throughout the Middle Ages, Michelet is impatient for the Renaissance.