Swift Wind Quotes

Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.

Do not leave me, hide in my heart like a secret, wind around my head like a turban. "I come and go as I please," you say, "swift as a heartbeat." You can tease me as much as you like but never leave me.

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.

Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.

Be as swift as the wind. As silent as the forest. As fierce as the fire. As unshakable as the mountain. And you can do anything...

We be light, we be life, we be fire! We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven! Come be we and be free!

At Tara in this fateful hour, I place all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness: All these I place, By God's almighty help and grace Between myself and the powers of darkness!

Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night,' he had said. 'You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.

Loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street; faster than the winds, passionate as sin, ending so suddenly.

She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one's childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.

A story is alive, as you and I are. It is rounded by muscle and sinew. Rushed with blood. Layered with skin, both rough and smooth. At its core lies soft marrow of hard, white bone. A story beats with the heart of every person who has ever strained ears to listen. On the breath of the storyteller, it soars. Until its images and deeds become so real you can see them in the air, shimmering like oases on the horizon line. A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.

Change is inevitable and life changes as swiftly as the wind blows. It’s which direction that you let the wind blow you that matters.

Flowers need plenty of water and sunshine to grow. Love, too, needs attention and affection, or else it slowly withers away from neglect. Once love’s gone, it’s as brittle as a dried-out leaf. You pick it up, only to discover that it’s turned to ash beneath your oncecareful touch, gone on a swift wind forever.

Much of my crying is for joy and wonder rather than for pain. A trumpet's wailing, a wind's warm breath, the chink of a bell on an errant lamb, the smoke from a candle just spent, first light, twilight, firelight. Everyday beauty. I cry for how life intoxicates. And maybe just a little for how swiftly it runs.

The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her. Deer and hare and dove and groundvole all richly empaneled on the air for her delight, all nations of the possible world ordained by God of which she was one among and not separate from. Where she ran the cries of the coyotes clapped shut as if a door had closed upon them and all was fear and marvel. He took up her stiff head out of the leaves and held it or he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it.

The Master Speed No speed of wind or water rushing by but you have speed far greater. You can climb back up a stream of radiance to the sky, and back through history up the stream of time. And you were given this swiftness, not for haste nor chiefly that you may go where you will, but in the rush of everything to waste, that you may have the power of standing still-- off any still or moving thing you say. Two such as you with such a master speed From one another once you are agreed that life is only life forevermore together wing to wing and oar to oar.

as swift as wind, as gentle as forest, as fierce as fire, as unshakable as mountain

Those horses must have been Spanish jennets, born of mares mated with a zephyr; for they went as swiftly as the wind, and the moon, which had risen at our departure to give us light, rolled through the sky like a wheel detached from its carriage...

You can handcuff my wrists, and Shackle my feet. You can bind me in chains, throw me in your deepest darkest dungeon...but you can't enslave my thinking...for it is free like the wind.

Nothing but the sight of blood upon his dark face would ease the pain in her heart. She lunged for him, swift as a cat, but with a light startled movement, he sidestepped, throwing up his arm to ward her off. She was standing on the edge of the freshly waxed top step, and as her arm with the whole weight of her body behind it, struck his out-thrust arm, she lost her balance. She made a wild clutch for the newel post and missed it. She went down the stairs backwards, feeling a sickening dart of pain in her ribs as she landed. And, too dazed to catch herself she rolled over and over to the bottom of the flight.

Be swift as the wind, silent as the forest, fierce as fire, steady as a mountain.

A Pandava must be so precise and so skilled that they can separate a shadow from its host! They can grab the wind! They are as swift as - ' 'A river!,' shouted Aru. Mini hollered, ' With the force of a great typhoon!' 'With all the strength of a raging fiiiiire - ' sang Brynne. 'STOP SINGING MULAN!' shouted Boo.

Lords of blue and Lords of gold, Lords of wind and waters wild, Lords of time that's growing old, When will come the season mild? When will come blue Madoc's child?

As swift as wind, as gentle as forest, as fierce as fire, as unshakable as mountain." -Fūrinkazan

You must be swift as the wind, dense as the forest, rapacious as fire, steadfast like a mountain, mysterious as night and mighty as thunder.

After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.

She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate.

I saw the sunset-colored sands, The Nile like flowing fire between, Where Rameses stares forth serene, And Ammon's heavy temple stands. I saw the rocks where long ago, Above the sea that cries and breaks, Swift Perseus with Medusa's snakes Set free the maiden white like snow. And many skies have covered me, And many winds have blown me forth, And I have loved the green, bright north, And I have loved the cold, sweet sea. But what to me are north and south, And what the lure of many lands, Since you have leaned to catch my hands And lay a kiss upon my mouth.

love's heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams, Driving back shadows over louring hills: Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.

Dad, will they ever come back?" "No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road." "Oh, no," said Will. "Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun." They moved around the carousel slowly. "What will they look like? How will we know them?" "Why," said Dad, quietly, "maybe they're already here." Both boys looked around swiftly. But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves. Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad. Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole. Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will. Jim stroked a horse's mane. Will patted a horse's shoulders. The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night. Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey. Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy. Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway. Lord. Each read the thoughts in the other's eyes. How easy, thought Will. Just this once, thought Jim. But then, thought Charles Halloway, once you start, you'd always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally... The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment. ...finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks... proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows.... Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here.

Orlando was unaccountably disappointed. She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses.

God help me now!’ I murmured, sinking on my knees among the damp weeds and brushwood that surrounded me, and looking up at the moonlit sky, through the scant foliage above. It seemed all dim and quivering now to my darkened sight. My burning, bursting heart strove to pour forth its agony to God, but could not frame its anguish into prayer; until a gust of wind swept over me, which, while it scattered the dead leaves, like blighted hopes, around, cooled my forehead, and seemed a little to revive my sinking frame. Then, while I lifted up my soul in speechless, earnest supplication, some heavenly influence seemed to strengthen me within: I breathed more freely; my vision cleared; I saw distinctly the pure moon shining on, and the light clouds skimming the clear, dark sky; and then I saw the eternal stars twinkling down upon me; I knew their God was mine, and He was strong to save and swift to hear. ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,’ seemed whispered from above their myriad orbs. No, no; I felt He would not leave me comfortless: in spite of earth and hell I should have strength for all my trials, and win a glorious rest at last!

There is the moment when the silence of the countryside gathers in the ear and breaks into a myriad of sounds:a croaking and squeaking, a swift rustle in the grass, a plop in the water, a pattering on earth and pebbles, and high above all, the call of the cicada, The sounds follow one another, and the ear eventually discerns more and more of them -just as fingers unwinding a ball of wool feel each fiber interwoven with progressively thinner and less palpable threads, The frogs continue croaking in the background without changing the flow of sounds, just as light does not vary from the continues winking of stars, But at every rise or fall of the wind every sound changes and is renewed. All that remains in the inner recess of the ear is a vague murmur: the sea.

Are you also going to inform me I need to be as swift as a fire so I may move mountains in the wind?” Yoshi

When the ship approached the equator, I stopped going out on deck in the daytime. The sun burned like a flame. The days had shortened and night came swiftly. One moment it was light, the next it was dark. The sun did not set but fell into the water like a meteor. Late in the evening, when I went out briefly, a hot wind slapped my face. From the ocean came a roar of passions that seemed to have broken through all barriers:'We mus procreate and multiply! We must exhaust all the powers of lust!' The waves glowed like lava, and I imagined I could see multitudes of living beings - algae, whales, sea monsters - reveling in an orgy, from the surface to the bottom of the sea. Immortality was the law here. The whole planet raged with animation. At times, I heard my name in the clamor: the spirit of the abyss calling me to join them in their nocturnal dance. ("Hanka")

He took up her stiff head out of the leaves and held it or he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of a great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it.

As children, we were given a choice between the talented but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare. We wanted to be swift as the wind and a bit more strategic—say, not taking quite so many snoozes before the finish line. After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win. The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through.

Nimander wondered if he had discovered the face of the one true god. Naught else but time, this ever changing and yet changeless tyrant against whom no creature could win. Before whom even trees, stone and air must one day bow. There would be a last dawn, a last sunset, each kneeling in final surrender. Yes, time was indeed god, playing the same games with lowly insects as it did with mountains and the fools who would carve fastnesses into them. At peace with every scale, pleased by the rapid patter of a rat’s heart and the slow sighing of devouring wind against stone. Content with a star’s burgeoning light and the swift death of a raindrop on a desert floor.

A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.

Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night…You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and make tender by kisses.

Lords of fire and earth and water, Lords of moon and wind and sky, Come now to the Old Man's daughter, Come from fathers long gone by. Bring blue from a distance eye. Lords of water, earth, and fire, Lords of wind and snow and rain, Give to my heart's desire. Life as all life comes with pain, But blue will come to us again.

Time is a fleeting thing, a precious gift of life's days, It comes and goes, a bird with swift wings. How I wish I could have more time, but time is fleeting, like a passing breeze, it moves fast and cannot be grasped, it's there one day, gone the next. Of this precious gift I give you mine because you are worth every second spent.

The GhostWalker Creed: We are the GhostWalkers, we life in the shadows. The sea, the earth, and the air are our domain. No fallen comrade will be left behind. We are loyalty and honor bound. We are invisible to our enemies and we destroy them where we find them. We believe in justice and we protect our country and those unable to protect themselves. What goes unseen, unheard, and unknown are GhostWalkers. There is honor in the shadows and it is us. We move in complete silence whether in jungle or desert. We walk among our enemy unseen and unheard. Striking without sound and scatter to the winds before they have knowledge of our existance. We gather information and wait with endless patience for that perfect moment to deliver swift justice. We are both merciful and merciless. We are relentless and implacable in our resolve. We are the GhostWalkers and the night is ours.

Blow on, ye death fraught whirlwinds! blow, Around the rocks, and rifted caves; Ye demons of the gulf below! I hear you, in the troubled waves. High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds In night's impenetrable clouds, My solitary watch I keep, And listen, while the turbid deep Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole. Eternal world of waters, hail! Within thy caves my Lover lies; And day and night alike shall fail Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes. Along this wild untrodden coast, Heap'd by the gelid' hand of frost; Thro' this unbounded waste of seas, Where never sigh'd the vernal breeze; Mine was the choice, in this terrific form, To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm. Yes! I am chang'd - My heart, my soul, Retain no more their former glow. Hence, ere the black'ning tempests roll, I watch the bark, in murmurs low, (While darker low'rs the thick'ning' gloom) To lure the sailor to his doom; Soft from some pile of frozen snow I pour the syren-song of woe; Like the sad mariner's expiring cry, As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die. Then, while the dark and angry deep Hangs his huge billows high in air ; And the wild wind with awful sweep, Howls in each fitful swell - beware! Firm on the rent and crashing mast, I lend new fury to the blast; I mark each hardy cheek grow pale, And the proud sons of courage fail; Till the torn vessel drinks the surging waves, Yawns the disparted main, and opes its shelving graves. When Vengeance bears along the wave The spell, which heav'n and earth appals; Alone, by night, in darksome cave, On me the gifted wizard calls. Above the ocean's boiling flood Thro' vapour glares the moon in blood: Low sounds along the waters die, And shrieks of anguish fill the' sky; Convulsive powers the solid rocks divide, While, o'er the heaving surge, the embodied spirits glide. Thrice welcome to my weary sight, Avenging ministers of Wrath! Ye heard, amid the realms of night, The spell that wakes the sleep of death. Where Hecla's flames the snows dissolve, Or storms, the polar skies involve; Where, o'er the tempest-beaten wreck, The raging winds and billows break; On the sad earth, and in the stormy sea, All, all shall shudd'ring own your potent agency. To aid your toils, to scatter death, Swift, as the sheeted lightning's force, When the keen north-wind's freezing breath Spreads desolation in its course, My soul within this icy sea, Fulfils her fearful destiny. Thro' Time's long ages I shall wait To lead the victims to their fate; With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy, And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy.

The sight of her was like a swift, cool wind through his frame, quickening his body, alerting all his senses, making him completely aware he was a male and she a female.

As swift as the wind As silent as the forest As fierce as the fire As unshakable as the mountain

The witch approached it and pared its edges with a sword that she drew from her thigh. Then she sat down beside it on the earth and sang to it while it cooled. Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets. She sang of old Summer noons in the time of harebells: she sang on that high dark heath a song that seemed so full of mornings and evenings preserved with all their dews by her magical craft from days that had else been lost, that Alveric wondered of each small wandering wing, that her fire had lured from the dusk, if this were the ghost of some day lost to man, called up by the force of her song from times that were fairer.

Cool wind soothed her. She could breathe sweet air. The only heat she felt was the warm, familiar heat from the mage's body. Opening her eyes, she saw that she stood close to him. Raising her head, she gazed up into his face...and felt a swift, sharp ache in her heart. Raistlin's thin face glistened with sweat, his eyes reflected the pure, white flame of the burning bodies, his breath came fast and shallow. He seemed lost, unaware of his surroundings. And there was a look of ecstasy on his face, a look of exultation, of triumph. "I understand," Crysania said to herself, holding onto his hands. "I understand. This is why he cannot love me. He has only one love in this life and that is his magic. To this love he will give everything, for this love he will risk everything!

It had begun to dawn on him that this same sweet pretty little head was a “good head for figures.” In fact, a much better one than his own and the knowledge was disquieting. He was thunderstruck to discover that she could swiftly add a long column of figures in her head when he needed a pencil and paper for more than three figures. And fractions presented no difficulties to her at all. He felt there was something unbecoming about a woman understanding fractions and business matters and he believed that, should a woman be so unfortunate as to have such unladylike comprehension, she should pretend not to. Now he disliked talking business with her as much as he had enjoyed it before they were married. Then he had thought it all beyond her mental grasp and it had been pleasant to explain things to her. Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual masculine indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.

Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade—not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d,

Earth and sky, rock and wind, bear witness! By the power of the Swift Sure Hand, I claim this ground and sain it with a name: Bwgan Bwlch! Power of fire I have over it, Power of wind I have over it, Power of thunder I have over it, Power of wrath I have over it, Power of heavens I have over it, Power of earth I have over it, Power of worlds I have over it! As tramples the swan upon the lake, As tramples the horse upon the plain, As tramples the ox upon the meadow, As tramples the boar upon the track, As tramples the forest host of heart and hind, As tramples all quick things upon the earth, I do trample and subdue it, And drive all evil from it! In the name of the Secret One, In the name of the Living One, In the name of the All-Encircling One, In the name of the One True Word, it is Bwgan Bwlch, Let it so remain as long as men survive To breath the name.

Hush!’ said the Cabby. They all listened. In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it… ‘Gawd!’ said the Cabby. ‘Ain’t it lovely?’ Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it , as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves who were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing. ‘Glory be!’ said the Cabby. ‘I’d ha’ been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this.’ …Far away, and down near the horizon, the sky began to turn grey. A light wind, very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see shapes of hills standing up dark against it. All the time the Voice went on singing…The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose. Digory had never seen such a sun…You could imagine that it laughed for joy as it came up. And as its beams shot across the land the travellers could see for the first time what sort of place they were in. It was a valley through which a broad, swift river wound its way, flowing eastward towards the sun. Southward there were mountains, northward there were lower hills. But it was a valley of mere earth, rock and water; there was not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass to be seen. The earth was of many colours: they were fresh, hot and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else. It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about three hundred yards away.

Do not stand at my grave and weep  I am not there. I do not sleep.  I am a thousand winds that blow.  I am the diamond glints on snow.  I am the sunlight on ripened grain.  I am the gentle autumn rain.  When you awaken in the morning's hush  I am the swift uplifting rush  Of quiet birds in circled flight.  I am the soft stars that shine at night.  Do not stand at my grave and cry;  I am not there. I did not die. ~ Mary Elizabeth Frye

Let this curse find those who have stolen from us like the wolf finds his prey. May death come to you on swift wings, may your spoils turn into serpents and coil around your necks, may the rest of your days be stricken with unending sickness, may your children's bodies belong to the fire, may every last one of you anguish in eternal pain, crying aloud for mercy, while we turn our heads away with a smile and a deaf ear. In payment for your treachery, we will accept your thieving hands on our finest plates, your sullen heads on our tallest flag poles, and your worthless souls in our enveloping clutches. All the while we will watch your graveless corpses writhe with worms and turn into an eternal, restless dust. Always know, we shall forever be against you as a crocodile on the water, as a serpent on the earth, as a raven in the wind, and as an enemy in this world and worlds to come.

I lost my voice and my best friend too On swift, fierce winds and wings of blue, The cold rain fell where beams had shone, So I wrapped up tight and safe. Alone. But I missed my friend, I missed my voice, And my heart still whispered of another choice To break out of my binding, safe, and warm, And see what the world looked like after the storm. So I struggled free and was greeted by Colorful brushstrokes across the sky, The melody of the summer breeze And blue wings like mine in hazel trees. On the soft, sweet air of the mountain glade, We gathered together in cool, green shade, And told our stories, beginnings to ends, And found our song in the hearts of new friends.

This. This is exactly it. "It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside — but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond — only a glimpse — and heard a note of unearthly music. This moment came rarely — went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it — never summon it — never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. Tonight the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a grey bird lighting on her windowsill in a storm, with the singing of “Holy, holy, holy” in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she writing down a ‘description’ of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.

We feel the breath of the wind upon our cheeks, we see the dust and the leaves blowing before the wind, we see the vessels at sea driven swiftly towards their ports; but the wind itself remains invisible. Just so with the Spirit; we feel His breath upon our souls, we see the mighty things He does, but Himself we do not see. He is invisible, but He is real and perceptible.

The day arrived,when myriad teary rivers flow and the muted wind faintly died in his tears—an altar for the beloved one's departure,for sister-hood is no more,for her to adore!while pangs the beating world in a lamenting voice;their remembering loss of the 'one' they embrace most and when the crepuscule came like a phantom,the mournful,gathered birds swiftly flew in gloom.

COME AWAY, dreamer, come away. Soon you will witness things that only sleepers and sorcerers can see. Climb onto the wind and let it bear you—yes, it is a swift and frightening steed, but there are leagues and leagues to journey and the night is short.

She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses… Orlando then came to the conclusion (opening half-a-dozen books)…that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a ten-pound note round the sugar tongs when Miss Christina Rossetti came to tea…next (here were half-a-dozen invitations to celebrate centenaries by dining) that literature since it all these dinners must be growing very corpulent; next (she was invited to a score of lectures on the Influence of this upon that; the Classical revival; the Romantic survival, and other titles of the same engaging kind) that literature since it listened to all these lectures must be growing very dry; next (here she attended a reception given by a peeress) that literature since it wore all those fur tippets must be growing very respectable; next (here she visited Carlyle’s sound-proof room at Chelsea) that genius since it needed all this coddling must be growing very delicate…

The week passed by swiftly, like a dream....a dream where minutes flew as rapidly as heartbeats. Such a breathless week when something within her drove Scarlett with mingled pain and pleasure to pack and cram every minute with incidents to remember after he was gone, happenings which she could examine at leisure in the long months ahead, extracting every morsel of comfort from them - dance, sing, laugh, fetch and carry for Ashley, anticipate his wants, smile when he smiles, be silent when he talks, follow him with your eyes so that each line of his erect body, each lift of his eyebrows, each quirk of his mouth, will be indelibly printed on your mind - for a week goes by so fast and the war goes on forever.

Then the wind comes so swift and dashing that it takes the autumn leaves with it, and they rise into the juggling air, while the trees bleat and blubber. Then drops fall, big as the thumb … the earth itself seems to heave up and cheep in the monsoon rains. It churns and splashes, beats against the treetops, reckless and wilful, and suddenly floating forwards, it bucks back and spits forward and pours down upon the green, weak coffee leaves, thumping them down to the earth.

He held his mundu spread above his head to dry. The wind lifted it like a sail. He was suddenly happy. Things will get worse he thought to himself. Then better. He was walking swiftly now, towards the Heart of Darkness. As lonely as a wolf. The God of Loss. The God of Small Things. Naked but for his nail varnish. (274)

I closed my eyes and heard the wind and the sound of water flowing softly, swiftly in the river. It was enough, for one moment. And I knew that it would not endure, that it would fly away from me like something torn out of my arms, and I would fly after it, more desperately lonely than any creature under God, to get it back.

Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur.

The sand squeaked underfoot as she toed it. She looked more closely: dark grains of basalt, mixed with minute seashell fragments, and a variety of colorful pebbles, some of them no doubt brecciated fragments of the Hellas impact itself. She lifted her eyes to the hills west of the sea, black under the sun. The bones of things stuck out everywhere. Waves broke in swift lines on the beach, and she walked over the sand toward her friends, in the wind, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars.

The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamour, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clock like tick of the rails, moved towards the bridge - it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid - the temperature of warm blood... The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank.

Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.” “Snap ending.” Mildred nodded. “Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag), whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.” Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down. Beatty ignored her and continued: “Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!” Mildred smoothed the bedclothes. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she patted his pillow. Right now she was pulling at his shoulder to try to get him to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put it back. And perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and say, “What’s this?” and hold up the hidden book with touching innocence. “School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?

Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate.

Montag ran. He could feel the Hound, like autumn, come cold and dry and swift, like a wind that didn't stir grass, that didn't jar windows or disturb leaf shadows on the white sidewalks as it passed. The Hound did not touch the world. It carried its silence with it, so you could feel the silence building up a pressure behind you all across town. Montag felt the pressure rising, and ran.

Frederick Faber: In the spiritual life God chooses to try our patience first of all by His slowness. He is slow: we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been for eternity. . . . There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them. We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and He will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go their road. When He comes, go with Him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when he quickens His pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when He slackens, slacken at once: and do not be slow only, but silent, very silent, for He is God.

The eclipse of your faith, the darkness of your mind, the fainting of your hope, all these things are but parts of God's method of making you ripe for the great inheritance upon which you shall soon enter. These trials are for the testing and strengthening of your faith--they are waves that wash you further upon the rock--they are winds which waft your ship the more swiftly towards the desired haven.

I ate the end of my piece of cheese and took a swallow of wine. Through the other noise I heard a cough, then came the chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh--then there was a flash, as when a blast-furnace door is swung open, and a roar that started white and went read and on and on in a rushing wind. I tired to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind. I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died. Then I floated, and instead of going on I felt myself slide back. I breathed and I was back.

All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all! Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails, Yellow feet a-quiver, Yellow bills all out of sight Busy in the river! Slushy green undergrowth Where the roach swim—Here we keep our larder, Cool and full and dim. Everyone for what he likes! We like to be Heads down, tails up, Dabbling free! High in the blue above Swifts whirl and call—We are down a-dabbling Uptails all!

poet Mary Elizabeth Frye’s words: Do not stand there at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glints on the snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain; I am the gentle autumn’s rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds encircled flight. I am the soft star that shines at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there; I did not die.

O where are you going with your love-locks flowing On the west wind bellowing along this valley track?” “The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye, We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.” So they two went together in glowing August weather, The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right; And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight. “Oh, what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven, Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?” “Oh, that’s a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous, An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt>” “Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly, Their scent comes rich and sickly?” “A scaled and hooded worm.” ”Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?” “Oh, that’s a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.” “Turn again, O my sweetest,--turn again, false and fleetest: This beaten way thou beatest, I fear is hell’s own track.” “Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting: This downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back.

Home was five blocks away. She would not wait for the sobbing Peter to harness the buggy, would not wait for Dr. Meade to drive her home. She could not endure the tears of the one, the silent condemnation of the other. She went swiftly down the dark front steps without her coat or bonnet and into the misty night. She rounded the corner and started up the long hill toward Peachtree Street, walking in a still wet world, and even her footsteps were as noiseless as a dream.

And Lotto beamed with pleasure, preening, eyes darting around to see which kind soul in the room could have sent along the champagne, the force of his delight such that wherever his eyes landed, the recipients of the gaze would look up out of their food and conversation. and a startled expression would come over their face, a flush, and nearly everyone began grinning back, so that on this spangled early evening with the sun shining through the windows in gold streams, and the treetops rustling in the wind, and the streets full of congregating, relieved people, Lotto sparked upwellings of inexplicable glee in dozens of chests, lightening the already buoyant mood in one swift wave. Animal magnetism is real. It spreads through bodily convection. Even Ariel smiled back. The stunned grin stayed on the faces of some people, an expressions of speculation growing, hoping he would look at them again, or wondering who he was because on this day, and in this world, he was someone.

s ships Phoenix and Rose, in the company of three tenders, cast off their moorings at Staten Island and started up the harbor under full sail, moving swiftly with the favorable wind and a perfect flood tide. Alarm guns sounded in New York. Soldiers

In every era there comes a moment when the collective thoughts, whims, and motivations of a people become so self-absorbed, so malignant, so unheeding that nature itself revolts. Man scars the land such that it finally rebels against him. As thoughts can spread despair and death like seedlings of weeds strewn by the wind, so they eventually draw the Gardener to pluck them out. The vetches must be pulled, roots and all. When this happens, the Medium ceases to bless, and instead, it curses. Instead of healing, it spews poison. It happens swiftly and terribly. The ancients gave it a name, this culling process that blackens the world. They named it after a wasting disease that occurs in once-healthy groves of trees. They called it the Blight.

Homer's Hymn to Castor and Pollux Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818. Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove, Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love With mighty Saturn's Heaven-obscuring Child, On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild, Brought forth in joy: mild Pollux, void of blame, And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame. These are the Powers who earth-born mortals save And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave. When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow, Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow, And sacrifice with snow-white lambs,—the wind And the huge billow bursting close behind, Even then beneath the weltering waters bear The staggering ship—they suddenly appear, On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky, And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity, And strew the waves on the white Ocean's bed, Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight, And plough the quiet sea in safe delight.

Wild rode the wind though the West country. Banners were blowing, black was the raven they bore as blazon. Blaring of trumpets, neighing of horses, gnashing of armour, in the hoar hollows of the hills echoed . Mordred was marching; messengers speeding northward and eastward the news bearing through the land of Logres. Lords and chieftains to his side he summoned swift to hasten their tryst keeping, true to Mordred, faithful in falsehood, foes of Arthur, lovers of treason and freebooters of Erin and Alban, and East-Sassoin, of Almain and Angel and the isles of mist.

The GhostWalker Creed We are the GhostWalkers, we live in the shadows The sea, the earth, and the air are our domain No fallen comrade will be left behind We are loyalty and honor bound We are invisible to our enemies and we destroy them where we find them We believe in justice and we protect our country and those unable to protect themselves What goes unseen, unheard, and unknown are Ghostwalkers There is honor in the shadows and it is us We move in complete silence whether in jungle or desert We walk among our enemy unseen and unheard Striking without sound and scatter to the winds before they have knowledge of our existence We gather information and wait with endless patience for that perfect moment to deliver swift justice We are both merciful and merciless We are relentless and implacable in our resolve We are the GhostWalkers and the night is ours

He ran from her suddenly, swift and quiet like a mountain cat among the high peeks of Eld mountain. She watched him dive in among the trees, and the autumn winds shoke suddenly at his heels. She sad down on a fallen trunk and dropped her head among the knees. A great soft warmth shiled her from the wind, and she looked up and saw into Gules Lyons quiet, golden eyes. What is it, white one? She knelt suddenly and flung his arms around the great mane, and burried her face against him. I wish that I had wings and could fly and fly and never come back. What has troubled you, Orams powerful child? What can trouble you? What can such a small one as Coren of Sirle say to touch you? For a long moment she did not answer. And then she said, her fingers tight around the gold tangeled fur. He has taken my heart and offered it back to me. And I thought he was harmless.

And there lay the essential differences between reading and rereading, acts that Henry and I were preforming simultaneously. The former had more velocity; the latter had more depth. The former shut out the world in order to focus on the story; the latter dragged in the world in order to assess the story. The former was more fun; the latter was more cynical. But what was remarkable about the latter was that it contained the former: even while, as with the upper half of a set of bifocals, I saw the book through the complicating lens of adulthood, I also saw it through the memory of the first time I’d read it, when it had seemed as swift and pure as the Winding Arrow, the river that divides Calormen from Archenland.

On the morning that she left the Water Gardens, her father rose from his chair to kiss her on both cheeks. "The fate of Dorne goes with you, daughter," he said, as he pressed the parchment into her hand. "Go swiftly, go safely, be my eyes and ears and voice... but most of all, take care." "I will, Father." She did not shed a tear. Arianne Martell was a princess of Dorne, and Dornishmen did not waste water lightly. It was a near thing, though. It was not her father's kisses nor his hoarse words that made her eyes glisten, but the effort that brought him to his feet, his legs trembling under him, his joints swollen and inflamed with gout. Standing was an act of love. Standing was an act of faith. He believes in me. I will not fail him.

Suddenly the sails caught the breeze and filled, they bellied out in the wind, lovely and white and free, the gulls rose in a mass, screaming above the masts, the setting sun caught the painted ship in a gleam of gold, and silently, stealthily, leaving a long dark ripple behind her, the ship stole in towards the land. And a feeling came upon Dona, as though a hand touched her heart, and a voice whispered in her brain, “I shall remember this.” A premonition of wonder, of fear, of sudden strange elation. She turned swiftly, smiling to herself for no reason, humming a little tune, and strode back across the hills to Navron House, skirting the mud and jumping the ditches like a child, while the sky darkened, and the moon rose, and the night wind whispered in the tall trees.

the beaches. In literally hundreds of instances, a vessel’s ignorance of her longitude led swiftly to her destruction. Launched on a mix of bravery and greed, the sea captains of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries relied on “dead reckoning” to gauge their distance east or west of home port. The captain would throw a log overboard and observe how quickly the ship receded from this temporary guidepost. He noted the crude speedometer reading in his ship’s logbook, along with the direction of travel, which he took from the stars or a compass, and the length of time on a particular course, counted with a sandglass or a pocket watch. Factoring in the effects of ocean currents, fickle winds, and errors in judgment, he then determined his longitude. He routinely missed his mark, of course—searching

I could hear the wind whistle behind me as someone swiftly moved away from me in a distance. I heard the autumn leaves crunch beneath his feet as the figure slowly retreated. I could have sworn that it was the red-eyed man from my past that couldn't live with just haunting my dreams - he haunted my life like a ghost lingering around me, his eyes burning like flames in every shadow he could find. But, I wondered, why me?

There is no path to truth, it must come to you. Truth can come to you only when your mind and heart are simple, clear, and there is love in your heart; not if your heart is filled with the things of the mind. When there is love in your heart, you do not talk about organizing for brotherhood; you do not talk about belief, you do not talk about division or the powers that create division, you need not seek reconciliation. Then you are simply a human being without a label, without a country. This means that you must strip yourself of all those things and allow truth to come into being; and it can come only when the mind is empty, when the mind ceases to create. Then it will come without your invitation. Then it will come as swiftly as the wind and unbeknown. It comes obscurely, not when you are watching, wanting. It is there as sudden as sunlight, as pure as the night; but to receive it, the heart must be full and the mind empty. Now you have the mind full and your heart empty.

Ode to the West Wind I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! II Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Astounding, really, that Michel could consider psychology any kind of science at all. So much of it consisted of throwing together. Of thinking of the mind as a steam engine, the mechanical analogy most ready to hand during the birth of modern psychology. People had always done that when they thought about the mind: clockwork for Descartes, geological changes for the early Victorians, computers or holography for the twentieth century, AIs for the twenty-first…and for the Freudian traditionalists, steam engines. Application of heat, pressure buildup, pressure displacement, venting, all shifted into repression, sublimation, the return of the repressed. Sax thought it unlikely steam engines were an adequate model for the human mind. The mind was more like—what?—an ecology—a fellfield—or else a jungle, populated by all manner of strange beasts. Or a universe, filled with stars and quasars and black holes. Well—a bit grandiose, that—really it was more like a complex collection of synapses and axons, chemical energies surging hither and yon, like weather in an atmosphere. That was better—weather—storm fronts of thought, high-pressure zones, low-pressure cells, hurricanes—the jet streams of biological desires, always making their swift powerful rounds…life in the wind. Well. Throwing together. In fact the mind was poorly understood.

...when the morning wind caught up with us, and with it some quite unexpected fog - soft and rolling. It would roll down the open channels in great round masses - hesitate for an island, and then roll over it and on. It would fill up all the bays - searching and exploring. It came on board and felt us all over with soft, damp fingers, and we hoisted our sails and fled before it. ...A little farther on, the wind blew harder, but it was steadier...The mountains grew higher and higher, and gossiped together across our heads. And somewhere down at their feet, on that narrow ribbon of water, our boat with the white sails flew swiftly along, completely dwarfed by its surroundings.

She had seen Southern men, soft voiced and dangerous in the days before the war, reckless and hard in the last despairing days of the fighting. But in the faces of the two men who stared at each other across the candle flame so short a while ago there had been something that was different, something that heartened her but frightened her — fury which could find no words, determination which would stop at nothing. For the first time, she felt a kinship with the people about her, felt one with them in their fears, their bitterness, their determination. No, it wasn’t to be borne! The South was too beautiful a place to be let go without a struggle, too loved to be trampled by Yankees who hated Southerners enough to enjoy grinding them into the dirt, too dear a homeland to be turned over to ignorant people drunk with whisky and freedom. As she thought of Tony’s sudden entrance and swift exit, she felt herself akin to him, for she remembered the old story how her father had left Ireland, left hastily and by night, after a murder which was no murder to him or to his family. Gerald’s blood was in her, violent blood. She remembered her hot joy in shooting the marauding Yankee. Violent blood was in them all, perilously close to the surface, lurking just beneath the kindly courteous exteriors. All of them, all the men she knew, even the drowsy-eyed Ashley and fidgety old Frank, were like that underneath — murderous, violent if the need arose. Even Rhett, conscienceless scamp that he was, had killed a man for being “uppity to a lady.

All about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged. The Captains of the West were foundering in a gathering sea. The sun gleamed red, and under the wings of the Nazgul the shadows of death fell dark upon the earth. Aragorn stood beneath his banner, silent and stern, as one lost in thought of things long past or far away; but his eyes gleamed like stars that shine the brighter as the night deepens. Upon the hill-top stood Gandalf, and he was white and cold and no shadow fell on him. The onslaught of Mordor broke like a wave on the beleaguered hills, voices roaring like a tide amid the wreck and crash of arms. As if to his eyes some sudden vision had been given, Gandalf stirred; and he turned, looking back north where the skies were pale and clear. Then he lifted up his hands and cried in a loud voice ringing above the din: The Eagles are coming! And many voices answered crying: The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming! The hosts of Mordor looked up and wondered what this sign might mean. There came Gwaihir the Windlord, and Landroval his brother, greatest of all the Eagles of the North, mightiest of the descendants of old Thorondor, who built his eyries in the inaccessible peaks of the Encircling Mountains when Middle-earth was young. Behind them in long swift lines came all their vassals from the northern mountains, speeding on a gathering wind. Straight down upon the Nazgul they bore, stooping suddenly out of the high airs, and the rush of their wide wings as they passed over was like a gale. But the Nazgul turned and fled, and vanished into Mordor's shadows, hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower; and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them; and now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid. Then all the Captains of the West cried aloud, for their hearts were filled with a new hope in the midst of darkness. Out from the beleaguered hills knights of Gondor, Riders of Rohan, Dunedain of the North, close-serried companies, drove against their wavering foes, piercing the press with the thrust of bitter spears. But Gandalf lifted up his arms and called once more in a clear voice: 'Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.' And even as he spoke the earth rocked beneath their feet. Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire. The earth groaned and quaked. The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered, and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise. 'The realm of Sauron is ended!' said Gandalf. 'The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest.' And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell. The Captains bowed their heads...

He told stories to help Two Mothers overcome childish fear. "Now,my son, why do you fear the storm? It is only the warriors of thunder and lightning. When you are tempted to be afraid, remember that God tells the lightning where it may go.Pretend that the noise and the light are from two warriors called Thunder and Lightning. They ride beautiful, swift ponies and carry lightning in their hands.As they race the wind,their ponies' hooves strike the clouds.That is the thunder.When they throw their lightning sticks, it flashes brightly in the sky.When God says 'Enough!' the warriors ride down to the earth, bringing the rain to water their ponies." "Have you ever seen the ponies, Father?" "Once, when I was hunting in the Black Hills, I thought I caught a glimpse of them. But before Wind and I could catch them, they rose again into the sky, taking the thunder and lightning with them to another place.

Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm [...]. [...] Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. [...] Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet [...] was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: "now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors". Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more. [...] Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought! [...] School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts? [...] The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour. [...] Life becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang, boff, and wow!

And now, for the first time, the Lion was quite silent. He was going to and fro among the animals. And every now and then he would go up to two of them (always two at a time) and touch their noses with his. He would touch two beavers among all the beavers, two leopards among all the leopards, one stag and one deer among all the deer, and leave the rest. Some sorts of animal he passed over altogether. But the pairs which he had touched instantly left their own kinds and followed him. At last he stood still and all the creatures whom he had touched came and stood in a wide circle around him. The others whom he had not touched began to wander away. Their noises faded gradually into the distance. The chosen beasts who remained were now utterly silent, all with their eyes fixed intently upon the Lion. The cat-like ones gave an occasional twitch of the tail but otherwise all were still. For the first time that day there was complete silence, except for the noise of running water. Digory’s heart beat wildly; he knew something very solemn was going to be done. He had not forgotten about his Mother, but he knew jolly well that, even for her, he couldn’t interrupt a thing like this. The Lion, whose eyes never blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if he was going to burn them up with his mere stare. And gradually a change came over them. The smaller ones—the rabbits, moles, and such-like—grew a good deal larger. The very big ones—you noticed it most with the elephants—grew a little smaller. Many animals sat up on their hind legs. Most put their heads on one side as if they were trying very hard to understand. The Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it; he was breathing out, a long, warm breath; it seemed to sway all the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees. Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.

The Calf Path One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bell-wethers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made. And many men wound in and out, And dodged, and turned, and bent about And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ’twas such a crooked path.15 But still they followed—do not laugh— The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked, Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again; This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way, And lost one hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach, Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. They keep the path a sacred groove, Along which all their lives they move. But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah! Many things this tale might teach— But I am not ordained to preach. —Sam Walter Foss

The group is a concept of uncommunicable shared suffering, a concept that ultimately rejects the agency of words. For shared suffering, more than anything else, is the ultimate opponent of verbal expression. Not even the mightiest Weltschmerz in the heart of the solitary writer, billowing upwards to the starry heavens like some great circus tent, can create a community of shared suffering. For though verbal expression may convey pleasure or grief, it cannot convey shared pain; though pleasure may be readily fired by ideas, only bodies, placed under the same circumstances, can experience a common suffering. Only through the group, I realised—through sharing the suffering of the group—could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of the individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary—the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it on to ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death, which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors… . In the dim light of early morning I was running, one of a group. A cotton towel with the symbol of a red sun on it was tied about my forehead, and I was stripped to the waist in the freezing air. Through the common suffering, the shared cries of encouragement, the shared pace, and the chorus of voices, I felt the slow emergence, like the sweat that gradually beaded my skin, of that “tragic” quality that is the affirmation of identity. It was a flame of the flesh, flickering up faintly beneath the biting breeze—a flame, one might almost say, of nobility. The sense of surrendering one’s body to a cause gave new life to the muscles. We were united in seeking death and glory; it was not merely my personal quest. The pounding of the heart communicated itself to the group; we shared the same swift pulse. Self-awareness by now was as remote as the distant rumour of the town. I belonged to them, they belonged to me; the two formed an unmistakable “us.” To belong—what more intense form of existence could there be? Our small circle of oneness was a means to a vision of that vast, dimly gleaming circle of oneness. And—all the while foreseeing that this imitation of tragedy was, in the same way as my own narrow happiness, condemned to vanish with the wind, to resolve itself into nothing more than muscles that simply existed—I had a vision where something that, if I were alone, would have resolved back into muscles and words, was held fast by the power of the group and led me away to a far land, whence there would be no return. It was, perhaps, the beginning of my placing reliance on others, a reliance that was mutual; and each of us, by committing himself to this immeasurable power, belonged to the whole.