Stoke Fire Quotes

Trump didn't divide America. He just doused us with gasoline and fanned the flames.

(I don't understand what this is. Why people do it. Why we stoke fires in each other. What are we burning?)

You know," Loki said, toeing a volume that had tumbled from the pile. "You'd have more room if you kept fewer books." Theo hung his cane on the edge of the grate beside the small fire place and began to stoke the ashes. "I'd rather have books than space.

What do you think he did to me to deserve to die?” I ask. He stokes the fire. Sparks fly up. “I assumed he broke your heart. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart.

What he doesn’t know is that the minute I properly introduce myself to Adeline Reilly, she won’t be able to think of anyone else. I will devour her from the inside out, until every intake of breath will only stoke the inferno I've created inside her. Like oxygen feeding a fire, I will consume every inch of her sweet little body until she will think of nothing else but how to get me deeper inside of her.

Every death is a burst of fuel I use to stoke the fires that sit inside me. But it’s more than anger. It’s love too. It’s the fact that I care about the people who will die if I don’t do this.", FADE by Kailin Gow

Fire needs air to live. Air fuels fire, stokes it, and makes it burn brighter and hotter than it ever could alone. But too much air will snuff it completely, just as too many flames will consume all the air. They are far greater than the sum of their parts together, but are equally as dangerous to each other’s existence.

Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate Semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parable therein...

What makes aerobic exercise so powerful is that it’s our evolutionary method of generating that spark. It lights a fire on every level of your brain, from stoking up the neurons’ metabolic furnaces to forging the very structures that transmit information from one synapse to the next.

He was so adept - so very, very gifted - at stoking my fire then leaving me with a giant lady hard-on. In fact, I suspected maybe this was his superpower.

Perhaps just the smallest ember of those fires we set within each remained, but we never stoked it, never tended it, it never grew. Instead, it just flickered as a memory. Until now.

ain’t nobody gonna stoke your fire but you, boy.” She looks at me hard with her grey, cloudy eyes. “You go make life happen.

Hatred may keep a body warm, but it takes a lot to keep the fire stoked, so unless a person is extraordinary in some way, some people are not worth hating, just like they’re not worth loving.

I open the toilet door and step out, my internal fire re-stoked, ready to face my demons, fight if need be and win. I’m raging, focused like a jungle warrior after his second bowl of tiger-cock soup.

What I want to know is when does Lily get off her butt and do some chores?" Tristan said, panting, as he dragged a gnarly stump of bleached wood up the beach. "I feel like I've been stacking wood and stoking fire all damn day while she just sits there." Rowan gave Tristan a disapproving look. "It's a mechanic's privilege to serve his witch.

27 July Rage-thought to live by: in The General, Buster gets so annoyed at his girlfriend's stupidity for stoking the engine with tiny pieces of wood, he facetiously gives her little toothpicks - which she dutifully feeds into the fire. He then stares at her in disbelief, then delights in her anyway and leaps at her with a kiss. Sweet axiom!

You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration. You tend the flame because if you don’t you’re stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to seasonal layers, doomed to practicality, doomed to this is just the way things are, doomed to settling and understanding and reasoning and agreeing and seeing it another way and seeing it his way and seeing it from all the other ways but your own.

We didn't finish that dance." "Here?" "Why not?" Echo's high heel tapped against the sidewalk, the telltale sign of nerves. I took a deliberate step forward and caught her waist before she coud back away from me. My siren had sung to me for way too long, capturing my heart, tempting me with her body, driving me slowly insane. Now, I expected her to pay up. "Do you hear that?" I aked. Echo raised an eyebrow when she heard nothing but the sound of water trickling in the fountain. "Hear what?" I slid my right hand down her arm, cradled her hand against my chest and swayed us from side to side. "The music." Her eyes danced. "Maybe if you could tell me what i'm supposed to be hearing." "Slow drum beat." With one finger i tapped the beat into the small of her back. "Acoustic quitar." I leaned down and hummed my favorite song in her ear. Her sweet cinnamon smell intoxicated me. She relaxed, fitting perfectly into my body. In the crisp, cold February air, we swayed together, moving to our own personal beat. For one moment, we escaped hell. No teachers, no therapist, no well-meaning friends, no nightmares-just the two of us, dancing. My song ended, my finger stopped tapping the beat, and we ceased swaying from side to side. She held perfectly still, keeping her hand in mine, her head resting on my shoulder. I nuzzled into the warmth of her silky curls, tightening my hold on her. Echo was becoming essential, like air. I eased my hand to her chin, lifting her face toward me. My thumb caressed her warm, smooth cheek. My heart beat faster. A ghost of that siren smile graced her lips as she tilted her head closer to mine, creating the undeniable pull of the sailor lost to the sea to the beautiful goddess calling him home. I kissed her lips. Soft, full, warm-everything i'd fantasized it would be and more, so much more. Echo hesitantly pressed back, a curious question for which i had a response. I parted my lips and teased her bottom one, begging, praying, for permission. Her smooth hands inched up my neck and pulled at my hair, bringing me closer. She opened her mouth, her tongue seductively touching mine, almost bringing me to my knees. Flames licked through me as our kiss deepened. Her hands massaged my scalp and neck, only stoking the heat of the fire. Forgetting every rule i'd created for this moment, my hands wandered up her back, twining in her hair, bringing her closer to me. I wanted Echo. I needed Echo. Her eyes met mine again. "So what does this mean for us?" I lowered my forehead to hers. "It means you 're mine.

Echo hesitantly pressed back, a curious question for which i had a response. I parted my lips and teased her bottom one, begging, praying, for permission. Her smooth hands inched up my neck and pulled at my hair, bringing me closer. She opened her mouth, her tongue seductively touching mine, almost bringing me to my knees. Flames licked through me as our kiss deepened. Her hands massaged my scalp and neck, only stoking the heat of the fire.

Tears and Smiles <3 Mrs. Randolph Quite the character!!! "Here’s the thing about life, boy. We meet a lot of people along this journey. Some of them are sonsabitches and some are special. When you find the special ones you don’t take a moment for granted, because you never know when your time with them is gonna be up. I got over fifty years with my Fritz. Fifty wonderful years. When he died, I was lost for a few months. I lost my fire. But then I realized that life’s short and I had a choice to make. I could keep bein’ miserable, or I could go find joy and live again.” She’s squeezing even harder now. “If you only listen to one thing this crazy old lady tells you, I hope it’s this: ain’t nobody gonna stoke your fire but you, boy.” She looks at me hard with her grey, cloudy eyes. “You go make life happen.

It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.

I stepped out to the lawn. I remember the air that night, and how it was so brisk that it could revive the dead. The fragrance of eucalyptus stoking a home fire, the smell of wet grass, of dung fuel, of tobacco, of swamp air, and the perfume of hundreds of roses--this was the scent of Missing. No, it was the scent of a continent.

When we learn to respond to each other rather than react, we will move much more quickly in our conflict toward resolution and reconciliation. Reactions only stoke the fires of conflict; responses, particularly godly ones, help us snuff out the conflict.

Reading is like a roaring fire, it stokes the imagination and keeps it burning bright!

Put the fire out? Hell no. What we need to do is stoke it.

He was no longer a wildfire burning with rage. He was now the fires of the forges he'd stoked. He burned for a purpose and remained focused on that singular goal.

ain't nobody gonna stoke your fire but you, boy.

When night came your voice stoked the fires of the boats that go toward the islands and you left, leaving me behind, the empty eyes of absence.

Now, the disposition to be conservative in respect of politics reflects a quite different view of the activity of governing. The man of this disposition understands it to be the business of a government not to inflame passion and give it new objects to feed upon, but to inject into the activities of already too passionate men an ingredient of moderation; to restrain, to deflate, to pacify and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down. And all this, not because passion is vice and moderation virtue, but because moderation is indispensable if passionate men are to escape being locked in an encounter of mutual frustration.

With werewolves gone and fire stoked, Sidheav stopped shaking. The tea, once it arrived, had its customary effect--engendering comfort and loosening the tongue. *That's tea for you*, thought Sophronia, *the great social lubricant.* Soon they had the whole story out of her. No wonder tea was considered a vital weapon of espionage.

How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all. I remember how learnedly and enthusiastically I could talk for hours about mysticism and the experiential knowledge of God, and all the while I was stoking the fires of the argument with Scotch and soda.

I didn't know what I thought of heaven above us or hell deep below, the fires supposed to be constantly stoked and tended. I was afraid to tell her what I feared: that both places were kingdoms of air...And for all the praying I've done in my life, I fear that prayers are bits of grain the birds drop to the wind.

It’s dark and it’s cold and I stoke the fire like a madman to keep warm. One

In order for nonviolence to work,” Stokely Carmichael said in 1967, “your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.

For me, writing is like stoking a fire; I enjoy being mesmerized by its flames.

She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is a sorrow so enervating it could render her immobile. She needs to keep moving, flickering around the room. She needs o fill her bags and get the hell out of here.

How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all. I remember how learnedly and enthusiastically I could talk for hours about mysticism and the experimental knowledge of God, and all the while I was stoking the fires of the argument with Scotch and soda.

Talent might be a gift but it still has to be cultivated. The imagination is like a fire or furnace: it has to be stoked, fed and attended to. One thing sets another ablaze. Keep it going.

As high as the fire in me burns, Evie, I will stoke it in you." "Sebastian..."She strained a little, and he pinned her more firmly against the table. "It's my right to kiss you," he reminded her. "whenever I want, for as long as I want. That was our bargain." She threw an agitated glance around the room, and he read her thoughts easily. "I don't give a damn if anyone sees us. You're my wife." A smile chased across his lips. "My better half, to be certain." Leaning over her, he nuzzled into the fine tendrils that strayed over her forehead. His breath was hot and soft on her skin. "My prize... my pleasure and pain... my endless desire. I've never known anyone like you, Evie." His lips touched gently at the bridge of her nose and slid down to the tip. "You dare to make demands of me that no other woman would think of asking. And for now, I'll pay your price, love. But later you'll pay mine... over and over..." He caught her trembling lips with his, his hands cupping the back of her head.

But I warn you, what pulls them together is nothing a mortal man may battle; it is a holy fire, I tell you, a most holy fire that burns in them." "The devil can stoke a fire as well as ever God could.

Dear, Mr. Ajax…don’t ye know…the fires of Hell are stoked by righteous lawyers! Tis a fact it is. All that hot air… How’d ya think they get that Brimstone so hot?” --Old Tom Goodling from Angela's Coven

Phoenix Queen: You blaze so brightly You set fire to the heart of this world. You conjure up enormous love in all you give, And keep rising from the ashes as a Phoenix queen. Some will be burned by your flame, Try to cool you, put you out, Make you think that your passion is something to doubt, But the ones that truly matter will dance with your flame, Stoke you, stroke you, And stay lit right beside you.

I look back and see centuries of creative evolution of the hatred for Black bodies. I look at the present—police brutality, racial disparities, backlash against being “politically correct,” hatred for our first Black president, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the election of a chief executive who stoked the fire of racial animosity to win—and I ask myself, Where is your hope, Austin? The answer: It is but a shadow.

Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.

Even with my eyes shut, the dancing flickers and shadows penetrate through my lids. I try to remind myself it’s just from the fire, but an ever-growing part of me fears it is Hades stoking the pits of the Underworld in preparation for my arrival.

Life is like a fire, it changes constantly, flickering high and low. Sometimes it burns brightly and other times it's nothing but a smouldering ember. It's up to you to stoke the fire and make it burn as brightly as possible — before it burns out.

This war has made racists of too many of the and too many of us, and it is the leadership in Khartoum that has stoked this fire, that has brought to the surface, and in some cases created from whole cloth, new hatreds that have bred unprecedented acts of brutality.

At first she did nothing, waiting for her husband to wake, which he did not, because that wasn’t a thing he ever did. She waited longer than she usually did, waited and waited, the boy wailing while she lay as still as a corpse, patiently waiting for the day when her corpse self would miraculously be reanimated and taken into the Kingdom of the Chosen, where it would create an astonishing art installation composed of many aesthetically interesting beds. The corpse would have unlimited child-care and be able to hang out and go to show openings and drink corpse wine with the other corpses whenever it wanted, because that was heaven. That was it. She lay there as long as she could without making a sound, a movement. Her child’s screams fanned a flame of rage that flickered in her chest. That single, white-hot light at the center of the darkness of herself—that was the point of origin from which she birthed something new, from which all women do. You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration. You tend the flame because if you don’t you’re stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to seasonal layers, doomed to practicality, doomed to this is just the way things are, doomed to settling and understanding and reasoning and agreeing and seeing it another way and seeing it his way and seeing it from all the other ways but your own. And upon hearing the boy’s scream, the particular pitch and slice, she saw the flame behind her closed eyes. For a moment, it quivered on unseen air, then, at once, lengthened and thinned, paused, and dropped with a whump into her chest, then deeper into her belly, setting her aflame

Above, the tower. Emberlight and the pendant dark. Below, the hidden world that sheltered the forsaken. And I walked the liminal between them, with a god at my side and the streets like dying coals around us, waiting to be stoked. The fire was in the citadel, in his eyes, in my skin.

In my dear pine-clad mountains of the Harz   There’s a pitchlike smell, a smell I favor   Most of all, excepting that of sulphur.   But here among these Greeks there’s not a trace   Of anything like that. I’m curious   To find out what they use below in their Hell   To stoke the fires with, their kind of fuel.   DRYAD. I guess you’re smart enough in your own country,   Abroad you’re something less than apt; 8220 Stop thinking home thoughts, try, Sir, to adapt   And show due honor to our sacred oak tree.   MEPHISTO. What you have lost, that’s what you think about,

It is more than ‘backlash politics.’ It is orchestrated backlash politics. Campaigns made choices, set fires, and even poured on the gasoline if accelerant was needed, which is why the passage of time has not, in fact extinguished, such prejudice. It is kept aflame as long as it is stoked.

Swagger is a lifestyle choice. We don’t need to wake up every morning with a spring in our step to do things that stoke the fire in our bellies. Sometimes there are days where you have to fake it till you make it. Then before you know it, you’re strolling down the street like it’s a runway and running the track like it’s a catwalk.

The lack of goodness in the young gun's heart was oxygen to the fire, and so he burned for a good long while before I woke. The dream stoked my faith in the judgment and justice that will come someday or this afternoon soon. I turn up the collar of my white robe, relieved to know that God's got me covered 'cause I'm good, but not that good.

- You're right, I don't get it. I just spent the past couple hours watching you seek out every wild ride at that festival. You get off in the thrill. You get off on life. There's fire in you, Mac. - Fire - she echoes dubiously. - Hell yes. Fire. And you choose to be with someone who puts out the fire? Screw that. You need a man to stoke it.

Mon wants this transition to be as peaceable as possible. That is, of course, a noble goal. And in late nights the chancellor confided in Leia that she is wisely struck by the fear of what happened the first time the parasite of Palpatine squirmed under the skin. How easy it was for him to prey on the anxieties of the galaxy. How simple it was for him to turn system against system by stoking the fires of xenophobia, anger, selfishness. (And here Luke’s voice echoes in her mind: The ways and tools of the dark side, Leia.) How do you form an Empire? By stealing a Republic. And how do you steal a Republic? By convincing its people that they cannot govern themselves—that freedom is their enemy and that fear is their ally. Palpatine

All of Berleburg's streets slanted away from the palace like rays of the sun, fell downhill to the Odeborn Creek, and turned into the market square. Even now, in February, the center of the stream ran free, water rushing by, smelling of greenness, past banks thick with cattails, rimed with ice. A rooster crowed as the town awakened, stoked its fires, fried its sausage.

Cambridge exceeded our most macabre expectations ... the arm-chairs, the crumpets, the beautifully-bound eighteenth century volumes, the fires roaring in stoked grates. Each of us had the loan of an absent undergraduate's rooms - bedroom, sitting-room and pantry; all fitted up in a style which, after the spartan simplicity of a public school study, seemed positively sinful.

Please guide this ship away from harm and make her safe - keep her warm... Attention and lust all she desires - and the time it takes to stoke those fires You may invite her to your lair with sensuousness and a passionate flair her draw irresistible, hunger insatiable  -  your thoughts no more your own For she has taken place there, in you, the queen upon her throne..... Sensual bliss one of many rewards, but stolen heart and pointy swords Your skills and gift of most import, for when they wane, pain, and love's cut short.... May crack your inner strength some day and truly steal your time (heart) away.... For a muse but one of intermittent bliss starting from the first kiss And ending only when she's done - then you're left alone as one.....

Things were different back then. Today if a woman was asked to do the things we did back then, she would revolt, declare that she wasn’t anyone’s slave, wouldn’t be put upon in that fashion. But you have to remember that this was before automatic washers and dishwashers, before blenders and electric knives. If the carpet was going to get cleaned, someone, usually a woman, would have to take a broom to it, or would have to haul it on her shoulders to the yard and beat the dirt out of it. If the wet clothes were going to get dry, someone had to hang them in the yard, take them down from the yard, heat the iron on the fire, press them, and finally fold or hang them. Food was chopped by hand, fires were stoked by hand, water was carried by hand, anything roasted, toasted, broiled, dried, beaten, pressed, packed, or pickled, was done so by hand. Our version of a laborsaving device was called a spouse. If a man had a woman by his side, he didn’t have to clean and cook for himself. If a woman had a man by her side, she didn’t have to go out, earn a living, then come home and wrestle the house to the ground in the evening.

How could there be a stone unturned in the quest to understand your life's purpose? So many well entrenched systems already exist and some have done so for thousands of years. Still we are all inquisitive creatures by nature and I aim to feed your voracious appetite and stoke the ever-burning fires of controversy by introducing you to Life Cycles." After all you cannot be a quiet revolutionary.

The devil was smaller and rather younger than I would have guessed. He danced barefoot around the fire as he stoked it in preparation for my torment. The fiend wore a tunic of rough linen, leaves and sticks clinging to it, and a bycocket hat with a single feather in the style of bow hunters back home in Blighty. Bit of a ginger fringe. Scrawny and pathetic, really, for the prince of bloody darkness.

Thus it was we entered a low eating-house on the lamplit shores of the river in a Moslem neighbourhood, a modest boxwood shanty having no walls at all, but sufficiently screened with hanging bags. There were several benches and three tables, and upon each table were oil-lamps which cast soft shadows on the haze of airborne cooking-fats and wood-smoke, and gently illuminating a dozen Africans at food; on the floor at the farther end were cooking-fires, and a fine diversity of smells arose from bubbling pots and sizzling pans. The chef was a robust ogre of glistening dark bronze with an incense pastille smouldering in his hair, a swearing, sweating Panta-gruel naked to the waist and stoking fires, lifting lids, and scooping out great globs of meat and manioc and fish: he might have been cooking skulls on the shores of River Styx.

With Petrov, everything is a zero-sum game—for Russia to rise, America must fall. Everything he’s done over the past decade has been an effort to sully and tarnish the reputation of Western democracies. Promoting Brexit, actively trying to break up the EU and NATO, turning Italy against France, stoking the fires of partisanship in the United States. And while we turn inward, trying to tame and manage the chaos Russia unleashed in our house, Petrov is systematically moving his chess pieces all over the board.

He looked up to the gods but never accepted their eternal superiority. For better or worse, plotting their overthrow was the only aspiration that stoked the fires of destiny. Such an exalted ambition was worthy of a man who had long accomplished the chore of dominating human minds. A man so terrified of finding himself alone in a stratosphere where no one could understand just how exceptional he was. In that place, the presumed existence of gods was a great comfort, especially in a profession in which his rivals were mere mortals.

Rona soon picked out her own plot of land - one hundred eighty acres that stretched along the bottom of a rocky hill and only a stone's through from the shoreline. Quickly, much more quickly than natural for a man much less a woman - even one of Rona Blackburn's stature - a house appeared. She filled her new home with reminders of her previous one on the Aegean island she had loved so much: pastel seashells and a front door painted a deep cobalt blue - a color the yiayias always claimed had the power to repel evil. Then she set up her bed, made a pit for her fire, and erected two wooden tables. One table she kept bare. The other she covered in tinctures and glass jars of cut herbs and other fermented bits of flora and fauna. On this table, she kept a marble mortar and pestle, the leather sheath in which she wrapped her knives, and copper bowls - some for mixing dry ingredients, some for liquid, and a few small enough to bring to the mouth for sipping. And when the fire was stoked and the table was set, she placed a wooden sign - soon covered in a blanket of late December snow - outside that blue front door. It read one world: Witch.

Gautama found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle. If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understands things as they are, then there is no suffering. If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind. But how do you get the mind to accept things as they are, without craving? To accept sadness as sadness, joy as joy, pain as pain? Gautama developed a set of meditation techniques that train the mind to experience reality as it is, without craving. These practices train the mind to focus all its attention on the question, ‘What am I experiencing now?’ rather than on ‘What would I rather be experiencing?’ It is difficult to achieve this state of mind, but not impossible. Gautama grounded these meditation techniques in a set of ethical rules meant to make it easier for people to focus on actual experience and to avoid falling into cravings and fantasies. He instructed his followers to avoid killing, promiscuous sex and theft, since such acts necessarily stoke the fire of craving (for power, for sensual pleasure, or for wealth). When the flames are completely extinguished, craving is replaced by a state of perfect contentment and serenity, known as nirvana (the literal meaning of which is ‘extinguishing the fire’). Those who have attained nirvana are fully liberated from all suffering. They experience reality with the utmost clarity, free of fantasies and delusions. While they will most likely still encounter unpleasantness and pain, such experiences cause them no misery. A person who does not crave cannot suffer.

Right now, many female activists in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties are gazing thoughtfully into the glowing embers of lesbian culture. For us, this is still an active campfire where we gather and warm ourselves; one which, we hope, will not fade away into forgotten ash, but instead retain hot coals to stoke new fires. Such images of heat and spark have always served to symbolize shifts in leadership; think of that other fire-based metaphor, the passing of the torch - presumably, to a next generation. What does it mean if that next generation is disdainful of the torch, welcomes its dousing, or lacks the data or the will to learn how it was lit and carried forward in the first place?

More recently, Dallas Willard put it this way: Desire is infinite partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God, and made to run on God. We can be satisfied only by the one who is infinite, eternal, and able to supply all our needs; we are only at home in God. When we fall away from God, the desire for the infinite remains, but it is displaced upon things that will certainly lead to destruction.5 Ultimately, nothing in this life, apart from God, can satisfy our desires. Tragically, we continue to chase after our desires ad infinitum. The result? A chronic state of restlessness or, worse, angst, anger, anxiety, disillusionment, depression—all of which lead to a life of hurry, a life of busyness, overload, shopping, materialism, careerism, a life of more…which in turn makes us even more restless. And the cycle spirals out of control. To make a bad problem worse, this is exacerbated by our cultural moment of digital marketing from a society built around the twin gods of accumulation and accomplishment. Advertising is literally an attempt to monetize our restlessness. They say we see upward of four thousand ads a day, all designed to stoke the fire of desire in our bellies. Buy this. Do this. Eat this. Drink this. Have this. Watch this. Be this. In his book on the Sabbath, Wayne Muller opined, “It is as if we have inadvertently stumbled into some horrific wonderland.”6 Social media takes this problem to a whole new level as we live under the barrage of images—not just from marketing departments but from the rich and famous as well as our friends and family, all of whom curate the best moments of their lives. This ends up unintentionally playing to a core sin of the human condition that goes all the way back to the garden—envy. The greed for another person’s life and the loss of gratitude, joy, and contentment in our own.

With her left thigh draped over his right hip, he pleasured her at a more leisurely pace. She closed her eyes and let him love her. Before long, however, he had stoked her fire until it blazed again. She pressed him onto his back and, looking intrigued with the possibilities, sat astride him; he never left her body. Victorious atop him, she appeared to savor this position---and her newfound power over him. There was no denying it. At the moment, he was hers, body and soul, whether she knew it or not. Whether he was quite ready for that or not. He was sure as hell not ready to admit it. "Rohan," she murmured, "why haven't we been doing this all the time that I've been here?" He gave her a licentious half smile. "I was trying to convince you that I was a gentleman," he replied, his low tone roughened by desire. She smiled at his irreverent answer and dragged her dainty fingers down his chest. "What would I want with a gentleman when I could have a Beast?

Once again the Aos Sí, the good folk, and the fairy kin, gather 'mungst the humans- to celebrate the ushering in of days, at the start of May, with candles, fires, and lumen. Oh, see, oh! What have some humans done?! Turning beloved Beltane into twisted wildness- such awful ravenous hum. The low drums, and the lovely blossoms- of which are covered now by carnal madness. Twas not always such a frenzied display of such power-driven lusts. The Beltane was sweet, but fervent- passion, to open up the flower buds. A welcoming, of the Spring and Summer seasons met the fire, the rhythm, and the dances- all to stoke the spirit of each creature, including leaflets on the trees upon where faeries pranceth. But for I- tonight I dance, and I cast my seeds- a better world to ripen, grow, and be. My fire, well lit; sparks of passion ignite in me, magic trickles from my fingers, joyful laughter so shall linger. Welcome, welcome sweetest Beltane." From the book "The spark (of a Muse)", by Cheri Bauer

After placing everything in the backseat, Nadia buckled her seat belt and turned to him. “Corvon,” she addressed him by his in-game persona. “If I were to tell you that you get a prize for besting me, what would you want?” He slid closer, dragging his gaze over her without hiding it. Caleb could see her nipples peaking under her bra. She was as turned on as he was. “Anything I want?” “Perhaps. What would it be?” She wouldn’t commit, which meant she didn’t trust him. It was time to drop the asshole persona. He couldn’t help but let her in. She was his One. “I would want …” He reached for her chin. “...a kiss.” Caleb leaned in so far he could feel her breath on his face. Her pupils were dilated wide, and he ran his thumb over her plush bottom lip. “Would you award me such a prize, Asteria?” She nodded. Closing the distance between them, he claimed her lips. This kiss was even hotter than the one at laser tag, slow and languid, like they had all the time in the world. He wrapped his hand around the base of her head and leaned her body back as her arms wrapped around his waist. Her tongue slid along his in a tantalizing dance that stoked the fire within. She sighed softly into his mouth as he felt the walls between them melt away from the heat. One kiss, that’s all he’d asked for. But he never wanted it to end. This felt dangerous. But so right. Finally, he forced himself to break the kiss, moaning Nadia’s name. She looked dazed, like she was just waking up — or just had the most incredible orgasm. What he wouldn’t give to see Nadia’s afterglow. “Can you drive?” His mouth was bone dry but he managed to get the words out eventually. She nodded and started the motor. He buckled himself in but didn’t stop looking at her. That had been no ordinary kiss. He needed another. As she backed out to turn the truck around, Nadia looked over at him shyly. “I wanna do that again.” “Me, too.” Licking his lips at the idea of tasting her again, he broke the first of his rules. “Come upstairs when we get to my place and we can.

Cursing himself, he glided his fingertips from her shoulder inward along the elegant line of her collarbone. She responded to him with a sigh of intoxicated pleasure, arching her head back, lifting her breasts slightly as her body rose to his touch. His eyes glazed over as he realized then that she was awake enough to know what she wanted. He leaned down at once and kissed her shoulder softly, whispering her name. "Wake to me." She touched his head in answer, draping her arm weakly over his neck. He moved onto the bed with her, his heart pounding. He lay beside her, close enough to consume with his lips the small, heady sigh that escaped hers. He watched the dreamy smile that curved her lips as he began caressing her with seductive reassurance, letting her get accustomed to his touch. "That's right. You just relax," he breathed. He skimmed his palm down her arm, but at her elbow, he diverted his explorations to her slender waist. From there, he ran his hand down lower, to her hip. She stretched a little like a pampered cat under his patient stroking. He bent his head at length and pressed a kiss to the white line of her tender neck. He was rewarded with another enticing undulation of her body, drawing him closer. As his lips worked his way higher, Kate turned her mouth to his invitingly. She met his gaze for a fleeting instant before he kissed her; her glittering, heavy-lidded eyes teemed with feverish desire. "Hullo there," he whispered, then he bent his head and claimed her mouth. Her low moan passed from her lips to his. Rohan answered in kind as he deepened the kiss, capturing her chin between his finger and thumb. She clutched two fistfuls of his shirt for a passing instant. Her mouth tasted of red wine. He drank deeper. As she opened her mouth to his hungry kiss, he skimmed his fingertips down her throat to her chest. He slipped his hand into her gown and cupped her breast. With tingling hands, he took her nipple between his finger and thumb and held it lightly as he kissed her. Her approving groan asked wordlessly for more. She touched his shoulders, arms, and chest as he moved downward over her body to indulge himself in sampling her breasts. She made no move to stop him, no longer cold or shivering as she had been in the great hall, but panting, her skin aglow with newfound heat as he undid the bodice of her skimpy gown and bared her lovely breasts. Closing his eyes, he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked until it swelled to glorious fullness against his tongue. The kiss went on and on, for she was even sweeter than he had already fantasized in the great hall. Now that he had her nipple in his mouth, he could not get enough of her. But when she began to writhe hungrily beneath him, her moans climbing, he obliged her, taking his hand down slowly over her quivering stomach through her gown. She was wanton, but he stoked her fire by keeping a leisurely pace for now. He put his hand between her legs, giving her a taste of what she craved. She began rubbing restlessly against the snug hold of his hand cupping her mound. He was rock hard, and enjoyed pleasuring her for a while further, feeling the dampness of her core permeating the thin cloth of her gown

How is his temperature?” “He needs to go up one more degree.” “The devil I do,” West said. “With that fire stoked so high, the room is an oven. Soon I’ll be as brown as a Christmas goose. Speaking of that… I’m famished.” “The doctor said we can’t feed you until you’ve reached the right temperature,” Pandora said. “Will you take another cup of tea?” Cassandra asked. “I’ll have a brandy,” West retorted, “along with a wedge of currant pie, a plate of cheese, a bowl of potato and turnip mash, and a beefsteak.” Cassandra smiled. “I’ll ask the doctor if you may have some broth.” “Broth?” he repeated indignantly. “Come along, Hamlet,” Pandora said, “before West decides he wants bacon as well.” “Wait,” Kathleen said, frowning. “Isn’t Hamlet supposed to be in the cellars?” “Cook wouldn’t allow it,” Cassandra said. “She said he would find a way to knock over the bins and eat all the root vegetables.” She cast a proud glance at the cheerful-looking creature. “Because he is a very creative and enterprising pig.” “Cook didn’t say that last part,” Pandora said. “No,” Cassandra admitted, “but it was implied.” The twins cleared the dogs and pig from the room and left. Helen extended the thermometer to West. “Under your tongue, please,” she said gravely. He complied with a long-suffering expression.

She thought that she had been seeking a light distraction. But when she heard the clang of metal on metal and saw Arin scraping a shaft of steel across the anvil with one set of tools and beating at it with another, Kestrel knew she had come to the wrong place. “Yes?” he said, keeping his back to her. His workshirt was soaked through with sweat. His hands were sooty. He left the blade of the sword to cool on the anvil and moved to place another, shorter length of metal on the fire, which lined his profile with unsteady light. She willed her voice to be her own. “I thought we could play a game.” His dark brows drew together. “Of Bite and Sting,” Kestrel said. More firmly, she added, “You implied you know how to play.” He used tongs to stoke the fire. “I did.” “You implied that you could beat me.” “I implied that there was no reason a Valorian would want to play with a Herrani.” “No, you worded things carefully so that what you said could be interpreted that way. But that isn’t what you meant.” He faced her then, arms folded across his chest. “I have no time for games.” The tips of his fingers had black rings of charcoal dust buried under the nail and into the cuticle. “I have work to do.” “Not if I say you don’t.” He turned away. “I like to finish what I start.” She meant to leave. She meant to leave him to the noise and heat. She meant to say nothing more. Instead, Kestrel found herself issuing a challenge. “You are no match for me anyway.” He gave her the look she recognized well, the one of measured disdain. But this time, he also laughed. “Where do you propose we play?” He swept a hand around the forge. “Here?” “My rooms.” “Your rooms.” Arin shook his head disbelievingly. “My sitting room,” she said. “Or the parlor,” she added, though it bothered her to think of playing Bite and Sting with him in a place so public to the household. He leaned against the anvil, considering. “Your sitting room will do. I’ll come when I’ve finished this sword. After all, I have house privileges now. Might as well use them.” Arin started to say something else, then stopped, his gaze roving over her face. She grew uneasy. He was staring, she realized. He was staring at her. “You have dirt on your face,” he said shortly. He returned to his work. Later, in her bathing room, Kestrel saw it. The moment she tilted the mirror to catch the low, amber light of late afternoon, she saw what he had seen, as had Lirah, who had tried to tell her. A faint smudge traced the slope of her high cheekbone, darkened her cheek, and skimmed the line of her jaw. It was a handprint. It was the shadow left from her father’s gritty hand, from when he had touched her face to seal the bargain between them.

I’ll tell you what,” he says. “You keep me company while I finish my dinner. I won’t even ask you what you have…or don’t have…under that coat. Deal?” I smile tentatively and smooth down my hair. “Deal.” “You don’t have to do that for me,” he says, gently taking my hand away from my hair. “I’ll get a blanket so you don’t get dirty.” I wait until he pulls a clean light green fleece blanket out of a closet. We sit on the blanket and Alex looks at his watch. “Want some?” he asks, pointing to his dinner. Maybe eating will calm my nerves. “What is it?” “Enchiladas. Mi’amá makes kick-ass enchiladas.” He stabs a small portion with a fork and holds it out to me. “If you’re not used to this kind of spicy food--” “I love spicy,” I interrupt, taking it into my mouth. I start chewing, enjoying the blend of flavors. But when I swallow, my tongue slowly catches on fire. Somewhere behind all the fire there’s flavor, but the flames are in the way. “Hot,” is all I can say as I attempt to swallow. “I told you.” Alex holds out the cup he’d been drinking from. “Here, drink. Milk usually does the trick, but I only have water.” I grab the cup. The liquid cools my tongue, but when I finish the water it’s as if someone stokes it again. “Water…,” I say. He fills another cup. “Here, drink more, though I don’t think it’ll help much. It’ll subside soon.” Instead of drinking it this time, I stick my tongue in the cold liquid and keep it there. Ahhh… “You okay?” “To I wook otay?” I ask. “With your tongue in the water like that, actually, it’s erotic. Want another bite?” he asks mischievously, acting like the Alex I know. “Mo mank ooh.” “Your tongue still burnin’?” I lift my tongue from the water. “It feels like a million soccer players are stomping on it with their cleats.” “Ouch,” he says, laughing. “You know, I heard once that kissin’ reduces the fire.” “Is that your cheap way of telling me you want to kiss me?” He looks into my eyes, his dark gaze capturing mine. “Querida, I always want to kiss you.

Sarah rode with him and felt her body rejoice, felt her senses whirl and sing with pleasure. She was exquisitely conscious, to her fingernails aware of the shattering intimacy of their joining. Eyes closed, hearing suspended, her world condensed just to him and her, and another world came alive, a landscape filled with feeling, with heat and longing, with sensation and power and the promise of glory. He moved within her and she rode out each thrust, met and matched him, welcomed and reluctantly released him again. Pleasure and delight bloomed, welled, then spilled through her. The momentary pain had faded so fast it was already a dim memory, overwhelmed by the solid and immediate reality of him hard and strong and so elementally male, joining so deeply and inexorably with her. His fingers slid from hers, sliding down and around to one globe of her bottom. He tilted her hips, and she gasped as the altered position let him penetrate her more deeply still. The reined power behind each deliberate thrust sent a thrill arcing through her. A primitive sense of danger, the recognition of vulnerability; he was so much stronger than she, his body so much harder, so much more powerful than hers. Yet he was careful. The realization slid through her, but she couldn't focus enough to think, then the heat of their passion rose another degree and claimed her. Sent fire and a hungry, ravenous need sliding through her veins, making her writhe, making her gasp. It inexorably branded desire deep into her flesh, marking and searing, until she burned. Until her body was aflame, until the flames coalesced and concentrated, burning deeper and hotter until she sobbed and clung and desperately urged him on, and he rode her faster, harder, deeper. Until with a rush, all heat and yearning, she found herself clinging to that final, dizzying peak. Felt him thrust one last time and shatter her, felt the furnace within her that he'd stoked and fed rupture, felt glory pour forth and sear her veins. And rush through her. She spiraled through a void, cushioned in heated bliss, her mind disconnected. Dimly, she heard him groan, long-drawn and guttural, was distantly aware that, joined deeply with her, he went rigid in her arms. She felt, from far away, the warmth of his seed spill inside her. Buoyed by glory, cocooned in golden rapture, she smiled.

afreight with the past, dreams dispersed in the water someway, nothing ever lost. Houseboats ride at their hawsers. The neap mud along the shore lies ribbed and slick like the cavernous flitch of some beast hugely foundered and beyond the country rolls away to the south and the mountains. Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark’s total restitution could appease.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln said that slavery was the chief cause of the war and noted the complicity of Christians, many of whom “believed weighty political issues could be parsed into good or evil. Lincoln’s words offered a complexity that many found difficult to accept.”The war devastated the playground of evangelical politics and “‘thrashed the certitude of evangelical Protestantism’ as much as World War I shattered European Protestant liberalism.” Lincoln’s contention that Christians played a role in causing the war offers an illuminating and devastating critique of the way toxic religious attitudes stoke fires of hatred. His realism in confronting facts was both masterful and badly needed. Lincoln spoke of “‘American slavery’ as a single offense ascribed to the whole nation.

You are stronger than the memories of your past. Use them to fuel your determination, to stoke the fire in your soul that promises defeat to your enemies.

Seek clarity on who you want to be, how you want to interact with others, what you want, and what will bring you the greatest meaning. As every project or major initiative begins, you ask questions such as “What kind of person do I want to be while I’m doing this?” “How should I treat others?” “What are my intentions and objectives?” “What can I focus on that will bring me a sense of connection and fulfillment?” High performers ask these types of questions not only at the beginning of an endeavor but consistently throughout. They don’t just “get clarity” once and develop a mission statement that lasts the test of time; they consistently seek clarity again and again as times change and as they take on new projects or enter new social situations. This kind of routine self-monitoring is one of the hallmarks of their success. Generate energy so that you can maintain focus, effort, and wellbeing. To stay on your A game, you’ll need to actively care for your mental stamina, physical energy, and positive emotions in very specific ways. Raise the necessity for exceptional performance. This means actively tapping into the reasons you absolutely must perform well. This necessity is based on a mix of your internal standards (e.g., your identity, beliefs, values, or expectations for excellence) and external demands (e.g., social obligations, competition, public commitments, deadlines). It’s about always knowing your why and stoking that fire all the time so you feel the needed drive or pressure to get at it. Increase productivity in your primary field of interest. Specifically, focus on prolific quality output (PQO) in the area in which you want to be known and to drive impact. You’ll also have to minimize distractions (including opportunities) that steal your attention from creating PQO. Develop influence with those around you. It will make you better at getting people to believe in and support your efforts and ambitions. Unless you consciously develop a positive support network, major achievements over the long haul are all but impossible. Demonstrate courage by expressing your ideas, taking bold action, and standing up for yourself and others, even in the face of fear, uncertainty, threat, or changing conditions. Courage is not an occasional act, but a trait of choice and will.

The quiet seaside village of Casa Azar had never encoun tered anything quite like Eddie Chang. For hundreds of years, the village had patiently endured monsoons, hurricanes, forest fires, and the occasional mudslide. But this was Casa Azar's first encounter with Eddie, and the town was wholly unprepared for the devastation that can be wrought by a panicking seventh grader at the wheel of a three-ton vehicle, on the run for his life.

Well, as long as you’re not stoking anyone else’s fire is about all you need to worry about. And as long as he’s not getting his fire stoked by anyone else—” “Dad!” “You gotta talk about that, son. Put all your expectations on the table, then there’s no feelings gettin’ hurt or hearts getting broken.” I sighed. “Okay, okay.” “And I’d imagine with two men, there are other conversations you need to have. Like whether you stoke the fire or if you get your fire stoked—

want to see the expression your face makes when it’s happy. I don’t know why, but I do. I have seen you angry and hateful and disappointed and sad—so sad—Lazarus. I want to see what stokes the fire in that soul of yours and lights you up from within.

You could be riding in the back of a studio’s black limo, or just as easily the back of the coroner’s blue van. The sound of applause was the same as the buzz of a bullet spinning past your ear in the dark. That randomness. That was L.A. There was flash fire and flash flood, earthquake, mudslide. There was the drive-by shooter and the crack-stoked burglar. The drunk driver and the always curving road ahead. There were killer cops and cop killers. There was the husband of the woman you were sleeping with. And there was the woman. At any moment on any night there were people being raped, violated, maimed. Murdered and loved. There was always a baby at his mother’s breast. And, sometimes, a baby alone in a Dumpster.

You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration. You tend the flame because if you don’t you’re stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to seasonal layers, doomed to practicality, doomed to this is just the way things are, doomed to settling and understanding and reasoning and agreeing and seeing it another way and seeing it his way and seeing it from all the other ways but your own. And

It was a marvelous idea, and he backed away from it, giving it space; you could blow on a fire to stoke it, but if you blew on a little flame, it would go out.

The men who trusted Kinsey—a hard-won trust that he achieved only because one man vouched for him to another, who did the same to someone else, who followed suit—unwittingly became part of a movement that was only just beginning, one that was little more than a hope for some, such as Henry Gerber two decades earlier, but a seeming impossibility to most. However small and obscure it was in the beginning, it would help to stoke the fires of the sexual revolution that would explode in New York in 1969 in what has been called the Stonewall riots and in the gay liberation movement that the riots spawned. It would be too late for Raymond Carlson and hundreds of other men like him who, caught up in the insidiousness of the time, took control of their destiny in the only way available to them. It also would be too late for those who, like Ralph Wright, charged into marriage to hide their sexuality. Others, like the men of the Rush Street boardinghouse, would make due, devise strategies that would allow them to survive the very real threats that surrounded them—threats not only to their bodies but also to their sense of self—while keeping what we think of as their sexual identity intact. Chicago was full of such men, all heroes and virtually all forgotten now or, if remembered at all, relegated to a footnote to the narrative of the period in which they lived and loved and over which, in time, they triumphed.

you could blow on a fire to stoke it, but if you blew on a little flame, it would go out. He headed up into Woodberry

Your vote should not be cast in fear. A fearful vote will lead to harm in two ways. First, it will ensure that your vote is made selfishly; from a desire to protect yourself and your interests rather than a desire to serve and bless others. Second, a fearful vote is usually won by a candidate that employed fear to gain support. Where the fires of fear are stoked, the warm glow of Christian love will not long endure. Those who think making people afraid will result in flourishing are deluded. They are not on a path paved by Christ that leads toward his kingdom, no matter how many Bibles they display or Christian endorsements they secure. A fearful vote is a vote for demagoguery not divinity.

Antoinette cannot believe she has uttered the words “I love you” in vain. She must either be loved or else abdicate her place in the world. “Feeling then the solitude of her voluptuous bed where lust had not yet placed its warm feet, she rolled about restlessly, repeating to herself: ‘I want to be loved!’ . . . the true woman glimpsed happiness, and her imagination, avenger of time lost by nature, pleasured itself in stoking the inextinguishable fires of pleasure.

They have a new playbook, and they’re a bigger threat than ever,” he continued. “With Petrov, everything is a zero-sum game—for Russia to rise, America must fall. Everything he’s done over the past decade has been an effort to sully and tarnish the reputation of Western democracies. Promoting Brexit, actively trying to break up the EU and NATO, turning Italy against France, stoking the fires of partisanship in the United States.

Stokes started by explaining how often the term "servant" is used as a euphemism for "slave" in New England and how there is a presumption that Africans here were somehow "smarter" and treated better than those in the South. This misperception, he pushed, is because people don't want to remember the dehumanization. Without hesitating, he went on to say, Slavery is violent, grotesque, vulgar, and we are all implicated in how it denigrates humanity.

I want to see the expression your face makes when it’s happy. I don’t know why, but I do. I have seen you angry and hateful and disappointed and sad—so sad—Lazarus. I want to see what stokes the fire in that soul of yours and lights you up from within.

From the day I brought the kitten home there was a change in my husband, he didn't go out to the bars nearly as much, he tried to be home every night by dark, and he stoked the fires in both stoves and fussed all over that kitten, somehow he became that kitten's surrogate mother, and not only did my husband meticulously brush his teeth every night, he quit drinking beer at night altogether so as not to reek of it. And whenever I woke up to have a look, there was that kitten suckling at my husband's knuckle, and that's how they slept together, that's how they slept together even when that kitten grew into a full-grown tabby cat, that tabby cat couldn't fall asleep unless he was snuggled up to my husband and suckling at his knuckle. Little Ethan, that's what we named our tabby, was so in love with my husband that he just couldn't wait for evening to come, and when I made the beds Ethan liked to slip under the covers and romp around in the dark, even I fell in love with that tabby, even I fell in love with him as if he were our own little child, even I couldn't wait to see our tabby cat, who was fond of sunning himself up on the roof, up there where my husband typed on his typewriter, in fact, these days my husband even wrote while I was at home, because that tabby cat sat right next to him, gazing wisely at the typewriter keys, gazing lovestruck at my husband, and into my lap he would come, and then back to my husband at the typewriter, some sort of muse to my husband is what that little creature was.

All Yang’s men were in by midday and our party straggled in later completely done in. Chuen came in first. He was wearing a dark green commando’s beret, long green canvas boots with rubber soles – American jungle boots – and green battle-dress with lovely blue parachute wings over his left pocket. He is a little cheerful man and speaks fair English. Then came Humpleman, very young, blue-eyed, with a bland and serious manner; then Jim Hannah, lean, dark, hook-nosed, moustached, and over forty. At one time he was a journalist and in the rubber slump in Malaya he worked in Australia. Then came Harrison, short, with red face and sandy hair – a very silent Scot, also a planter. John and Richard brought up the rear, absolutely exhausted but very contented. After a meal they had got out on to the field and had everything ready an hour before midnight. Then they waited and waited and, as nothing happened, they got more and more worried and despondent. One hour late, then two hours. It was bitterly cold, and at last they were just talking of returning home when a faint drone was heard from the west. They were so excited that their hearts almost choked them! At last the Lib came over. Apparently she followed up the Perak river, then came across on a bearing. The moon was shining brilliantly and the sky was covered with high, white, fleecy clouds. The fires, freshly stoked with dry atap, burned up brightly, and Quayle with his torch flashed the recognition letter faster and faster with growing excitement as the great Lib, after flying round in a wide circle, swooped overhead, vast and glistening in the moonlight. Suddenly four little white balls seemed to appear in the plane’s wake, and four tiny black forms were seen swinging from side to side below them. John, Richard, and Frank all agreed it was the most exciting moment of their lives. While they were still lost in wonder, things started happening. Hannah and Harrison landed beautifully and were immediately fielded, but Humpleman fell in the stream and was retrieved soaking wet. The containers and packages, which had been released immediately after the bodies, now came down and all landed

The quiet seaside village of Casa Azar had never encountered anything quite like Eddie Chang. For hundreds of years, the village had patiently endured monsoons, hurricanes, forest fires, and the occasional mudslide. But this was Casa Azar's first encounter with Eddie, and the town was wholly unprepared for the devastation that can be wrought by a panicking seventh grader at the wheel of a three-ton vehicle, on the run for his life.

Freya’s eyes flash wide. “Oh!” She bobs a curtsy and speaks softly. “Your Highness. My lady. Forgive me. I was going to stoke the fire in the bedroom.” What a coincidence, I think. I was considering the very same thing. I turn to Harper before my thoughts can get ahead of me.

Freya’s eyes flash wide. “Oh!” She bobs a curtsy and speaks softly. “Your Highness. My lady. Forgive me. I was going to stoke the fire in the bedroom.” What a coincidence, I think. I was considering the very same thing. I turn to Harper before my thoughts can get ahead of me. “I should leave you to your rest.” I bow, then take her hand to brush a kiss across her knuckles. “Until tomorrow, my lady.” It takes every ounce of self-restraint I possess to walk away.

The hand at her back stroked up and down. Never straying too far south, but igniting a fire inside her that she wanted this fireman to stoke instead of extinguish

Tell me we’re not going to be stoking up the cook fires to build palisades through the night by their light.’ I stood, turning as I spoke. Gravely, he said, ‘You’re not going to be stoking the cook fires and building palisades through the night by their light.’ Something was wrong with Lupus. He had never in his life made a joke, and his eyes were not laughing; quite the reverse.

And on that note, why are they called the No Name Mountains?” Moore continued as he stoked the fire, poking at it with the end of a long stick. “Perhaps because they have never been given a name,” Oliver suggested with a wry twist to his lips. “But if they are called the No Name Mountains, then they have been given a name, and therefore they cannot be No Names. They must be given a true name.” “By that logic they already have a name. They do not need another.” “But their name means they have no name!” “They are a paradox, then,” Oliver said dismissively. He was not bothered by the name of the mountains, just by their presence. “We should name them the Paradox Peaks,” Moore said with a bright smile. “Then they would have a name that is not No Name and therefore would no longer be a paradox. Thus not aptly named,” Oliver drawled with a smile as he slouched further into the warmth of his cloak. Moore stared at him, eyes narrowing as he mentally sorted it out. “If you were not a royal prince, I would smack you.” “It has never stopped you before,” Oliver pointed out with a laugh.

One bonus you get from having an enemy is a very clear marketing message. People are stoked by conflict. And they also understand a product by comparing it to others. With a chosen enemy, you're feeding people a story they want to hear. Not only will they understand your product better and faster, they'll take sides. And that's a sure-fire way to get attention and ignite passion.

Set aside time on a regular basis to immerse yourself in books, films, magazines, and other resources that stoke the fire of your curiosity. Keep a list of resources that strike you as interesting, and set aside time to experience them each day. I keep a “Stimulus Queue,” which is a list of all of the interesting books, films, or articles that I come across throughout my day and I want to revisit later, during my study time. I also use a variety of Web-based tools to stockpile articles I come across for later viewing. I then work through them systemically, take notes, and consider how they may apply to my work. Always leave time at the end of any reading/study session to reflect on what you’ve read and to consider how it is relevant to your work. The next great idea for your work will probably not come from watching your competitors, but from taking an insight from an unrelated industry and applying it to your own. Read and experience broadly, and with focus on your deeper questions.

You are a man without a heart, Dr. Leddell. And you, Mary Cooper, are a meddler. A woman can be forgiven for many transgressions but not that. I have been called worse. And by people I hold in more esteem than you. Ha! I pity the poor man unfortunate enough to marry you someday. He writes his own ticket to hell. If he does, then I'll make that hell as pleasant a place for him as I know how. But I won't deceive him and tell him it's heaven, then stoke the fires behind his back and cover it all with the scent of lilacs".

Arguing against a mother’s logic is like stoking a fire with your finger and expecting not to get burned.

I leave in the search of you at the flourish of midnight every day… when the fire inside is stoked by the mania of solitude, and the blood declines to hold the insanity at bay.

Guidelines for ROE 1. When on post, mobile, or foot patrol, keep loaded magazine in weapon, bolt closed, weapon on safe, no round in the chamber. 2. Do not chamber a round unless told to do so by a commissioned officer unless you must act in immediate self-defense where deadly force is authorized. 3. Keep ammo for crew-served weapons readily available but not loaded. Weapon is on safe. 4. Call local forces to assist in self-defense effort. Notify headquarters. 5. Use only minimum degree of force to accomplish any mission. 6. Stop the use of force when it is no longer needed to accomplish the mission. 7. If you receive effective hostile fire, direct your fire at the source. If possible, use friendly snipers. 8. Respect civilian property; do not attack it unless absolutely necessary to protect friendly forces. 9. Protect innocent civilians from harm. 10. Respect and protect recognized medical agencies such as Red Cross, Red Crescent, etc. Col. Jim Mead’s 32nd MAU was relieved by Col. Tom Stokes’s 24th MAU on October 30, 1982. The transition was seamless, morale was high, and all hands assumed their responsibilities enthusiastically. Colonel Stokes also honored the Ministry of Defense’s request to help train the LAF. The government of Lebanon (GOL) introduced conscription, and young men from all over Lebanon answered the call to colors. The various religious groups—the Christians, Druze, Sunnis, and Shiites—were being trained and integrated into the Lebanese Army. Although the U.S. Army already had an ongoing training mission in effect, it was viewed that the Marines’ additional training would quickly improve the LAF’s combat capabilities. The results of the training courses led to their expansion, particularly among the noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The religious integration of the LAF was a major goal of its commander, Gen. Ibrahim Tannous, who wanted to produce a true national army. The Marine training was contributing to that end.

In the inns of certain Himalayan villages is practiced a refined tea ceremony. The ceremony involves a host and exactly two guests, neither more nor less. When his guests have arrived and seated themselves at his table, the host performs three services for them. These services are listed in the order of the nobility the Himalayans attribute to them: stoking the fire, fanning the flames, and pouring the tea. During the ceremony, any of those present may ask another, “Honored Sir, may I perform this onerous task for you?” However, a person may request of another only the least noble of the tasks which the other is performing. Furthermore, if a person is performing any tasks, then he may not request a task that is nobler than the least noble task he is already performing. Custom requires that by the time the tea ceremony is over, all the tasks will have been transferred from the host to the most senior of the guests. How can this be accomplished?3

He had learned to play his instrument with the same joyless precision that barefoot waifs exercised in stoking the coal fires of a debtors’ prison.

But when I close my eyes and try to picture her face there’s no coherent image, only a hazy montage of feelings, moments, gestures, like fragments of a dream that’s already fading. I play them over in my head anyway, so I don’t lose what’s left of her, and for the feeling they provide. Like stoking the embers to get the last of the warmth from a dying fire.

Here’s the thing about life, boy. We meet a lot of people along this journey. Some of them are sonsabitches and some are special. When you find the special ones you don’t take a moment for granted, because you never know when your time with them is gonna be up. I got over fifty years with my Fritz. Fifty wonderful years. When he died, I was lost for a few months. I lost my fire. But then I realized that life’s short and I had a choice to make. I could keep bein’ miserable, or I could go find joy and live again.” She’s squeezing even harder now. “If you only listen to one thing this crazy old lady tells you, I hope it’s this: ain’t nobody gonna stoke your fire but you, boy.” She looks at me hard with her grey, cloudy eyes. “You go make life happen.

cycling, and from my first days living in Italy I couldn’t help but feel its influence and importance. It played a pivotal part in where I was, what I was doing and who I was trying to become. Once I was in Italy the Giro was forever on my mind. The thing about Italians is they love to talk. They love to talk about anything, but much in line with their Mediterranean cousins in Greece and Spain they love to debate. In Italian the word is polemica – it is what keeps bars in business, cafés bustling, and it is what makes cycling, along with football and politics, so important. The drama and aesthetic beauty set against the titanic physical struggle of cycling make it the perfect subject matter for this kind of debate. In Italy, while one-day races might provide reasons for a good debate for a day or two at best, the real winner is the Giro. It provides one whole month of conversation and argument, and the newspapers and television stations delight in fuelling the conversation – they exist purely to stoke the fire of debate.

My mind hasn’t felt this peaceful and calm in years. We’ll make the most of the time you’re here.” He gave her lips a little kiss. “I was so angry when I first faced you. I’m not angry anymore. You made things good for me.” “An awful lot more passed between us than I ever imagined,” she said. “But I’m glad.” “Then let’s fold our jeans and head back to town. I think we can get a toddy with Jack and Preacher before they close. Then we’ll go home, stoke the fire and if you want me to, I’ll read the dirty part of that book to you again.” She slapped his arm. “Please, it’s not dirty! It’s romantic.” “Yeah,” he grinned. “Very.” He pressed his lips against her forehead. They

Whereas all her life her mother had more often than not been in conflict not only with others but with herself, her own circumstances, angry about one thing or another, mostly dissatisfied and even resentful of her lot in life, now she seemed to have let that go. But in its stead, there appeared to be nothing. As if she had finally fully burned her ability to care about anything in the long-stoked fire of her discontent. And now she was empty.

He watched him stoke the flames, God's own firedrake. The sparks rushed upward and died in the starless dark. Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.

Yes, God has given us desire. But we are the ones that stoke it. What sort of kindling will we be using to make our fire?

It's always there, the fire between us, like glowing embers waiting to be stoked. One look, one kiss, one caress, and I come alive for him.

It was nothing, really," Carly breathed. "Mostly gibberish." "Mmm." His fingers brushed her cheekbone, and he stared down at her, not giving an inch. "Say it again." "Tu set I'womo Piu bello---" Jackson captured her words mid sentence, his mouth brushing hers in a hot, unyielding stroke as her lips parted over a sigh. His fingers tightened in her hair before he moved his palm to cradle her face. The kiss was like a low fire, begging to be stoked, and Jackson obliged on nothing but impulse. His tongue mingled with the supple sweetness of Carly's bottom lip, testing the way and drowning in the magnetic pull of her as he deepened the kiss. Her mouth vibrated against his as she released another small sigh, and it tore through him like an avalanche, prompting his hands up into the thick fall of her hair. Christ, she tasted so sweet and yet so sinful...

Gratitude is often considered an element of spirit or purpose. But what are we expected to be grateful for? Innovation calls for financial gains, promotions, and possessions to stoke the fires of gratitude. But kaizen invites us to be grateful for health, for our next breath, for the moments with a friend or colleague. When famous songwriter Warren Zevon was suffering from terminal cancer, David Letterman asked him what wisdom he gleaned from his illness. Zevon’s answer was pure kaizen: “Enjoy every sandwich.” Some quotes on service and gratitude to begin your exploration of kaizen: “I long to accomplish a great and noble task but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” —Helen Keller “We have to learn to live happily in the present moment, to touch the peace and joy that are available now.” —Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Zen master “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” —Albert Einstein “I would rather have it said, ‘He lived usefully’ than ‘He died rich.’ ” —Benjamin Franklin

One of the most important was that the emotion itself is often not the problem. It’s the way we react to it that causes the problem. For example, I feel angry and respond to it with more anger, stoking the coals, keeping the fire of anger burning. Or I feel worried and I start to feel worried that I feel worried.

They heard Rose Pastor Stokes quote Marx: “Workers, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains—and you have the world to gain.

Bone didn’t know yet that the men who own the world don’t get to do that by being magnanimous and overly interested in other people. They get to do it by taking care of themselves along the way. They stoke the fire of their own reputations, and sometimes other people come by, asking: What’s that you’re doing there? Oh, stoking the fire of my reputation. Can I help? Certainly. Go get some wood.

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.

I wanted to strip her flames away, bit by bit, until I reached her core. Once there I would snuff her fire out, or stoke it until it raged beyond control.

We have indeed, felt the effects of the epic journey that has been our life. We have covered a lot of ground, parenting, marriage, career, family and otherwise, and at times, surely, have felt the worse for the wear, especially when different circumstances have chewed us up and spit us out! When it felt as if the kiln was stoked to maximum heat levels, and that we would shatter into a billion pieces that would never all be found! There are some differences now, having a little more seasoning to us. First of all, now we understand there is no such thing as being finished. There is always more firing, refining and glazing we can experience, and it is only a matter of when and how, not if we will do so. Secondly, we look forward to it, knowing now it would take more heat than possible to break us beyond repair.

Stoke thy fires, thou Dragon-hearted daughter of flame, Rend the storm with thy mighty wings unfurled, Graciously salute the dawn.

Touching her now, after her gratifyingly loud and spectacularly animated release, calmed me even as it stoked a frenzied fire of need. I wanted to touch her everywhere. And for always. “What

In the Deep South, we understand pride. We lost everything once, but by God, we held on to our pride. We heaped fuel onto the fire of it, stoked it as high as a crematorium. And we immolate ourselves on it sometimes.

Father in heaven, we confess to you that we don’t pray as we ought. Ignite our hearts with the fiery darts of your Spirit to enable us to pray. Create in us a life of unceasing prayer. Stoke the fire of prayer in our church to a new intensity so that we are changed, as well as the people around us. Jesus, we lift up your name; we plead with you to draw people to yourself. Turn our church around for your glory, now and forevermore! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

It’s a fireman’s job to put out the flames, but all Cole is capable of doing is stoking the fire within me. It’s burning and growing into a wild inferno that only he can put out. My core is smoldering, my pussy is burning, and my desire is growing into a white-hot blaze. I need a fireman more than ever. Luckily, I have a sexy one standing in front of me. And he’s got a big hose to get the job done with.

I often find people wondering why relationships seem to fade in intensity. Some possible light on the subject: When you first meet someone your whole world is about them! As time passes we as humans start to think about what we are GETTING from the relationship as opposed to what we are GIVING. I have read several books on the subject (and started to write one). It is ok (and natural) for a relationship to transition from the "new car" to the "old comfortable shoe". This is the way of humans. It's ok for the roaring flame to become a smoldering ember but every once in awhile we need to throw another chunk of wood on the fire to stoke it up and get that warmth that we desire. Keep your expectations reasonable!!!!

How is his temperature?” “He needs to go up one more degree.” “The devil I do,” West said. “With that fire stoked so high, the room is an oven. Soon I’ll be as brown as a Christmas goose. Speaking of that…I’m famished.” “The doctor said we can’t feed you until you’ve reached the right temperature,” Pandora said. “Will you take another cup of tea?” Cassandra asked. “I’ll have a brandy,” West retorted, “along with a wedge of currant pie, a plate of cheese, a bowl of potato and turnip mash, and a beefsteak.” Cassandra smiled. “I’ll ask the doctor if you may have some broth.” “Broth?” he repeated indignantly. “Come along, Hamlet,” Pandora said, “before West decides he wants bacon as well.” “Wait,” Kathleen said, frowning. “Isn’t Hamlet supposed to be in the cellars?” “Cook wouldn’t allow it,” Cassandra said. “She said he would find a way to knock over the bins and eat all the root vegetables.” She cast a proud glance at the cheerful-looking creature. “Because he is a very creative and enterprising pig.” “Cook didn’t say that last part,” Pandora said. “No,” Cassandra admitted, “but it was implied.

My tail fire makes me hot-blooded and my fur lets me stoke it until it's boiling. - The Malwatch

How is his temperature?” “He needs to go up one more degree.” “The devil I do,” West said. “With that fire stoked so high, the room is an oven. Soon I’ll be as brown as a Christmas goose. Speaking of that…I’m famished.

In the 2016 elections, white fear ruled the day. Trump used fear to prime the pumps of white American racial resentment by fanning the flames of the birther myth against Barack Obama, claiming that Obama was not a native-born American citizen. For years Trump stoked the fires of the birther myth, continuing even after Canadian-born Ted Cruz became his primary opposition in the 2016 Republican primaries. Donald Trump deftly used the narrative of national belonging to make some groups, namely white male voters (across class lines), feel visible, heard, and affirmed. All voters should have access to candidates that make them feel recognized, but there’s a problem when your notion of recognition is predicated on someone else’s exclusion. There’s a problem when visibility becomes a zero-sum game, where making one group’s demands visible make every other group’s political concerns obscure. Only white supremacy demands such exacting and fatalistic math.

In their family, even the most nuclear of disputes remained under wraps until eventually it dissipated, seemingly for the simple reason that no one was prepared to stoke the fire.

Blame stokes the fire of hate.

Fire burns out if you don't stoke it and romance fizzles if you don't stroke it.

Picture a man in his living room. He is standing at a closed window opposite the fireplace and looking out at the dark night. As the fire starts to burn, the images of the objects in the room behind him can be seen reflected dimly in the window. As more logs burn and the fire in the fireplace illuminates the room, the man now sees a vivid reflection of himself and the contents of the room, which appears to be outside the window. As the analogy is applied to intoxication, the window is the window of our senses to the world, the fire is the electrical excitation in the brain, and the logs are the drugs that dampen (sedatives) or stoke up (stimulants and hallucinogens) the fire. When the fire is stifled, the man will see very little. But when the fire burns brightly, the glass will reflect the furniture in the rooms of his mind—his images, memories, dreams, and fantasies. The brighter the fire—the more [drugs] in the brain—the more vivid the reflections become until some users step through the window, like Alice going through the looking glass, and behave as if the images were real.

Arguing against a mother’s logic is like stoking a fire with your finger and expecting not to get burned. It

The prisoner told me that it was a shame the East and West could not have worked together. He said, ‘Fire needs air to live. Air fuels fire, stokes it, and makes it burn brighter and hotter than it ever could alone. But too much air will snuff it completely, just as too many flames will consume all the air. They are far greater than the sum of their parts together, but are equally as dangerous to each other’s existence.

Words to feed your passion. Thought to stoke your flickering embers. I see your unseen fires & feed it with my timber.

Marjan measured Bahar's unpredictable temperament according to the ancient and treasured Zoroastrian practice of gastronomic balancing, which pitted light and against dark, good against evil, hot against cold. Certain hot, or 'garm,' personalities tend to be quick to temper, exude more energy, and prompt all others around them to action. This energy often runs itself ragged, so to counter exhaustion, one must consume cold, or 'sard' foods, such as freshwater fish, yogurt, coriander, watermelon, and lentils. Most spices and meats should be avoided, for they only stoke the fires inside. (Tea, although hot in temperature, is quite a neutralizing element.) By contrast, for the person who suffers from too cold a temperament, marked by extreme bouts of melancholia and a general disinterest in the future, hot or 'garm' dishes are recommended. Foods such as veal, mung beans, cloves, and figs do well to raise spirits and excite ambitions. To diagnose Bahar as a 'garmi' (on account of her extreme anxiety and hot temper) would have been simple enough, had she not also suffered from a lowness of spirit that often led to migraine headaches. Whether in a 'garm' or a 'sard' mood, Bahar could always depend on her older sister to guide her back to a relative calm. Marjan had for a long time kept a close eye on Bahar and knew exactly when to feed her sautéed fish with garlic and Seville oranges to settle her hot flashes, or when a good apple 'khoresh,' a stew made from tart apples, chicken, and split peas, would be a better choice to pull Bahar out of her doldrums.

When she can’t sleep, she writes. All she remembers is his words. It will soon be dawn, with fire-stoked horses thundering to the humming sky of crickets. I will see you run. And I will run with you. That morning, while Ata ate a dripping mango over the sink, she felt him come up behind her and touch the small of her back, light as a current of air. He kissed the side of her neck, inhaled the steam of bitter cocoa, boiling with bay leaves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and said it reminded him of his childhood. “You are from the islands,” she said. But then he was gone.

Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. —Matthew 6:32 (KJV) How am I going to keep doing this, God?” I shot the prayer up under my breath. The stock market had been frenetic, and the global economy was stoking the fire. As an investment adviser, my job was to manage my clients’ savings as well as their expectations. While I love what I do, sometimes the stress of it all becomes overwhelming. As the closing bell rang, I decided to call it a day. At home, I was eager to spend a little time with our six-month-old baby girl. “Daddy’s got you, Mary Katherine!” I swooped my daughter up in the air and smiled as I looked into her bright hazel eyes. She cooed back at me with a big, toothless grin. I could feel my stress melt away as she giggled and squealed. Before long, her happy cheer turned into a fussy whine. I knew this meant “Daddy, I’m sleepy.” It was nap time. I fed her a bottle and gently patted her back until she burped. Then I rocked her for a bit, and soon she was sound asleep. “There are few things as peaceful as a sleeping baby,” I said to my wife, Corinne, as I walked into the kitchen. “So how was work?” she asked, sensing my weariness. “Stressful.” She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Brock, you just spent an hour taking great care of Mary Katherine. God has been taking care of you for forty years! Do you think He is going to stop now?” Suddenly, my burden felt a bit lighter. Daddy’s got you, Mary Katherine, I thought to myself, and my Father in heaven has me too. Father, sometimes even a grown-up needs a daddy. Thanks for being mine. —Brock Kidd Digging Deeper: Phil 4:19; 1 Jn 3:1

Want some?" he asks, pointing to his dinner. Maybe eating will calm my nerves. "What is it?" "Enchiladas. Mi'ama makes kick-ass enchiladas." He stabs a small portion with a fork and holds it out to me. "If you're not used to this kind of spicy food--" "I love spicy," I interrupt, taking it into my mouth. I start chewing, enjoying the blend of flavors. But when I swallow, my tongue slowly catches on fire. Somewhere behind all the fire there's flavor, but the flames are in the way. "Hot," is all I can say as I attempt to swallow. "I told you." Alex holds out the cup he'd been drinking from. "Here, drink. Milk usually does the trick, but I only have water." I grab the cup. The liquid cools my tongue, but when I finish the water it's as if someone stokes it again. "Water . . . ," I say. He fills another cup. "Here, drink more, though I don't think it'll help much. It'll subside soon." Instead of drinking it this time, I stick my tongue in the cold liquid and keep it there. Ahhh . . . "You okay?" "To I wook otay?" I ask. "With your tongue in the water like that, actually, it's erotic. Want another bite?" he asks mischievously, acting like the Alex I know. "Mo mank ooh.

Thousands, tens of thousands, and millions right now are mobilizing to stoke those fires from below, to develop a shared faith that injustice can be opposed and justice aspired to, that human solidarity and connectedness can become a living force, that a spirit of courage can be tempered with vast feelings of love and generosity, and that a full and passionate embrace of the lives we're given can be combined with an eagerness to move forward toward a worldwide beloved community.

You have to understand," he told her. "Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it's a strategy for survival. Sometimes . . . it's a triumph." He hesitated. "Do you know what a black-gang is?" Mutely, she shook her head. "Something I picked up in a museum in London, once. Way back in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, on Earth, they used to have ships that sailed across the tops of the oceans, that were powered by steam engines. The heat for the steam engines came from great coal fires in the bellies of the ships. And they had to have these suckers down there to stoke the coal into the furnaces. Down in the filth and the heat and the sweat and the stink. The coal made them black, so they were called the black-gang. And the officers and fine ladies up above would have nothing to do with these poor grotty thugs, socially. But without them, nothing moved. Nothing burned. Nothing lived. No steam. The black-gang. Unsung heroes. Ugly lower-class fellows.

Bonhoeffer’s words reveal that he was never what one might today term a culture warrior, nor could he easily be labeled conservative or liberal. He disagreed with Harnack’s liberal theological conclusions but agreed profoundly with the underlying assumptions that guided Harnack, and he rightly saw that these were more important than the conclusions to which they led. Anyone on the side of truth, wherever it led, was a compatriot to be lauded. This virtue had come to Bonhoeffer, in part, from Harnack and the liberal Grunewald tradition in which he had flourished, and Bonhoeffer was generous enough to see it and state it publicly. Bonhoeffer’s father was his primary mentor in this way of thinking. Karl Bonhoeffer’s conclusions may have been different from his son’s, but his respect for truth and for other human beings of different opinions formed the foundation of a civil society in which one might disagree graciously and might reason together civilly and productively. In the years ahead this would be seriously attacked, and the Nazis would stoke the fires of the culture wars (Kulturkampf) to play their enemies against each other. They would brilliantly co-opt the conservatives and the Christian churches, and when they had the power to do so, they would turn on them too. 96

One of the most important was that the emotion itself is often not the problem. It’s the way we react to it that causes the problem. For example, I feel angry and respond to it with more anger, stoking the coals, keeping the fire of anger burning. Or I feel worried and I start to feel worried that I feel worried. By stepping back and getting a little bit of perspective (something I could never have done without meditation) I was able to see the original emotion for what it was. And by simply being aware of it, it was as if it had its moment in the sun and was more willing to move on. So often we shut down when unpleasant feelings arise, we don’t want to feel them or be around them. But by reacting in this way we only give the emotion a greater sense of importance. By learning to let emotions come and go, and because there’s this underlying sense of awareness and perspective, then no matter how difficult the feeling, there is always the sense that everything is okay, even if the emotion is very strong. The other lesson I learned was that sometimes, the “idea” of something can be very different from reality. I thought I felt very sad, but when I tried to locate that sadness, all I could find were these ever-changing thoughts and physical sensations. I struggled to find any permanent emotion. I just found thoughts and physical sensations that were colored by the feeling.

The head has the same eyes as the fish, beady and unblinking, only they’re cloudy and flat, sunken deep into its skull. Its hair grows wild, tangled with beetles, twigs, and burs, and it trails the head like a tail. The flesh itself is rotten and foul, dead as the Heaven and Hell tree, once the tallest old oak on the reservation—its branches stretching for the stars, its roots reaching for the abyss below—and as ragged around its missing neck as the hem of my jeans.” The chain he wore on his wallet rattled as he lifted a foot over the fire, showing off the frayed cuff of his pant leg, streaked with mud. “The mouth”—he paused, clenching his jaw to steel himself—“that’s the worst part of it. It can stretch as wide as it wants . . . wide enough to suck you between its wormy lips.” She thought of the catfish again, their mouths gaping and wide, flanked by whiskers that had curled and turned black after her father had hacked off the fish heads and tossed them into the fire he’d stoked to cook the fish fillets. “It’s got a tongue of old leather and teeth like shattered glass, jagged and sharp.

The bridge had already been burned, she thought. She may as well stoke the fire.

Pope Paul VI stoked the fire of my own love of Christ. More by his life than by his words, he taught me what it means to be a disciple of the Master. His weekly addresses illuminated my theology studies, and as I studied Scripture I began to recognize that he was indeed a contemporary prophet. He became my pope.

I'll burn DeMalo from me in the fire between us. I'll stoke the flames high with my lies an secrets. Feed em with my weakness and my fears.

You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don't let it rage into a mountain of light, because that's not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration.

I will devour her from the inside out, until every intake of breath will only stoke the inferno I've created inside her. Like oxygen feeding a fire, I will consume every inch of her sweet little body until she will think of nothing else but how to get me deeper inside of her.

Are you decent?" "Depends who you ask." "You are not naked. I'm crushed." "It's chilly in here." "I could stoke the fire." "Believe me," she purred, "you do." He grinned at her jest, but Kate refused to blush and sent him a sultry, sparkling look. Mistresses, after all, could say that sort of thing. Then he swept into the room, bringing her breakfast on a tray like her very own cavaliere servente. "Hungry?" "For what?" she shot back. "My goodness," he drawled. "I've created a monster. I'm so pleased." She laughed as he set the large tray on the bed, then sauntered over to her at the window nook. At once, he leaned down, captured her face between his hands, and gave her a long, luscious kiss after their short separation. Though he had only been gone about twenty minutes, Kate had missed him desperately. She sighed with pleasure, caressing his arms, as Rohan slowly ended the kiss. "Done being sore yet, by chance?" he whispered with a wicked gleam in his pale eyes. "Almost." "Very well, replenish your strength.

What do you think he did to me to deserve to die?' I ask. He stokes the fire. Sparks fly up. 'I assumed he broke your heart. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart.

am not enslaved, and yet I look back and see centuries of creative evolution of the hatred for Black bodies. I look at the present—police brutality, racial disparities, backlash against being “politically correct,” hatred for our first Black president, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the election of a chief executive who stoked the fire of racial animosity to win—and I ask myself, Where is your hope, Austin? The answer: It is but a shadow.

He was the kindling to my fire, stoking the very flames of my soul.

Fuck, she was even hotter when she was furious. I seriously wouldn't have minded her taking that anger out on my body all night long. I'd be more than happy to angry fuck her until her body bent and bowed and finally gave in to the power play between us. I'd force her beneath me physically as well as with my power and maybe she'd find she liked it there just fine. Or maybe she'd stab me to death and cut my cock off for good measure because the look she was aiming my way said that was a whole lot more likely than me getting to spend the night ruining her. But it was a damn nice fantasy to indulge in for a few moments. ... She gave me a look of utter contempt and it made my cock throb as her nearness just compounded the desire I was already feeling for her and made me get all kinds of insane ideas about what I'd like to do with this little princess if I got her to myself for long enough. She made no attempt to cover herself, no sign of shame in her frosty features as she stalked forward to claim her key, a sneer touching those edible lips of hers. Her jaw was tight with rage which she was doing nothing to hide and as she reached out to snatch the key from my hand, I couldn't help but ache to bring her closer, draw her nearer, see just how far she'd go in this denial of my power over her. Her fingers curled around the brass key, but I didn't release it, instead using my hold on it to tug her a step closer so that only a breath of space divided our bodies. I looked down at her from my imposing height, dominating her space with the bulk of my body and making sure she took in every last inch of height I had over her. “Of course, if you’d rather just come on up to my room, I can give you a real welcome to the House of Fire,” I suggested my gaze dropping down to her body, the noticeable bulge in my pants making it clear enough how much I meant that offer. I probably shouldn't have been making it at all, but the beast in me couldn't help myself. Dragons saw something they wanted and they took it. And I hadn't seen something I wanted as much as this girl in as long as I could remember. Our gazes collided and the heat there was almost strong enough to burn, the tension between us crackling so loudly I was surprised the whole room couldn't hear it. But then her gaze shuttered and her lips pursed, her eyes dropping down to take me in, my skin buzzing everywhere they landed as I could feel the want in her while she assessed me. But as those deep green eyes met mine again and I gave her a knowing smirk, I couldn't tell what she was thinking. I didn't know if she was going to bow to this heat between us or just stoke the flames, and the fact that I didn't know had my heart thumping in anticipation deep in my chest. She shifted an inch closer to me, tilting her mouth towards my ear and making my flesh spark with the need to take her, own her, destroy her in all the best ways. But just as my cock began to get overexcited at the prospect of all the ways I could make her scream for me given enough time, she spoke and it wasn't in the sultry purr I'd been expecting, her voice coming out loud enough for everyone to hear instead. “I wouldn’t come near you even if someone held a knife to my heart and told me that the world would end if I didn’t,” she snarled, snatching the key out of my hand as my surprise at her words made me forget to keep my grip tight enough to keep it. “So why don’t you take a long, hard look while you can. Because I can promise you, you won’t be seeing this again.”(Darius POV)

Scarlett grabbed the fireplace poker and stoked the logs, watching the fire skip over the metal until it turned shades of brilliant orange-red—the color of bravery.