“
We are like the moon. The moon shines anyway, but it does not produce its own light. It reflects the light illuminated onto its surface by the Sun and is never proud to say "I am the source of light". God shines through us, hence He deserves the glory; not us.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor
“
Elections are highly-publicized puppet shows. Many puppets in the show are handled by the same owner, and regardless of their different costumes and voices, their agenda is one and the same. The man with the most puppets in the show usually wins the audience.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
These trees are yours because you once looked at them.
These streets are yours because you once traversed them.
These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you.
They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume.
You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you.
You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair.
The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak.
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours.
He sits with us in darkness now
to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
You have never spent any time in theatrical circles, have you? So you do not know those thespian faces that can embody the features of a Julius Caesar, a Goethe and a Beethoven all in one, but whose owners, the moment they open their mouths, prove to be the most miserable ninnies under the sun.
”
”
Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)
“
How can this dog be such an easy victim? A dog who was mistreated by her previous owner over and over again. Why doesn't she recognize evil when she runs straight into its arms? Because she has the ability to forget. Burrows down into the feathery snow and is pleased to see anyone who streches out a hand to her. And now she is lying here.
”
”
Åsa Larsson (Sun Storm (Rebecka Martinsson, #1))
“
An unused weapon is a danger to its owner, as much as to others.
”
”
Tessa Gratton (The Lost Sun (The United States of Asgard, #1))
“
I am doing the servant job in order for you to become the owners of Heaven
”
”
Sun Myung Moon
“
When the heart is beautiful, its light shines though the eyes, vocal tones and actions of its owner.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Just as the sun by itself
illuminates the entire world,
so the field owner illumines
everything in the field.
”
”
Stephen Mitchell (Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation)
“
Hem, you know I don't think that owner's wife where you live likes me. She wouldn't let me wait upstairs for you.'
'I'll tell her,' I said.
'Don't bother. I can always wait here. It's very pleasant in the sun now, isn't it?'
'It's fall now,' I said. 'I don't think you dress warmly enough.'
'It's only cool in the evening,' Evan said. 'I'll wear my coat.'
'Do you know where it is?'
'No. But it's somewhere safe.'
'How do you know?'
'Because I left the poem in it.
”
”
Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition)
“
We carried the sleeping dog out to the garden and laid him on a mat on the lawn so that we could watch him as he came round from the anesthetic.
Out there in the old high-walled garden the sun shone down on the flowers and the apple trees. Helen put on her fancy hat again and I put my smart jacket back on and we sat there, enjoying the good things from the picnic basket, we felt that we were still having a day out. But Helen kept glancing anxiously at the little dog and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. Would he be all right after all that we had done for him and, even then, what was going to happen to him? Would his owners ever come to claim him, because if they didn’t, he had nobody in the world to look after him.
”
”
James Herriot (The Market Square Dog)
“
The Ass in the Lion's Skin An Ass once found a Lion's skin which the hunters had left out in the sun to dry. He put it on and went towards his native village. All fled at his approach, both men and animals, and he was a proud Ass that day. In his delight he lifted up his voice and brayed, but then every one knew him, and his owner came up and gave him a sound cudgelling for the fright he had caused. And shortly afterwards a Fox came up to him and said: "Ah, I knew you by your voice." Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.
”
”
Aesop (Aesop's Fables)
“
had always felt that such signs of physical individuality as a bulging belly (sign of spiritual sloth) or a flat chest with protruding ribs (sign of an unduly nervous sensibility) were excessively ugly, and I could not contain my surprise when I discovered that there were people who loved such signs. To me, these could only seem acts of shameless indecency, as though the owner were exposing his spiritual pudenda on the outside of his body.
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Sun and Steel)
“
We feel prepared to face the reality of restoration. We walk into town for coffee and telephone Piero Rizzatti, the geometra. The translations “draftsman” or “surveyor” don't quite explain what a geometra is, a professional without an equivalent in the United States—a liaison among owner, builders, and town planning officials. Ian has assured us that he is the best in the area, meaning also that he has the best connections and can get the permits quickly.
”
”
Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun)
“
However, growing cane and extracting its sugar was a labour-intensive business. Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
The human mind is grown inside a 0.0013 cubic meters crystalline calcium phosphate box on the 149 million km2 rocky surface of a 510 million km2 planet that is falling in a straight line over curved space at 108,000 kilometres per hour inside the gravity well of a 6 trillion km2 star on a 250 million year sojourn around the centre of a galaxy containing some 400 billion stars and trillions of planets and moons. The immediate solar system appears to end at the Kuiper Belt, its outer edge a mind-stunning 7 billion kilometres away, yet the outermost reach of the Heliosphere is still another 5 billion kilometres further out. The furthest object, however, within the Sun’s gravity well, Sedna, marks the solar system’s diameter to in fact be a sense-jarring 287 billion kilometres in length.
”
”
John Zande (The Owner of All Infernal Names: An Introductory Treatise on the Existence, Nature & Government of our Omnimalevolent Creator)
“
A Palestinian village whose feudal owner sold it for a kiss through a pane of glass..."
Nothing remained of Sireen after the auction apart from you, little prayer rug, because a mother slyly stole you and wrapped up her son who'd been sentenced to cold and weaning - and later to sorrow and longing.
It's said there was a village, a very small village, on the border between sun's gate and earth. It's said that the village was twice sold - once for a measure of oil and once for a kiss through a pane of glass.
The buyers and sellers rejoiced at its sale, the year the submarine was sunk, in our twentieth century.
And in Sireen - the buyers went over the contract - were white-washed houses, lovers, and trees, folk poets, peasants, and children. (But there was no school - and neither tanks nor prisons.) The threshing floors, the colour of golden wine, and the graveyard were a vault meant for life and death, and the vault was sold!
People say that there was a village, but Sireen became an earthquake, imprisoned by an amulet as it turned into a banquet - in which the virgins' infants were cooked in their mothers' milk so soldiers and ministers might eat along with civilisation!
"And the axe is laid at the root of the tree..." And once again at the root of the tree, as one dear brother denies another and existence. Officer of the orbits... attend, O knight of death, but don't give in - death is behind us and also before us. Knight of death, attend, there is no time to retreat - darkness crowds us and now has turned into a rancid butter, and the forest too is full, the serpents of blood have slithered away and the beaker of our ablution has been sold to a tourist from California! There is no time now for ablution. People say there was a village, but Sireen became an earthquake, imprisoned by an amulet as it turned into a banquet - in which the virgins' infants were cooked in their mothers' milk so soldiers and ministers might eat, along with civilisation!
”
”
Samih Al-Qasim (Sadder than Water: New and Selected Poems)
“
Cattle liked to stand on the roadside at night and would suddenly step out into the paths of oncoming cars, almost as if they were curious to find out what lay behind the headlights. Perhaps they thought that the headlights were torches, held by their owners, and came out to see if they brought food; perhaps they were looking for warmth and thought the lights were the sun. Perhaps they thought nothing in particular, which was always possible with cattle, and with some people too, for that matter.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #6))
“
He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life.
This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges.
The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.'
The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it.
The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window.
The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it.
And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street.
That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer.
Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.
”
”
Nicole Krauss
“
Life has come to a silent pause,
The fear of Virus, the slowdown,
Disconnecting me from moments,
Heart has taken over the mind,
Light now shines upon my eyes,
Dreams blocked, the roads traversed,
The break has broken the barrier,
Me pondering, was I living my life?
The days are same and so is night,
The Sun, the Moon, and the stars,
still rise in the east and set in the west,
Trees, plants, flowers there as before,
The sky, clouds rivers and oceans,
Earth's precious treasures, no different,
Change is in my perspective n priorities,
Is it that I am learning to live my life.
Monotonous tedium chores,
Unpleasant hunger for wealth,
Most of us are living dead,
Body just awaits the soul to leave,
To be buried or cremated,
Waste of life and for what price,
All material things cherished,
Useless in our last flight.
Time to fall in love with my life,
Stop living for others, their expectations,
I am again the owner of my choices,
Not bothered to please others,
Nor what they think about me,
My dreams are alive and back,
My treasurers are now my deeds,
I have finally learnt to live!!!
”
”
Mukesh Kwatra
“
When the sun sets at night and you lay your head down on your pillow, you must believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that your business will be successful. More than anyone, you, the business owner, should have incredible faith that you will experience prosperity. This journey is not about following a popular path that leads to fame and fortune, instead, it is about creating an extension of God’s kingdom right here on earth. As beacons of light and salt of the earth, Christians should provide an example of what true victory means to the rest of the world.
”
”
V.L. Thompson (CEO - The Christian Entrepreneur's Outlook)
“
Dr. Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and a founder of the “Star Wars” missile defense system, proposed seeding the upper atmosphere with millions of tons of sulfur or other heavy metals to create a cloud cover to deflect sun rays and prevent further heating of the earth. Some scientists warned such a program would turn blue skies milky white and perhaps cause droughts and further ozone depletion. Teller admitted the difficulty in persuading the public to allow a program that would pollute the air with metal particles, many known to be harmful to humans.
”
”
Jim Marrs (Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us)
“
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.
In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer.
How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.
”
”
John Steinbeck
“
One of the first examples of forensic science solving a murder appears in a book called The Washing Away of Wrongs, published in 1247 by Song Ci, a Chinese coroner and detective. The author relates a story about a peasant found brutally hacked to death with a hand sickle. The local magistrate, unable to make headway in the investigation, calls for all the village men to assemble outside with their sickles; they’re instructed to place their sickles on the ground and then take a few steps back. The hot sun beats down. A buzz is heard. Metallic green flies descend in a chaotic swarm and then, as if collectively alerted, land on one sickle, crawling all over it as the other sickles lie undisturbed. The magistrate knew traces of blood and human tissue attract blowflies. The owner of the fly-covered sickle hung his head in shame. The case was solved.
”
”
Michelle McNamara (I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer)
“
We talked about the speed trials, which were starting today. I said I was running in them, but not that it was about art. It wasn’t a lie. I was a Nevada girl and a motorcycle rider. I had always been interested in land speed records. I was bringing to that a New York deliberateness, abstract ideas about traces and speed, which wasn’t something Stretch needed to know about. It would make me seem like a tourist. Stretch said the motel owner’s son had a Corvette running but that he could not so much as check the oil or tire pressure, that mechanics worked on it and a driver raced it for him. “I have to fill out his racing form because he doesn’t know what ‘displacement’ means.” He laughed and then went quiet. “I never met a girl who rides Italian motorcycles,” he said. “It’s like you aren’t real.” He looked at my helmet, gloves, my motorcycle key, on his bureau. The room seemed to hold its breath, the motel curtain sucked against the glass by the draft of a partly opened window, a strip of sun wavering underneath the curtain’s hem, the light-blocking fabric holding back the outside world.
”
”
Rachel Kushner (The Flamethrowers)
“
If these avatars were real people in a real street, Hiro wouldn't be able to
reach the entrance. It's way too crowded. But the computer system that
operates the Street has better things to do than to monitor every single one of
the millions of people there, trying to prevent them from running into each
other. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. On
the Street, avatars just walk right through each other.
So when Hiro cuts through the crowd, headed for the entrance, he really is
cutting through the crowd. When things get this jammed together, the computer
simplifies things by drawing all of the avatars ghostly and translucent so you
can see where you're going. Hiro appears solid to himself, but everyone else
looks like a ghost. He walks through the crowd as if it's a fogbank, clearly
seeing The Black Sun in front of him.
He steps over the property line, and he's in the doorway. And in that instant
he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. As one, they
all begin screaming. Not that they have any idea who the hell he is -- Hiro is
just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport. But in
the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over
the line into The Black Sun.
He turns and looks back at ten thousand shrieking groupies. Now that he's all
by himself in the entryway, no longer immersed in a flood of avatars, he can see
all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity. They are
all done up in their wildest and fanciest avatars, hoping that Da5id -- The
Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief -- will invite them inside. They flick
and merge together into a hysterical wall. Stunningly beautiful women,
computer-airbrushed and retouched at seventy-two frames a second, like Playboy
pinups turned three-dimensional -- these are would-be actresses hoping to be
discovered. Wild-looking abstracts, tornadoes of gyrating light-hackers who are
hoping that Da5id will notice their talent, invite them inside, give them a job.
A liberal sprinkling of black-and-white people -- persons who are accessing the
Metaverse through cheap public terminals, and who are rendered in jerky, grainy
black and white. A lot of these are run-of-the-mill psycho fans, devoted to the
fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close
in Reality, so they goggle into the Metaverse to stalk their prey. There are
would-be rock stars done up in laser light, as though they just stepped off the
concert stage, and the avatars of Nipponese businessmen, exquisitely rendered by
their fancy equipment, but utterly reserved and boring in their suits.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
“
Memories whirled in the back of her head. Not frightening this time. The owner of that voice made her smile. He protected her, and he loved her. When she was with him, the world felt right. As long as she was with him, she was safe.
He entered the room, crossing at an angle to her so that she saw just his shoulders and a glimpse of flat stomach. Not a stitch of clothing covered him. Not one. She could see the backs of his thighs and his bare behind. Round and strong and firm. Dark hair cut short gave his profile greater sternness. She knew beyond certainty she had every right to be here, with him perfectly naked. Her heart swelled with joy, a feeling so intense she wanted to cry out to the world.
He stopped at the window and stood there, one arm resting atop the sash, staring at the hills rising toward Scotland. His arm came forward on the sash, and he shifted so that he faced her. "Well," he said in a soft voice that made her breath catch. His voice was velvet, liquid velvet, and she was drowning in it, filled all the way to her soul. That voice, a woman could love. "Good afternoon."
Bluer eyes she'd never seen. Nor more piercing ones. She drowned in eyes of an incredible, piercing blue. The light shimmered as a cloud crossed the sun. But this man, this man with eyes like frost on a window, whose eyes made battle-hardened men quail and who seemed so foreign to tenderness, made her complete...
”
”
Carolyn Jewel (The Spare)
“
Joanne Sanders, a broad woman in her forties, posed with friends, family, and Snowball in photographs displayed on the mantel of the fake fireplace. She had shoulder-length brown hair and bangs teased high above her brow. I could picture her behind ten inches of bulletproof glass sneering at me with gloss-encased lips for filling out my deposit slip incorrectly. I fed Snowball half a cup of kibble and a spoonful of wet food as my envelope of information directed. She ate it quickly while making funny little squeaking noises. Once she had licked her bowl to a bright sheen, we headed out for my first walk as a dog-walker. I steered us off of East End Avenue and onto the esplanade that runs along the river. The water reflected the sun in bright silver glints. I smelled oil and brine. We reached Carl Schurz Park and turned into the dog run for small dogs. The gate leading into the run reached only to my knees, as did the rest of the fence designed to keep small dogs in and big ones out. A sign on the gate read, "Dogs over 25 pounds not permitted." Ten dogs under 25 pounds, and one who was probably a little over, played together in the pen. Their owners, in groups of three or four, sat on worn wooden benches and talked about dogs. Snowball ran to join a poodle growling at a puppy. They intimidated it behind its owner's calves. Then the poodle, a miniature gray curly thing with long ears, mounted Snowball. I turned to the river and watched a giant barge inch by.
”
”
Emily Kimelman (Unleashed (Sydney Rye, #1))
“
In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines. After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing amounts of sugar began to reach Europe. The price of sugar dropped and Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth. Entrepreneurs met this need by producing huge quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eighteen pounds in the early nineteenth century. However, growing cane and extracting its sugar was a labour-intensive business. Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, about 10 million African slaves were imported to America. About 70 per cent of them worked on the sugar plantations. Labour conditions were abominable. Most slaves lived a short and miserable life, and millions more died during wars waged to capture slaves or during the long voyage from inner Africa to the shores of America. All this so that Europeans could enjoy their sweet tea and candy – and sugar barons could enjoy huge profits. The slave trade was not
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Top Dog"
If I could, I would take your grief, dig it up
out of the horseradish field and grate it into something red and hot
to sauce the shellfish. I would take the lock of hair you put in the locket and carry it in my hand, I would make the light strike everything
the way it hit the Bay Bridge, turning the ironwork at sunset into waffles.
If I could, I would blow your socks off, they would travel far, always in unison,
past the dead men running, past the cranes standing in snow,
beyond the roads we rode, so small in our little car, it was like riding in a miner's helmet. If I could I would make everyone vote and call their public servants to say, “No one was meant for this.”
I would go back to the afternoon we made love in the tall grass under the full sun not far from the ravine where the old owner had flung hundreds of mink cages.
I would memorize gateways to the afterworld, the electric third rail,
the blond braid our girl has hanging down her back,
the black guppy we killed at our friends’ when we unplugged the bubbler and the fish floated to the top, one eye up at the ceiling, the other
at the blue gravel on the bottom of the tank.
I would beg an audience with Sister Lucia, the last living of the children
visited by Our Lady of Fatima, I would ask her about the weight of secrets, if they let her sleep or if she woke at night with a body on her body,
if the body said, “Let's play top dog, first I'll lie on you, then you lie on me.”
I would ask how she lived with revelation, the normal state of affairs amplified beyond God, bumped up to the Virgin Mother, who no doubt knew a few things, passed them on, quietly, and I would ask Lucia how she lived with knowing,
how she could keep it under her hat, under wraps, button up, zip her lip,
play it close to the vest, never telling, never using truth as a weapon.
”
”
Barbara Ras (Bite Every Sorrow: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets))
“
55. We should, therefore, have a guardian, as it were, to pluck us continually by the ear and dispel rumours and protest against popular enthusiasms. For you are mistaken if you suppose that our faults are inborn in us; they have come from without, have been heaped upon us. Hence, by receiving frequent admonitions, we can reject the opinions which din about our ears. 56. Nature does not ally us with any vice; she produced us in health and freedom. She put before our eyes no object which might stir in us the itch of greed. She placed gold and silver beneath our feet, and bade those feet stamp down and crush everything that causes us to be stamped down and crushed. Nature elevated our gaze towards the sky and willed that we should look upward to behold her glorious and wonderful works. She gave us the rising and the setting sun, the whirling course of the on-rushing world which discloses the things of earth by day and the heavenly bodies by night, the movements of the stars, which are slow if you compare them with the universe, but most rapid if you reflect on the size of the orbits which they describe with unslackened speed; she showed us the successive eclipses of sun and moon, and other phenomena, wonderful because they occur regularly or because, through sudden causes they help into view – such as nightly trails of fire, or flashes in the open heavens unaccompanied by stroke or sound of thunder, or columns and beams and the various phenomena of flames. 57. She ordained that all these bodies should proceed above our heads; but gold and silver, with the iron which, because of the gold and silver, never brings peace, she has hidden away, as if they were dangerous things to trust to our keeping. It is we ourselves that have dragged them into the light of day to the end that we might fight over them; it is we ourselves who, tearing away the superincumbent earth, have dug out the causes and tools of our own destruction; it is we ourselves who have attributed our own misdeeds to Fortune, and do not blush to regard as the loftiest objects those which once lay in the depths of earth. 58. Do you wish to know how false is the gleam that has deceived your eyes? There is really nothing fouler or more involved in darkness than these things of earth, sunk and covered for so long a time in the mud where they belong. Of course they are foul; they have been hauled out through a long and murky mine-shaft. There is nothing uglier than these metals during the process of refinement and separation from the ore. Furthermore, watch the very workmen who must handle and sift the barren grade of dirt, the sort which comes from the bottom; see how soot-besmeared they are! 59. And yet the stuff they handle soils the soul more than the body, and there is more foulness in the owner than in the workman.
”
”
Seneca (Letters from a Stoic)
“
The history of the land is a history of blood.
In this history, someone wins and someone loses. There are patriots and enemies. Folk heroes who save the day. Vanquished foes who had it coming.
It’s all in the telling.
The conquered have no voice. Ask the thirty-eight Santee Sioux singing the death song with the nooses around their necks, the treaty signed fair and square, then nullified with a snap of the rope. Ask the slave women forced to bear their masters’ children, to raise and love them and see them sold. Ask the miners slaughtered by the militia in Ludlow.
Names are erased. The conqueror tells the story. The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness.
Oh, but let’s not speak of such things! Look: Here is an eagle whipping above the vast grasslands where the buffalo once thundered bold as gods. (The buffalo are here among the dead. So many buffalo.) There is the Declaration in sepia. (Signed by slave owners. Shhh, hush up about that, now!) See how the sun shines down upon the homesteaders’ wagons racing toward a precious claim in the nation’s future, the pursuit of happiness pursued without rest, destiny made manifest? (Never mind about those same homesteaders eating the flesh of neighbors. Winters are harsh in this country. Pack a snack.)
The history is a hungry history. Its mouth opens wide to consume. It must be fed. Bring me what you would forget, it cries, and I will swallow it whole and pull out the bones bleached of truth upon which you will hang the myths of yourselves. Feed me your pain and I will give you dreams and denial, a balm in Gilead. The land remembers everything, though. It knows the steps of this nation’s ballet of violence and forgetting.
The land receives our dead, and the dead sing softly the song of us: blood. Blood on the plains. In the rivers. On the trees where the ropes swing. Blood on the leaves. Blood under the flowers of Gettysburg, of Antioch. Blood on the auction blocks. Blood of the Lenape, the Cherokee, the Cheyenne. Blood of the Alamo. Blood of the Chinese railroad workers. Blood of the midwives hung for witchcraft, for the crime of being women who bleed. Blood of the immigrants fleeing the hopeless, running toward the open arms of the nation’s seductive hope, its greatest export. Blood of the first removed to make way for the cities, the factories, the people and their unbridled dreams: The chugging of the railways. The tapping of the telegram. The humming of industry. Sound burbling along telephone wires. Printing presses whirring with the day’s news. And the next day’s. And the day after that’s. Endless cycles of information. Cities brimming with ambitions used and discarded.
The dead hold what the people throw away. The stories sink the tendrils of their hope and sorrow down into the graves and coil around the dead buried there, deep in its womb.
All passes away, the dead whisper. Except for us. We, the eternal. Always here. Always listening. Always seeing.
One nation, under the earth. E Pluribus unum mortuis.
Oh, how we wish we could reach you! You dreamers and schemers! Oh, you children of optimism! You pioneers! You stars and stripes, forever! Sometimes, the dreamers wake as if they have heard. They take to the streets. They pick up the plow, the pen, the banner, the promise. They reach out to neighbors. They reach out to strangers. Backs stooped from a hard day’s labor, two men, one black, one white, share water from a well. They are thirsty and, in this one moment, thirst and work make them brothers. They drink of shared trust, that all men are created equal. They wipe their brows and smile up at a faithful sun.
”
”
Libba Bray
“
She wondered if he was a neighbor, started to smile and introduce herself when his deep voice cut through the cool morning air.
“All right, what the hell is going on?”
Ignoring the anger in his voice, Charity set her hammer on top of the dresser and climbed down from the porch.
“Good morning. I’m Charity Sinclair. I’m the new--”
“I don’t care who you are, lady, I want to know what you’re doing on this property.”
She fixed a smile on her face, though it took a good bit of effort. “I’m here because I’m the owner. I bought the Lily Rose from a man named Moses Flanagan.”
He narrowed those striking blue eyes at her. “Bullshit. Old man Flanagan may not live here anymore but he’d die before he’d sell the Lily Rose. I don’t know who you think you’re kidding, sweetheart, but if you’re planning to squat on his property you can forget it.”
It was getting harder by the moment to hang on to her temper. “You’re wrong, Mr…?”
He made no effort to answer, just continued to glare down the length of his nicely shaped nose.
“Mr. Flanagan decided to move in with his son in Calgary. He listed the property for sale several weeks ago with Smith Real Estate in Dawson. I’m the person who bought it.”
His features looked even harder than they had before. “That’s impossible. I tried to buy this place from Mose Flanagan every other month for the last four years. He refused to even consider it.”
Her irritation inched up a notch. “Well, apparently he changed his mind. The transaction officially closed yesterday morning. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you the property was for sale.” When his black scowl deepened, she couldn’t resist adding, “Maybe he just didn’t like you.”
He opened his mouth to argue, clamped down on his jaw instead, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. Apparently her goading had hit on a portion of the truth.
”
”
Kat Martin (Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters Trilogy, #1))
“
Mr. Flanagan decided to move in with his son in Calgary. He listed the property for sale several weeks ago with Smith Real Estate in Dawson. I’m the person who bought it.”
His features looked even harder than they had before. “That’s impossible. I tried to buy this place from Mose Flanagan every other month for the last four years. He refused to even consider it.”
Her irritation inched up a notch. “Well, apparently he changed his mind. The transaction officially closed yesterday morning. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you the property was for sale.” When his black scowl deepened, she couldn’t resist adding, “Maybe he just didn’t like you.”
He opened his mouth to argue, clamped down on his jaw instead, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. Apparently her goading had hit on a portion of the truth.
“So now you’re the owner,” he said darkly.
“That’s right, I am.”
He looked her over from head to foot, taking in her Liz Claiborne jeans and the touch of makeup she hadn’t been able to resist. She bristled at his smug expression.
“And you actually intend to move in?”
“I am in, Mr…?”
“Hawkins. McCall Hawkins. I’m your next-door neighbor, so to speak. And I don’t appreciate all that hammering you’ve been doing. I like things nice and quiet. I enjoy my privacy and I don’t like being disturbed. It’ll be easier on both of us if you keep that in mind.”
“I’ll do my best,” she lied, thinking of the noisy dredging equipment she intended to use in the stream. She gave him a too-sweet smile. “I’d say it was a pleasure, Mr. Hawkins, but we both know it wasn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
Turning away from him, she climbed the stairs to the porch, picking up her hammer, and started pounding on the dresser again, dismissing him as if he had never been there. For several long moments, he simply stood there glaring. Then she caught the movement of his shadow as he turned and stalked away, back down the path beside the creek.
Of all the nerve. Who the devil did he think he was?
”
”
Kat Martin (Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters Trilogy, #1))
“
Hardie Boys- Exterior Millwork That Provides Value Over Time
The outdoor areas on your property and the features on it, become the perfect backdrop for your home’s structure. They are also one of the first things that visitors to your property notice. The manner in which these features are designed and the finishing that’s used in them, go a long way in enhancing the overall appeal and value of your property. And so it follows that you ensure resilient materials are used in the work and hire expert technicians for the installation.
When you start researching products and materials for outdoor installations, you will find that wood; iron, aluminum, plaster, brick and foam are commonly used in exterior construction. And this may lead you to believe that they are the best option for these applications. It’s also natural for you to be unsure about using new materials such as the specialized cellular PVC materials we use in our millwork.
Some comparisons
But the fact is that there has been a significant advancement in the manufacture of exterior-grade, manmade materials and cellular PVC is one of them. However, the higher upfront cost can sometimes become the other deterrent for property owners, to opt for this innovative material. Take a look at how the cellular PVC material that we at Hardie Boys, Inc. use stands up against other traditionally-used materials:
1. Weather impact
Materials such as hardwood and metal are strong and durable, but need a significant amount of treatments before they can be used in exterior applications. For instance, untreated and unfinished wood features get affected by moisture and the sun’s rays and eventually crack and crumble.
They can also develop rot or moss; and if these conditions are very severe, extensive repairs or complete replacement of the feature is the only option you are left with. Metal too gets affected by moisture and exposure to rain and frost; and rusts and corrodes over time. In comparison the unique PVC cellular material that we use in our millwork is moisture and heat-resistant and doesn’t corrode over time.
2. Termite damage
Termites are extremely destructive creatures and they can bore through wooden features and cause extensive damage to them. In most cases, replacement is the only option you are left with, which represents a significant expense. Concrete surfaces get affected by the freeze and thaw cycles and crack over a period of time, and you end up spending considerable amounts on repair and replacements. On the other hand, cellular PVC doesn’t get impacted by termites or weather fluctuations at all.
3. Maintenance
While choosing materials for exterior applications, most property owners fail to factor the maintenance costs into the overall cost of the installation. For instance, wood, plaster, foam, brick and concrete require annual mold prevention maintenance as well as sanding and polishing or painting. Metal surfaces have to be sanded, and painted regularly too. In comparison, our cellular PVC material features require only basic cleaning and they won’t warp, crack, fade, corrode, develop rot or mold. In short, this is an extremely low-maintenance option that is worth every penny you spend on initial costs.
We at Hardie Boys, Inc. are the leaders in this space and provide excellent, customized, cellular PVC millwork solutions for residential and commercial settings. For any more information about our exterior millwork,
”
”
Hardie Boys
“
You’ve probably all seen this place before. It’s a large field filled with really old pecan trees. They are planted in rows with the grass trimmed beneath them. Sometimes the owners let the cattle run free in the field, their hulking bodies snorting beneath the gigantic barken trunks, their breath visible in the dewy morning air as the sun rises over—”
I hold my crossed fingers up and interrupt him. “Dude, can we get on with it? Your third year creative writing class is doing wonders for your descriptive prose, but I’m ready to smash some skulls.”
It takes all I have to not squeak in shock when Zelda actually seconds my statement with a fervent nod.
Tommy sighs and flips past one, two, three of the notecards he was reading from. The dude must really be digging those writing classes.
“Okay, here we go.
”
”
Leah Rae Miller (Romancing the Nerd (Nerd, #2))
“
A primitive and vulgar business? A bag of tricks manipulated by the owners? I’m one of those who believe that football might be all that, but it is also much more: a feast for the eyes that watch it and a joy for the body that plays it. A reporter once asked German theologian Dorothee Sölle, ‘How would you explain happiness to a child?’ ‘I wouldn’t explain it,’ she answered. ‘I’d toss him a ball and let him play.
”
”
Eduardo Galeano (Football in Sun and Shadow (Penguin Modern Classics))
“
Or, more importantly, if they would believe the bloody secret lurking beneath Viaii Nisi’s sun-kissed waves.
That every owner who had purchased the island drowned.
”
”
Emily Layne (These Wicked Waters)
“
As Alexander Gerschenkron, the great Ukrainian-born scholar of European industrialization, put it: Although “the cheapness of labor in a backward country is said to aid greatly in the process of industrialization … the overriding fact to consider is that industrial labor, in the sense of a stable, reliable, and disciplined group that has cut the umbilical cord connecting it with the land and has become suitable for utilization in factories, is not abundant but extremely scarce in a backward country. Creation of an industrial labor force that really deserves its name is a most difficult and protracted process.”36 The lesson of history is that industrial labor, as distinct from merely cheap labor, is often in short supply in unindustrialized economies, and factory owners in the first throes of industrialization have always complained bitterly about this fact.
”
”
Irene Yuan Sun (The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa)
“
When the Europeans conquered America, they opened gold and silver mines and established sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. These mines and plantations became the mainstay of American production and export. The sugar plantations were particularly important. In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines. After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing amounts of sugar began to reach Europe. The price of sugar dropped and Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth. Entrepreneurs met this need by producing huge quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eight kilograms in the early nineteenth century. However, growing cane and extracting its sugar was a labour-intensive business. Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
... but in nearly all those who through necessity of life till fields, herd beasts, and keep fowls, these remaining wildings of the moors have enemies who care nothing for their survival. The farmers would exterminate nearly every wild bird and animal of prey, were it not for the land-owners, among whom are some who care for the wildings, because they are sprung from the same land of England, and who would be unhappy if they thought they country would know them no more. For the animal they hunt to kill in its season, or those other animals or birds they cause to be destroyed for the continuance of their pleasure in sport - which they believe to be natural - they have no pity; and since they lack this incipient human instinct, they misunderstand and deride it in others. Pity acts through imagination, the higher light of the world, and imagination arises from the world of things, as a rainbow from the sun. A rainbow may be beautiful and heavenly, but it will not grow corn for bread.
”
”
Henry Williamson (Tarka the Otter)
“
The sun set. The car smelled of its owner’s cigarette smoke. Everything was toxic and chemical and unnatural: the plastic walnut trim, the electric lights, the burning gasoline that was shoving them forward. This whole world was a processed petroleum product.
”
”
Lev Grossman (The Magician King (The Magicians, #2))
“
On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of about twelve hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. Here again, although I went down with the owner of the estate, to ‘the quarter,’ as that part of it in which the slaves live is called, I was not invited to enter into any of their huts. All I saw of them, was, that they were very crazy, wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked children basked in the sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I believe that this gentleman is a considerate and excellent master, who inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a seller of human stock; and I am sure, from my own observation and conviction, that he is a kind-hearted, worthy man.
”
”
Charles Dickens (American Notes and Pictures from Italy)
“
One day you might want to train for other owners, maybe even for Delamere. You’ve got the right base and you’ve the instincts.” “Get my trainer’s licence, you mean? Has a woman done that?” “Maybe not. But there aren’t any rules against it.” “I could try…. ” I let the words trail away.
”
”
Paula McLain (Circling the Sun)
“
Gentry conjures up a story about meeting moon-walking astronaut Buzz Aldrin at a party at the Malibu home of Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling. “So it’s a full moon, beautiful night,” says Gentry, “and I’m trying to think of something to say to this famous guy, and finally I say, ‘Buzz, damn, you ever look up and see the moon and think to yourself how people stare at it all the time and write poems about it, and you walked on it? You walked on it.’ “And Buzz looks at me and shrugs and says, ‘No. Fuck no.’ ” Gentry shakes his head. “Damn, you can even be cynical if you walked on the moon,” he says. “Isn’t that something?
”
”
Jack McCallum (Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns)
“
There is a Rainbow Bridge. It’s like dog heaven. We run and play and never get fat. The sun is always warm but not hot, the water is fresh and cold, and we get to just be dogs. We all take turns waiting. The bridge is a beautiful wooden structure that crosses over from dog land to the other side when our owners come. Time means nothing to us, which is hard for humans to understand.
”
”
Jennifer Probst (A Life Worth Living)
“
Ferguson, Missouri. When riots broke out over the August shooting death of Michael Brown, armed members of the Oath Keepers took to the city’s rooftops, appearing out of the smoke and shattered glass of ransacked buildings. Their supposed duty was to secure the local businesses from looting. In the first days of the protests, demonstrators had broken out windows of storefronts, set arson fires, and torched a beauty supply store. ABC News reported that a number of business owners embraced the Oath Keepers’ armed presence. Group members boarded up storefronts and kept buckets of water and fire extinguishers handy in case nearby arson attacks escalated. This was the vigilante group’s moment in the media sun. Still, rumors flew. Some protestors thought the armed men in camouflaged fatigues were members of the Ku Klux Klan. The St. Louis County police ordered the Oath Keepers to leave the rooftops of Ferguson, threatening them with arrest for acting as a security force without a license. This only added fuel to the right-wing group’s conspiracy that the government is not protecting its people. The volunteer security force packed up and left Ferguson, leaving people wondering exactly who these heavily armed mystery men were.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Miss Burel?"
In one second flat, Genevieve's thoughts died and her entire body went up in flames.
Standing on her rickety porch, with the chipped white paint and the sweet double swing, was the owner of that deep, demanding baritone. Genevieve stared at him like a mole who had just seen the sun for the first time. Hot, blinding and impossible to turn away. She was sure she had never met him before. She would have remembered if she had. Her gaze moved over him. Yes. This male in dark blue jeans and a worn, black leather jacket wasn't someone you walked past without either staring, double-taking or running into a tree. He was so tall his head grazed the roof of the porch, and so broad across the chest, the white T-shirt he wore strained against all that muscle. But it wasn't just his size and fierce manner that had her skin vibrating with awareness, or the thick, dark hair, or the light dusting of stubble around his mouth - or, God, even those incredible liquid amber eyes that equally mocked and studied her. No. It was the brightly colored tattooed skull interwoven with tribal markings that covered his collarbone and ran up the length of his neck.
”
”
Alexandra Ivy (Bayon / Jean-Baptiste (Bayou Heat, #3-4))
“
Chapter 2 “THE UTTER FAILURE OF THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT OF MEMPHIS” The economic success achieved in the 1850s simply could not have been accomplished without the backbreaking labor of enslaved human beings. African American slaves picked the cotton that was shipped through the Bluff City and worked the docks that loaded the white gold onto steamboats. Slaves also constructed railroads and worked in many of the city’s manufacturing concerns. In addition, the buying and selling of slaves was also one of the most lucrative businesses in Memphis. For example, the slave-trading firm owned by city alderman Nathan Bedford Forrest charged between $800 and $1,000 for individual chattel, and in a good year, Forrest and his partner, Byrd Hill, sold more than 1,000 slaves. By 1860 there were 16,953 slaves residing in Shelby County, and the majority of them made their way into Memphis either through the cotton trade or being rented to businesses in the city. Because of Memphis’s dependence on cotton and slaves for its economic growth, the city was often referred to as “the Charleston of the West.” The large numbers of slaves passing through the city made government officials very nervous. As a result, the mayor and board of aldermen passed several ordinances designed to control the number of slaves and free persons of color who resided or worked in Memphis. On March 27, 1850, an omnibus bill was passed that severely restricted the movements of African Americans in Memphis: State laws against slaves, free blacks and mulattoes to be enforced by city marshal. Slaves not allowed to be entertained or permitted to visit or remain on Sabbath in the house of any free person of colour. Large collection of slaves banned, except for public worship conducted in an orderly manner under superintendence of a white person. Unlawful for slaves to remain in corporate limits of city after sun set or any part of the Sabbath, except by permission of owner specifying limit of time. Collection of negroes in tippling houses [saloons and bars] not to be allowed.
”
”
G. Wayne Dowdy (A Brief History of Memphis)
“
Successful business owners not only have compelling visions for their organizations, but also know how to communicate those visions to the people around them. They get everyone in the organization seeing the same clear image of where the business is going and how it’s going to get there. It sounds easy, but it’s not. Are your staff all rowing in the same direction? Chances are they’re not. Some are rowing to the right, some are rowing to the left, and some probably aren’t rowing at all. If you met individually with each of your employees and asked them what the company’s vision was, you’d likely get a range of different answers. The more clearly everyone can see your vision, the likelier you are to achieve it. Focus everyone’s energy toward one thing and amazing results will follow. In his book Focus, Al Ries illustrates the point in this way: The sun provides the earth with billions of kilowatts of energy, yet if you stand in it for an hour, the worst you will get is a little sunburn. On the other hand, a few watts of energy focused in one direction is all a laser beam needs to cut through diamonds.
”
”
Gino Wickman (Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business)
“
Guns can be a strength in the hands of trained law enforcement officials and soldiers with character, but in the hands of civilians they are not just weakness, but a sickness. Without a trained host with character, a gun acts like a parasite, it not only makes the host sick both mentally and physically, but more importantly it sickens an entire society. Let me put this in perspective. In the hands of a civilian, snake venom is poison, in the hands of a scientist, it is medicine. So to put it in a nutshell - carry goodness, not guns. Civilization will never see the sun till the civilians reject their gun.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Mücadele Muhabbet: Gospel of An Unarmed Soldier)
“
I think part of the issue is people assuming that everyone MUST want to move upwards. Like... it's the next logical step for a person to want to move up the chain: from worker to manager, to district manager, eventually owner.
But I always think of growth like plants.
Aspens grow tall to reach the sun, for sure.
But dandelions grow deep, understanding themselves fully so that if some misguided fool tries to uproot them they'd have to try damn hard. And then there's thyme and other creeping plants, which spread themselves out so much that if you chop a part of it off it roots wherever it can find dirt to root in.
It's okay not to have lofty dreams. You know what kind of plant you are better than anyone else.
”
”
Libraford
“
The valuations of private and public companies were soaring, and there seemed to be a consensus that the gold rush was beginning. Amid this infrastructure mania, Reliance Power launched an IPO in January 2008 that was oversubscribed seventy-two times! It made the company’s owner, Anil Ambani, the richest Indian. Despite having a power capacity of less than 1,000 megawatts at the time of the IPO, the company’s value was about $35 billion. Did this lead to a large number of IPOs for infrastructure businesses that investors lapped up hungrily? Does the sun rise in the east? Both private and public equity investors in the hyped-up story of Indian infrastructure forgot or chose to ignore some uncomfortable truths: Every infrastructure business is held hostage to the whims and fancies of the government; the government hates to be a paying customer—underpayment and late payment are the rule, not the exception; and even if the government behaves well, the returns on these projects are capped according to law. So why would we want to spend a single minute debating if any power business is worth investing in?
”
”
Pulak Prasad (What I Learned About Investing from Darwin)
“
The general line seemed to be the same one that the government used against gun owners, with whom I began to sympathize for the first time. The argument ran like this: nobody needs these big powerful computers unless he or she intends to do something wrong. Sure, stockbrokers, accountants, and suits from Microsoft and Sun might have some reason to own them, but a kid from Wyoming? That kid has no reason to own anything more powerful than a Game Boy . . . Powerful computers are prima-facie evidence that they’re doing something wrong and un-American.
”
”
John Sandford (The Devil's Code (Kidd & LuEllen, #3))
“
The sheep themselves, to begin with, seem always in league against their owners. Merinos, though apparently estimable animals, are in reality dangerous monomaniacs, whose sole desire is to ruin the man that owns them. Their object is to die, and to do so with as much trouble to their owners as they possibly can. They die in the droughts when the grass, roasted to a dull white by the sun, comes out by the roots and blows about the bare paddocks; they die in the wet, when the long grass in the sodden gullies breeds “fluke” and “bottle” and all sorts of hideous complaints. They get burnt in bush fires from sheer malice, refusing to run in any given direction, but charging round and round in a ring till they are calcined. They get drowned by refusing to leave flooded country, though hunted with frenzied earnestness.
”
”
A B Paterson (An Outback Marriage; A Story of Australian Life: in large print)
“
And it is easy to imagine what experiments that brilliant, inquiring and unreverent mind would have led its owner into, how much he may have proved, through these mute creatures, of the reasons for birth and barrenness, and of the laws of life. He was thinking of these two things when the charm was done at last and he lay down to rest while the sun rose and crept through every crevice and cranny in jets of airy flame. “For I have noted that if I have a cow put in a field alone, she is barren, and if I place other cows with her she is barren, but if I let a bull into the field, even once, she becomes with calf. And after the calf is weaned, she becomes barren once more, and remains so, unless I let the bull into the field again. And if it is so with beasts, why not with men and women? “Folk cry out that beasts cannot be thus compared with humankind, that such questions blaspheme the gods—women in especial cry it, grudging new power to men—but this is arrogance and fools’ vanity, and has no part in the wisdom of my uncle Mâth. We are not so different; we were planned by the one Planner, and the calf is suckled on its mother’s milk as I was on Dôn’s. . . . They are co-heirs with us of destiny. All that is, is eternal and nothing passes but to return again, unless, at the end of the ages, it be time and change. . . . “No, the New Folk are right this once. And it would be sweet to know a child one’s own, part of the essence of one’s own body. I have always envied women that miracle. . . .
”
”
Evangeline Walton (The Mabinogion Tetralogy: The Prince of Annwn, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon, The Island of the Mighty)
“
Names are erased. The conqueror tells the story. The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness. Oh, but let’s not speak of such things! Look: Here is an eagle whipping above the vast grasslands where the buffalo once thundered bold as gods. (The buffalo are here among the dead. So many buffalo.) There is the Declaration in sepia. (Signed by slave owners. Shhh, hush up about that, now!) See how the sun shines down upon the homesteaders’ wagons racing toward a precious claim in the nation’s future, the pursuit of happiness pursued without rest, destiny made manifest? (Never mind about those same homesteaders eating the flesh of neighbors. Winters are harsh in this country. Pack a snack.)
”
”
Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You (The Diviners, #3))
“
And so you’re the owner of the whole world!
Yours are all the waters the oceans hold!
Even the whole shine of the sun all told!
Except for one: “You’re alone in this world!”
God gave world not for “ONE” but for “PEOPLE,”
sharing lives together on one earth ball.
Give thanks there are people to share life with;
for if there’s just you, life’s no life, indeed.
”
”
Rodolfo Martin Vitangcol
“
This age is the age of spring cleaning … spring after spring, and the furniture gets shabbier and shabbier and has to be replaced, and the walls get filthy and have to be repainted, and the tiles fall off and have to be put back, and the owners grow old and are succeeded by their heirs, and the house falls down and has to be rebuilt, and the state collapses and has to be reformed, and the world economic system gets out of date and has to be remodelled, and the world sources of supply dry up and new ones have to be found, and the sun cools down and the solar system gets deranged… It is the “progress” which keeps you where you are; and the whole thing is kept going by hope and fear, dangling their carrots and cracking their whips.
”
”
Nanamoli Thera
“
Had a study, like the 1968 Kerner Report on the state of race in America, been conducted of Ida Mae’s adopted neighborhood, it might have concluded that there were, in fact, two neighborhoods—one, hard-working and striving to be middle class, the other, transient, jobless, and underclass; one, owners of property, the other, tenants and squatters; one, churchgoing and law-abiding, the other, drug-dealing and criminal—both coexisting on the same streets, one at odds with the other.
”
”
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
“
The menus at failing restaurants offer too many dishes. The owners think making every dish under the sun will broaden the appeal of the restaurant. Instead it makes for crappy food (and creates inventory headaches).
”
”
Jason Fried (ReWork)
“
,It was saturday in the mid december
waking up with thought of you as i can remember
happiness is in the air as easy to breath
formless smile in beneath
you came,
waited outside on that station
black color wrap up your body
as your skin compete the sun
an i came,
with an old junkie of my uncle's favorite
wasnt meant to race the other
but yet aesthetic
thirteen in the afternoon
with every wish we've said so soon
i'll be gentle with you
hug you tight
left no room for you
"i miss you"
we stop the moment
being so full of emotion
our both lips reach to us
with our dense of lust
forming an imaginary shelter
a place where's the feeling return to his owner
getting more thick and faster
as we melt into each other
we paused,
i saw your red wine smile
a little laugh just to remind we had it all
do you remember the star-kiss that i've always gave you?
starts from your cheeks end to your lips.
it felt like hundreds of years
but in a glimpse of an eye
maybe a hour or two
but somehow we fell into.
”
”
Azlan (Azlan)
“
In the distance, smoke plumes from brick kilns where men, women and children will spend their entire lives on their knees under the sun cooling, patting, stacking, packing red bricks that are sent across the country. They will never leave that burning land, always thousands of rupees short of freeing themselves from their debts to the kiln’s owner
”
”
Sanam Maher (The Sensational Life and Death of Qandeel Baloch)
“
The instability of a white neighborhood under pressure from the very possibility of integration put the neighborhood into a kind of real estate purgatory. It set off a downward cycle of anticipation, in which worried whites no longer bought homes in white neighborhoods that might one day attract colored residents even if none lived there at the time. Rents and purchase prices were dropped “in a futile attempt to attract white residents,” as Hirsch put it. With prices falling and the neighborhood’s future uncertain, lenders refused to grant mortgages or made them more difficult to obtain. Panicked whites sold at low prices to salvage what equity they had left, giving the homeowners who remained little incentive to invest any further to keep up or improve their properties.
Thus many white neighborhoods began declining before colored residents even arrived, Hirsch noted. There emerged a perfect storm of nervous owners, falling prices, vacancies unfillable with white tenants or buyers, and a market of colored buyers who may not have been able to afford the neighborhood at first but now could with prices within their reach. The arrival of colored home buyers was often the final verdict on a neighborhood’s falling property value rather than the cause of it.
”
”
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
“
The grove owners and their packinghouses had a near monopoly on the growing and selling of citrus. They were among the richest men in central Florida; their European vacations and their daughters’ cotillions and the visits of their children from the best boarding schools in the South were all chronicled in the local papers that everyone, including workers like the Blye brothers and George, could read. It was a multimillion-dollar industry fed by the demands of wealthy and middle-class families from Chicago to Long Island who expected orange juice with their toast and coffee every morning.
”
”
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
“
In 1968, parked cars were cleared out of Gråbrødretorv, or Grey Monk’s Square, a small plaza dominated by a large shade tree near the Strøget. That summer, the owners of a café on the square set up a few tables outside their door. People sat down at those tables and ordered beer and meatballs, and they let the northern sunlight fall on their faces. It seemed a quirky anomaly. But those tables were the drops that led to a torrent. Now the city centre is crammed with outdoor cafés, close to nine thousand seats by Gehl’s last count. Danish winters are as miserable as they come – the winds from the North Sea deliver wave after wave of rain, sleet and snowstorms, and the weak sun disappears well before the end of the workday – but now you can see Copenhageners out on their plazas in the dead of winter, wrapped in woollen blankets, sipping little cups of espresso. Gehl collects pictures of them, proof that by redesigning city space, you can actually transform the culture.
”
”
Charles Montgomery (Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design)
“
The sovereign owner should
depend upon the skillful expert to drive his car, and the same principle should apply in the vital affairs of the nation.
The people are the owners; they must be sovereign. The government are specialists; they must be men of ability and
skill. We are therefore to look upon all the officers of the government, from president and premier down to heads
of departments, as specially trained chauffeurs; if they are able men and loyal to the nation, we should be willing to
give the sovereignty of the state into their hands. We must not limit their movements but give them freedom of
action; then the state can progress and progress with rapid strides. If, on the contrary, we attempt to take everything
into our own hands, or to hamper our experts at every turn and not allow them freedom of action, the state can
hardly hope to progress much and will move forward very slowly.
”
”
Sun Yat-Sen (Min quan zhu yi / Sun Wen chu.,民權主義 / 孫文著. 1924 [Leather Bound])
“
THE ASS AND HIS SHADOW A certain man hired an Ass for a journey in summertime, and started out with the owner following behind to drive the beast. By and by, in the heat of the day, they stopped to rest, and the traveller wanted to lie down in the Ass's Shadow; but the owner, who himself wished to be out of the sun, wouldn't let him do that; for he said he had hired the Ass only, and not his Shadow: the other maintained that his bargain secured him complete control of the Ass for the time being. From words they came to blows; and while they were belabouring each other the Ass took to his heels and was soon out of sight.
”
”
Aesop (Aesop's Fables)
“
when she turned to Orlando to speak to him, I saw she had what Pa Salt would have termed a Roman nose, which sat prominently in her striking face. She was certainly not classically beautiful and, from the look of her jeans and old sweater, did not care to make herself more so. Yet, there was something very attractive about her and I realized I wanted her to like me—an unusual feeling. “Are you coping back there?” she asked me. “Not far now.” “Yes, thank you.” I leaned my head against the windowpane as the thick hedges, their height exaggerated by the low car, flew by me, the country lanes becoming narrower. It felt so good to be out of London, with only the odd red-brick chimney stack peeping out from behind the wall of green. We turned right, through a pair of old gates that led to a drive so potholed that Marguerite’s and Orlando’s heads bumped against the roof. “I really must ask Mouse to bring the tractor and fill in these holes with gravel before the winter comes,” she commented to Orlando. “Here we are, Star,” she added as she pulled the car to a halt in front of a large, graceful house, its walls formed from mellow red brick, with ivy and wisteria fringing the uneven windows in greenery. Tall, thin chimney stacks, which emphasized the Tudor architecture, reached up into the crisp September sky. As I squeezed myself out of the back of the Fiat, I imagined the house’s interior to be rambling as opposed to impressive—it was certainly no stately home; rather, it looked as if it had gently aged and sunk slowly into the countryside surrounding it. It spoke of a bygone era, one that I loved reading about in books, and I experienced a twinge of longing. I followed Marguerite and Orlando toward the magnificent oak front door, and saw a young boy wobbling toward us on a shiny red bike. He let out a strange muffled shout, tried to wave, and promptly fell off the bike. “Rory!” Marguerite ran to him, but he had already picked himself up. He spoke again, and I wondered if he was foreign, as I couldn’t make out what he was saying. She dusted him down, then the boy picked up the bike and the two of them walked back to us. “Look who’s here,” Marguerite said, turning directly to the boy to speak to him. “It’s Orlando and his friend Star. Try saying ‘Star.’ ” She particularly enunciated the “st” in my name. “Ss-t-aahh,” the boy said as he approached me, a smile on his face, before holding up his hand and opening his fingers out like a shining star. I saw that Rory was the owner of a pair of inquisitive green eyes, framed by dark lashes. His wavy copper-colored hair glowed in the sun, and his rosy cheeks dimpled with happiness. I recognized that he was the kind of child that one would never want to say no to. “He prefers to go by the name ‘Superman,’ don’t you, Rory?” Orlando chuckled, holding up his hand in a fist like Superman taking off into the air. Rory nodded, then shook my hand with all the dignity of a superhero, and turned to Orlando for a hug. After giving him a tight squeeze and a tickle, Orlando set him down, then squatted in front of him and used his hands to sign, also speaking the words clearly. “Happy birthday! I have your present in Marguerite’s car. Would you like to come and get it with me?” “Yes please,” Rory spoke and signed, and I knew then that he was deaf. I rifled through my rusty mental catalog of what I had learned
”
”
Lucinda Riley (The Shadow Sister (The Seven Sisters #3))