Tears Of A Tiger Quotes

People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

A tear dropped from my cheek to his forehead. "Please don't die," I whispered.

Do you know what courage is? I guess you don't. Do you know that the courage it took at that moment - to actually blow yourself away - was more than enough courage to keep on living?

Go ahead and cry, Andy. Don't be afraid of those tears. Sometimes they help to wash the soul clean.

But I'll always love you, and I'll always miss you and I'll never forget that It's okay to put dragons in the jungle and tears on a tiger

Having the Bargainer’s full attention is like catching a tiger’s eye. All you wanted to do was pet the creature, but as soon as it turns its gaze on you, you realize it’s simply going to tear you apart.

L'union libre [Freedom of Love]" My wife with the hair of a wood fire With the thoughts of heat lightning With the waist of an hourglass With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes With the tongue of an unbelievable stone My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof And of steam on the panes My wife with shoulders of champagne And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice My wife with wrists of matches My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts With fingers of mown hay My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut And of Midsummer Night Of privet and of an angelfish nest With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill My wife with legs of flares With the movements of clockwork and despair My wife with calves of eldertree pith My wife with feet of initials With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking My wife with a neck of unpearled barley My wife with a throat of the valley of gold Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent With breasts of night My wife with breasts of a marine molehill My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days With the belly of a gigantic claw My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically With a back of quicksilver With a back of light With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking My wife with hips of a skiff With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers And of shafts of white peacock plumes Of an insensible pendulum My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos My wife with buttocks of swans' backs My wife with buttocks of spring With the sex of an iris My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat My wife with a sex of mirror My wife with eyes full of tears With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle My wife with savanna eyes My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

Not willingly," admitted the tiger. "But here is the alternative; either you transform yourself into an eye for our child, or I and my dear wife will tear you into shreds.

The place didn't look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.

I know people will say that it's because of the accident that I came back to church-well, they're right. I'm not too proud to know when a problem is bigger than I am.

No remedy but love Can make the lovesick well; Only the hand that tied the knot Can loose the tiger’s bell.

Your every emotion goes right over the top with a big audience. It's either laughter or tears, with no in-between. Those tigers in zoos, they must have a big opera all the time.

...tears and rain are the same thing, they're meant to wash you clean and make you grow. If you don't let them out, you'll drown inside.

I sit in the moon-viewing pavilion, the hem of my sleeves wet from tears, and I cannot see for the grief has stolen my eyes, and I cannot speak for the grief has stolen my tongue.

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell. Falling in love is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin. Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in. I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine, in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze, staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud, from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream. "You

I felt my resolve crumbling. I wanted him, wanted him badly. I needed him too. I almost gave in. I almost told him that there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be with him. That I didn’t think I was capable of leaving him. That he was more precious to me than anything. That I’d give up anything to be with him. But then he pressed me close and spoke softly in my ear, “Pease don’t leave me, priya. I don’t think I could survive without you.” My eyes filled up with tears, and shiny wet drops spilled down my cheeks. I touched his face. “Don’t you see, Ren? That’s exactly why I have to go. You need to know that you can survive without me. That there’s more to life than just me. You need to see this world that’s opened up to you and know that you have choices. I refuse to be your cage. “I could capture you and keep you selfishly to indulge my own desires. Regardless of whether you’re willing or not, it would be wrong. I helped you so that you could be free. Free to see and do all of the things that you missed out on all these years.” My hand slipped from his cheek to his neck. “Should I put a collar on you? Chain you up so you spend your life connected to me out of a sense of obligation?” I shook my head. I wept openly now. “I’m sorry, Ren, but I won’t do that to you. I can’t. Because…I love you too.” I kissed him quickly one last time.

When all the stories and the songs were Tiger’s, that was a bad time for everyone. People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song. And in Tiger times all the songs were dark. They began in tears, and they’d end in blood, and they were the only stories that the people of this world knew.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky commented on Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, when unborn children were ripped from their mothers’ wombs and prisoners were nailed by their ears to a fence overnight before being hanged: “People speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals. No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it.”89

I saw my mother's face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father's brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it, I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel's tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.

Time is the thing I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.

If I could believe," said Rhoda, "that I should grow old in pursuit and change, I should be rid of my fear: nothing persists. One moment does not lead to another. The door opens and the tiger leaps. You do not see me come...I cannot make one moment merge in the next. To me they are all violent, all separate; and if I fall under the shock of the leap of the moment you will be on me, tearing me to pieces. I have no end in view. I do not know how to run minute to minute, and hour to hour, solving them by some natural force until they make the whole and indivisible mass that you call life. Because you have an end in view--one person, is it, to sit beside, an idea is it, your beauty is it? I do not know--your days and hours pass like the boughs of forest trees and the smooth green of forest rides to a hound running in the scent... But since I wish above all things to have lodgment, I pretend, as I go upstairs lagging behind Jinny and Susan, to have an end in view. I pull on my stockings as I see them pull on theirs. I wait for you to speak and then speak like you. I am drawn here across London to a particular spot, to a particular place, not to see you or you or you, but to light my fire at the general blaze of you who love wholly, indivisibly, and without caring in the moment.

All right now. That’s it!” the Irish priest snapped from the front of the church. “We’ll have none of that grizzly shit in this holy house of my Lord. And you, badger, find a seat somewhere else.” When Freddy didn’t move, the tiger priest warned, “Don’t make me tear that puny head from your shoulders, my good lad. Because we both know I will, now don’t we?

Be the man who has the spirit of a ruthless tiger, ravaging every dusty corner of my soul. Be the man for whom I will tame myself voluntarily.. Be the man who can make me forget my birth date in moments of utter dellusion. Be the man whose arms are my harbor, whose lips are my shore, and whose name is my only salvation. Be the man who erases my past and draws my future with trails of roses and kisses. Be the man who makes me sigh behind the windows of Poetry, longing to be written. Be the man whose cigarette's ashes are confounded with mine. Be the man whose voice moves mountains inside me. Be the man whose eyes devour the innocence within me with every piercing glance. Be the man for whom I will transform exceptions into rules. Be the man who will dare to tear this poem from my hands. The man who will rewrite with the uncertainty of the futur every single one of my verses.

Once when I was young-maybe more than once-when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage. As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophie, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectful toward me. When I mentioned I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests. "Oh dear, it's just a misunderstanding. Amy was speaking metaphorically-right, Amy? you didn't actually call Sophie 'garbage.'" "Um, yes I did. But it's all in the context," I tried to explain. "It's a Chinese immigrant thing.

And he became more and more miserable, until he felt he would explode like a New Year firecracker, where powder is packed into a paper cylinder, and remains quiet until the fuse is lit and it tears itself apart in the explosion.

Life sometimes has his own truces. When it can look itself in the mirror, half smiling, loosened, half partnered, not asking for anything but to be alive and feel good in it's own skin, while listening the sound of the night bird. But those truces are rare: tigers, which live in various machines of our beings, wake up soon and start to tear each other apart.

My mind is cloudy. My heart is bloody, and my soul is on ice.

The salty fluid of life... the crystal-clear blood of the earth... That's what it is, Farhad. Tears. - Nitish

As you go forward, then, remember this: most men are hunters and collectors. You must come to know the difference between those who do so out of true appreciation and affection, those who do it for sport, those who do it for prestige and to possess what others admire and desire, and those who do it desperate to use a woman as a shield. The fourth man is hiding something. The third man can be like a dog that teases others in it's kennel with the bone it will never share. That kind of man might tear his object of affection to shreds, without meaning to, just as a dog would a bone. The second man can amuse you with the game of the hunt, if you do not take him too seriously. and the first? Well, if you can find the first kind of man, you have found heaven.

By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, -too; cutting the unborn child from the mothers womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.

As you say," Tyrion grinned. "If I were Volantene, and free, and had the blood, you'd have my vote for triarch, my lady." "I am no lady," the widow replied, "just Vogarro's whore. You want to be gone from here before the tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis." She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. "Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon.

This was not going the way I wanted it to. I felt a desperate need to escape before I said something that would screw up my plans. Ren was the dark side, the forbidden fruit, my personal Delilah-the ultimate temptation. The question was…could I resist? I gave his knee a friendly pat and played my trump card…”I’m leaving.” “You’re what?” “I’m going home to Oregon. Mr. Kadam thinks it will be safer for me anyway, with Lokesh out there looking to kill us and all. Besides, you need time to figure out…stuff.” “If you’re leaving, then I’m going with you!” I smiled at him wryly. “That kind of defeats the purpose of me leaving. Don’t you think?” He slicked back his hair, let out a deep breath, then took my hand and looked intently into my eyes. “Kells, when are you going to accept the fact that we belong together?” I felt sick, like I was kicking a faithful puppy who only wanted to be loved. I looked out at the pool. After a moment, he sat back scowling and said menacingly, “I won’t let you leave.” Inside, I desperately wanted to take his hand and beg him to forgive me, to love me, but I steeled myself, dropped my hands in my lap, then implored, “Ren, please. You have to let me go. I need…I’m afraid…look, I just can’t be here, near you, when you change your mind.” “It’s not going to happen.” “it might. There’s a good chance.” He growled angrily. “There’s no chance!” “Well, my heart can’t take that risk, and I don’t want to put you in what can only be an awkward position. I’m sorry, Ren. I really am. I do want to be your friend, but I understand if you don’t want that. Of course, I’ll return when you need me, if you need me, to help you find the other three gifts. I wouldn’t abandon you or Kishan in that way. I just can’t stay here with you feeling obligated to pity-date me because you need me. But I’d never abandon your cause. I’ll always be there for you both, no matter what.” He spat out, “Pity-date! You? Kelsey, you can’t be serious!” “I am. Very, very serious. I’ll ask Mr. Kadam to make arrangements to send me back in the next few days.” He didn’t say another word. He just sat back in his chair. I could tell he was fuming mad, but I felt that, after a week or two, when he started getting back out in the world, he would come to appreciate my gesture. I looked away from him. “I’m very tired now. I’d like to go to bed.” I got up and headed to my room. Before I closed the sliding door, I asked, “Can I make one last request?” He sat there tight-lipped, his arms folded over his chest, with a tense, angry face. I sighed. Even infuriated he was beautiful. He said nothing so I went on, “It would be a lot easier on me if I didn’t see you, I mean as a man. I’ll try to avoid most of the house. It is yours after all, so I’ll stay in my room. If you see Mr. Kadam, please tell him I’d like to speak with him.” He didn’t respond. “Well, good-bye, Ren. Take care of yourself.” I tore my eyes away from him, shut the door, and drew the curtains. Take care of yourself? That was a lame goodbye. Tears welled in my eyes and blurred my vision. I was proud that I’d gotten through it without showing emotion. But, now, I felt like a steamroller had come along and flattened me.

Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness

Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.

YORK. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth, How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex To triumph, like an Amazonian trull, Upon their woes whom fortune captivates! But that thy face is, vizard-like, unchanging, Made impudent with use of evil deeds, I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush. To tell thee whence thou cam'st, of whom deriv'd, Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless. Thy father bears the type of King of Naples, Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem, Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman. Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult? It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen; Unless the adage must be verified, That beggars mounted run their horse to death. 'T is beauty that doth oft make women proud; But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small. 'T is virtue that doth make them most admir'd; The contrary doth make thee wond'red at. 'T is government that makes them seem divine; The want thereof makes thee abominable. Thou art as opposite to every good As the Antipodes are unto us, Or as the south to the Septentrion. O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide! How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child, To bid the father wipe his eyes withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman's face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. Bid'st thou me rage? why, now thou hast thy wish: Wouldst have me weep? why, now thou hast thy will; For raging wind blows up incessant showers, And when the rage allays the rain begins. These tears are my sweet Rutland's obsequies, And every drop cries vengeance for his death, 'Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

Junghuhn saw an immense field entirely covered with skeletons, and took it to be a battlefield. However they were nothing but skeletons of large turtles, five feet long, three feet broad, and of equal height. These turtles come this way from the sea, in order to lay their eggs, and are then seized by wild dogs (canis rutilans); with their united strength, these dogs lay them on their backs, tear open their lower armour, the small scales of the belly, and devour them alive. But then a tiger often pounces on the dogs. Now all this misery is repeated thousands and thousands of times, year in, year out. For this then, are these turtles born. For what offence must they suffer this agony? What is the point of the whole scene of horror? The only answer is that the will-to-live [the world-will] thus objectifies itself.

The sun descending in the west, The evening star does shine; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine. The moon, like a flower, In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night. Farewell, green fields and happy groves, Where flocks have took delight. Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves The feet of angels bright; Unseen they pour blessing, And joy without ceasing, On each bud and blossom, And each sleeping bosom. They look in every thoughtless nest, Where birds are covered warm; They visit caves of every beast, To keep them all from harm. If they see any weeping That should have been sleeping, They pour sleep on their head, And sit down by their bed. When wolves and tigers howl for prey, They pitying stand and weep; Seeking to drive their thirst away, And keep them from the sheep. But if they rush dreadful, The angels, most heedful, Receive each mild spirit, New worlds to inherit. And there the lion's ruddy eyes Shall flow with tears of gold, And pitying the tender cries, And walking round the fold, Saying, 'Wrath, by His meekness, And, by His health, sickness Is driven away From our immortal day. 'And now beside thee, bleating lamb, I can lie down and sleep; Or think on Him who bore thy name, Graze after thee and weep. For, washed in life's river, My bright mane for ever Shall shine like the gold As I guard o'er the fold. - "Night

Gregori brought Savannah's hand to the warmth of his mouth,his breath heating the pulse beating in her wrist. The night is especially beautiful, mon petit amour.Your hero saved the girl, walks among humans, and converses with a fool.That alone should bring a smile to your face.Do not weep for what we cannot change.We will make certain that this human with us comes to no harm. Are you my hero,then? There were tears in her voice, in her mind, like an iridescent prism. She needed him, his comfort,his support under her terrible weight of guilt and love and loss. Always,for all eternity, he answered instantly,without hesitation, his eyes hot mercury. He tipped her chin up so that she met the brilliance of his silver gaze.Always, mon amour.His molten gaze trapped her blue one and held her enthralled. Your heart grows lighter.The burden of your sorrow becomes my own. He held her gaze captive for a few moments to ensure that she was free of the heaviness crushing her. Savannah blinked and moved a little away from him, wondering what she had been thinking of.What had they been talking about? "Gary." Gregori drawled the name slowly and sat back in his chair,totally relaxed. He looked like a sprawling tiger,dangerous and untamed. "Tell us about yourself." "I work a lot.I'm not married. I'm really not much of a people person. I'm basically a nerd." Gregori shifted, a subtle movement of muscles suggesting great power. "I am not familiar with this term." "Yeah,well,you wouldn't be," Gary said. "It means I have lots of brains and no brawn.I don't do the athlete thing. I'm into computers and chess and things requiring intellect. Women find me skinny,wimpy,and boring. Not something they would you." There was no bitterness in his voice,just a quiet acceptance of himself,his life. Gregori's white teeth flashed. "There is only one woman who matters to me, Gary, and she finds me difficult to live with.I cannot imagine why,can you?" "Maybe because you're jealous, possessive, concerned with every single detail of her life?" Gary plainly took the question literally, offering up his observations without judgement. "You're probably domineering,too. I can see that. Yeah.It might be tough." Savannah burst out laughing, the sound musical, rivaling the street musicians. People within hearing turned their heads and held their breath, hoping for more. "Very astute, Gary.Very, very astute. I bet you have an anormous IQ." Gregori stirred again, the movement a ripple of power,of danger. He was suddenly leaning into Gary. "You think you are intelligent? Baiting the wild animal is not too smart.

Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it.

He had not been sleeping well over Christmas. Actually, he hadn’t been doing anything well over Christmas – eating, sleeping, exercising, talking, looking after himself, laughing, crying… No, he hadn’t really been crying despite all the pain he felt. It was just tearing him up inside, quietly. It was like his insides were being ripped up by an angered tiger.

No more peeping through keyholes! No more mas turbating in the dark! No more public confessions! Unscrew the doors from their jambs! I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw, primary colors, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins. I’m sick of looking at cunts all tickled up, disguised, deformed, idealized. Cunts with nerve ends exposed. I don’t want to watch young virgins masturbating in the privacy of their boudoirs or biting their nails or tearing their hair or lying on a bed full of bread crumbs for a whole chapter. I want Madagascan funeral poles, with animal upon animal and at the top Adam and Eve, and Eve with a crude, honest slit between the legs. I want hermaphrodites who are real hermaphrodites, and not make-believes walking around with an atrophied penis or a dried-up cunt. I want a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels. The Bible a la King James, for example. Not the Bible of Wycliffe, not the Vulgate, not the Greek, not the Hebrew, but the glorious, death-dealing Bible that was created when the English language was in flower, when a vocabulary of twenty thousand words sufficed to build a monument for all time. A Bible written in Svenska or Tegalic, a Bible for the Hottentots or the Chinese, a Bible that has to meander through the trickling sands of French is no Bible-it is a counterfeit and a fraud. The King James Version was created by a race of bone-crushers. It revives the primitive mysteries, revives rape, murder, incest, revives epilepsy, sadism, megalomania, revives demons, angels, dragons, leviathans, revives magic, exorcism, contagion, incantation, revives fratricide, regicide, patricide, suicide, revives hypnotism, anarchism, somnambulism, revives the song, the dance, the act, revives the mantic, the chthonian, the arcane, the mysterious, revives the power, the evil, and the glory that is God. All brought into the open on a colossal scale, and so salted and spiced that it will last until the next Ice Age. A classic purity, then-and to hell with the Post Office authorities! For what is it enables the classics to live at all, if indeed they be living on and not dying as we and all about us are dying? What preserves them against the ravages of time if it be not the salt that is in them? When I read Petronius or Apuleius or Rabelais, how close they seem! That salty tang! That odor of the menagerie! The smell of horse piss and lion’s dung, of tiger’s breath and elephant’s hide. Obscenity, lust, cruelty, boredom, wit. Real eunuchs. Real hermaphrodites. Real pricks. Real cunts. Real banquets! Rabelais rebuilds the walls of Paris with human cunts. Trimalchio tickles his own throat, pukes up his own guts, wallows in his own swill. In the amphitheater, where a big, sleepy pervert of a Caesar lolls dejectedly, the lions and the jackals, the hyenas, the tigers, the spotted leopards are crunching real human boneswhilst the coming men, the martyrs and imbeciles, are walking up the golden stairs shouting Hallelujah!

It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute. My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.

Julius explained that the palace rooms where they stood were called Wunderkammers, or wonder rooms. Souvenirs of nature, of travels across continents and seas; jewels and skulls. A show of wealth, intellect, power. The first room had rose-colored glass walls, with rubies and garnets and bloodred drapes of damask. Bowls of blush quartz; semiprecious stone roses running the spectrum of red down to pink, a hard, glittering garden. The vaulted ceiling, a feature of all the ten rooms Julius and Cymbeline visited, was a trompe l'oeil of a rosy sky at down, golden light edging the morning clouds. The next room was of sapphire and sea and sky; lapis lazuli, turquoise and gold and silver. A silver mermaid lounged on the edge of a lapis lazuli bowl fashioned in the shape of an ocean. Venus stood aloft on the waves draped in pearls. There were gold fish and diamond fish and faceted sterling silver starfish. Silvered mirrors edged in silvered mirror. There were opals and aquamarines and tanzanite and amethyst. Seaweed bloomed in shades of blue-green marble. The ceiling was a dome of endless, pale blue. A jungle room of mica and marble followed, with its rain forest of cats made from tiger's-eye, yellow topaz birds, tortoiseshell giraffes with stubby horns of spun gold. Carved clouds of smoky quartz hovered over a herd of obsidian and ivory zebras. Javelinas of spotted pony hide charged tiny, life-sized dik-diks with velvet hides, and dazzling diamond antlers mingled with miniature stuffed sable minks. Agate columns painted a medley of dark greens were strung with faceted ropes of green gold. A room of ivory: bone, teeth, skulls, and velvet. A room crowded with columns all sheathed in mirrors, reflecting world maps and globes and atlases inlaid with silver, platinum, and white gold; the rubies and diamonds that were sometimes set to mark the location of a city or a town of conquest resembled blood and tears. A room dominated by a fireplace large enough to hold several people, upholstered in velvets and silks the colors of flame. Snakes of gold with orange sapphire and yellow topaz eyes coiled around the room's columns. Statues of smiling black men in turbans offering trays of every gem imaginable-emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz, diamond-stood at the entrance to a room upholstered in pistachio velvet, accented with malachite, called the Green Vault. Peridot wood nymphs attended to a Diana carved from a single pure crystal of quartz studded with tiny tourmalines. Jade tables, and jade lanterns. The royal jewels, blinding in their sparkling excess: crowns, tiaras, coronets, diadems, heavy ceremonial necklaces, rings, and bracelets that could span a forearm, surrounding the world's largest and most perfect green diamond. Above it all was a night sky of painted stars, with inlaid cut crystal set in a serious of constellations.

The poet is asking the tiger who made him, and how,” said Crowley, his chin buried deep under his collar. “ ‘What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?’ ” Only his eyes were visible, black pits reflecting the dancing fire. “He wrote two poems like that, you know—‘The Lamb’ and ‘The Tiger.’ One was made of sweetness and love, and one was forged from terror and death.” Crowley looked at me, his eyes dark and heavy. “ ‘When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears—did he smile, his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?

King of Qin, rides a tiger, touring eight poles Sword's light shining in empty sky from jade Xihe strikes the sun, as glass is sounded Robbed ashes fly to ends, past, present level Dragon head, flows out wine, inviting wine star Golden groove, pipa in the night: “cheng cheng” Dongting rain, upon the feet, comes blowing sheng Wine hearty, drinking moon, causes change of shape Silver clouds, dense and denser, jade temple bright Palace gates, holding affairs, announces one watch Flower house, jade phoenix, sounds seductive, fierce Sea silk fabric, red text, fragrance shallow, clear Yellow beauty, stumbles dance, thousand year vessel Celestial being, candle’s plant wax smoking lightly Goddess of Qing, drunk, tears of deepest waters

One day, fearing that I was coming down with the flu, I stopped by Bowerman’s office to say that I wouldn’t be able to practice that afternoon. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Who’s the coach of this team?” “You are.” “Well, as coach of this team I’m telling you to get your ass out there. And by the way . . . we’re going to have a time trial today.” I was close to tears. But I held it together, channeled all my emotion into my run, and posted one of my best times of the year. As I walked off the track I glowered at Bowerman. Happy now, you son of a—? He looked at me, checked his stopwatch, looked at me again, nodded. He’d tested me. He’d broken me down and remade me, just like a pair of shoes. And I’d held up. Thereafter, I was truly one of his Men of Oregon. From that day on, I was a tiger.

Your Eve was wise, John. She knew that Paradise would make her mad, if she were to live forever with Adam and know no other thing but strawberries and tigers and rivers of milk. She knew they would tire of these things, and each other. They would grow to hate every fruit, every stone, every creature they touched. Yet where could they go to find any new thing? It takes strength to live in Paradise and not collapse under the weight of it. It is every day a trial. And so Eve gave her lover the gift of time, time to the timeless, so that they could grasp at happiness. ... And this is what Queen Abir gave to us, her apple in the garden, her wisdom--without which we might all have leapt into the Rimal in a century. The rite bears her name still. For she knew the alchemy of demarcation far better than any clock, and decreed that every third century husbands and wives should separate, customs should shift and parchmenters become architects, architects farmers of geese and monkeys, Kings should become fishermen, and fishermen become players of scenes. Mothers and fathers should leave their children and go forth to get other sons and daughters, or to get none if that was their wish. On the roads of Pentexore folk might meet who were once famous lovers, or a mother and child of uncommon devotion--and they would laugh, and remember, but call each other by new names, and begin again as friends, or sisters, or lovers, or enemies. And some time hence all things would be tossed up into the air once more and land in some other pattern. If not for this, how fastened, how frozen we would be, bound to one self, forever a mother, forever a child. We anticipate this refurbishing of the world like children at a holiday. We never know what we will be, who we will love in our new, brave life, how deeply we will wish and yearn and hope for who knows what impossible thing! Well, we anticipate it. There is fear too, and grief. There is shaking, and a worry deep in the bone. Only the Oinokha remains herself for all time--that is her sacrifice for us. There is sadness in all this, of course--and poets with long elegant noses have sung ballads full of tears that break at one blow the hearts of a flock of passing crows! But even the most ardent lover or doting father has only two hundred years to wait until he may try again at the wheel of the world, and perhaps the wheel will return his wife or his son to him. Perhaps not. Wheels, and worlds, are cruel. Time to the timeless, apples to those who live without hunger. There is nothing so sweet and so bitter, nothing so fine and so sharp.

You see, the penis, it's so graceless, wouldn't you agree? When it's cold and shrivelled up, it looks like W.H. Auden in his old age; when it's hot, it flops and dangles about in a ridiculous way; when it's excited, it looks so pained and earnest you'd think it was going to burst into tears. And the scrotum! To think that something so vital to the survival of the species, fully responsible for 50 per cent of the ingredients--though none of the work--should hang freely from the body in a tiny, defenceless bag of skin. One whack, one bite, one paw-scratch--and it's just the right level, too, for your average animal, a dog, a lion, a sabre-tooth tiger--and that's it, end of story. Don't you think it should get better protection? Behind some bone, for example, like us? What could be better than our nicely tapered entrance? It's discreet and stylish, everything is cleverly and compactly encased in the body, with nothing hanging out within easy reach of a closing subway door, there's a neat triangle of hair above it, like a road sign, should you lose your way--it's perfect. The penis is just such a lousy design. It's pre-Scandinavian. Pre-Bauhaus, even.

The Rabbit The rabbit wanted to grow. God promised to increase his size if he would bring him the skins of a tiger, of a monkey, of a lizard, and of a snake. The rabbit went to visit the tiger. “God has let me into a secret,” he said confidentially. The tiger wanted to know it, and the rabbit announced an impending hurricane. “I’ll save myself because I’m small. I’ll hide in some hole. But what’ll you do? The hurricane won’t spare you.” A tear rolled down between the tiger’s mustaches. “I can think of only one way to save you,” said the rabbit. “We’ll look for a tree with a very strong trunk. I’ll tie you to the trunk by the neck and paws, and the hurricane won’t carry you off.” The grateful tiger let himself be tied. Then the rabbit killed him with one blow, stripped him, and went on his way into the woods of the Zapotec country. He stopped under a tree in which a monkey was eating. Taking a knife, the rabbit began striking his own neck with the blunt side of it. With each blow of the knife, a chuckle. After much hitting and chuckling, he left the knife on the ground and hopped away. He hid among the branches, on the watch. The monkey soon climbed down. He examined the object that made one laugh, and he scratched his head. He seized the knife and at the first blow fell with his throat cut. Two skins to go. The rabbit invited the lizard to play ball. The ball was of stone. He hit the lizard at the base of the tail and left him dead. Near the snake, the rabbit pretended to be asleep. Just as the snake was tensing up, before it could jump, the rabbit plunged his claws into its eyes. He went to the sky with the four skins. “Now make me grow,” he demanded. And God thought, “The rabbit is so small, yet he did all this. If I make him bigger, what won’t he do? If the rabbit were big, maybe I wouldn’t be God.” The rabbit waited. God came up softly, stroked his back, and suddenly caught him by the ears, whirled him about, and threw him to the ground. Since then the rabbit has had big ears, short front feet from having stretching them out to break his fall, and pink eyes from panic. (92)

Steve was a warrior in every sense of the word, but battling wildlife perpetrators just wasn’t the same as old-fashioned combat. Because Steve’s knees continued to deteriorate, his surfing ability was severely compromised. Instead of giving up in despair, Steve sought another outlet for all his pent-up energy. Through our head of security, Dan Higgins, Steve discovered mixed martial arts (or MMA) fighting. Steve was a natural at sparring. His build was unbelievable, like a gorilla’s, with his thick chest, long arms, and outrageous strength for hugging things (like crocs). Once he grabbed hold of something, there was no getting away. He had a punch equivalent to the kick of a Clydesdale, he could just about lift somebody off the ground with an uppercut, and he took to grappling as a wonderful release. Steve never did anything by halves. I remember one time the guys were telling him that a good body shot could really wind someone. Steve suddenly said, “No one’s given me a good body shot. Try to drop me with a good one so I know what it feels like.” Steve opened up his arms and Dan just pile drove him. Steve said, in between gasps, “Thanks, mate. That was great, I get your point.” I would join in and spar or work the pads, or roll around until I was absolutely exhausted. Steve would go until he threw up. I’ve never seen anything like it. Some MMA athletes are able to seek that dark place, that point of total exhaustion--they can see it, stare at it, and sometimes get past it. Steve ran to it every day. He wasn’t afraid of it. He tried to get himself to that point of exhaustion so that maybe the next day he could get a little bit further. Soon we were recruiting the crew, anyone who had any experience grappling. Guys from the tiger department or construction were lining up to have a go, and Steve would go through the blokes one after another, grappling away. And all the while I loved it too. Here was something else that Steve and I could do together, and he was hilarious. Sometimes he would be cooking dinner, and I’d come into the kitchen and pat him on the bum with a flirtatious look. The next thing I knew he had me in underhooks and I was on the floor. We’d be rolling around, laughing, trying to grapple each other. It’s like the old adage when you’re watching a wildlife documentary: Are they fighting or mating? It seems odd that this no-holds-barred fighting really brought us closer, but we had so much fun with it. Steve finally built his own dojo on a raised concrete pad with a cage, shade cloth, fans, mats, bags, and all that great gear. Six days a week, he would start grappling at daylight, as soon as the guys would get into work. He had his own set of techniques and was a great brawler in his own right, having stood up for himself in some of the roughest, toughest, most remote outback areas. Steve wasn’t intimidated by anyone. Dan Higgins brought a bunch of guys over from the States, including Keith Jardine and other pros, and Steve couldn’t wait to tear into them. He held his own against some of the best MMA fighters in the world. I always thought that if he’d wanted to be a fighter as a profession, he would have been dangerous. All the guys heartily agreed.

It will be a war between an elephant and a tiger. If the tiger ever stands still the elephant will crush him with his mighty tusks. But the tiger does not stand still. He lurks in the jungle by day and emerges only at night. He will leap upon the back of the elephant, tearing huge chunks from his hide, and then he will leap back into the dark jungle. And slowly the elephant will bleed to death. That will be the war of Indochina.”39

The thought turned him topsy-turvy. It seemed to summarize the whole worthless way of the world--if there was one. And versions of it began to flutter wildly through his head. You have to look round to see straight. Good enough. Useful. And the rough places plain. But all that's geometry. But it measures the earth. You have to go slow to catch up. Eat to get thin? no, but fast to grow fat, that was a fine one. Then lose to win? fail to succeed? Risky. Stop to begin. The form made noiseless music--lumly lum lum or lum-lee-lee lum--like fill to empty, every physical extreme. Die to live was a bit old hat. But default to repay. And lie to be honest. He liked the ring of that. Flack! I'm white in order to be black. Sin first and saint later. Cruel to be kind, of course, and the hurts in the hurter--that's what they say--a lot of blap. That's my name, my nomination: Saint Later. Now then: humble to be proud; poor to be rich. Enslave to make free? That moved naturally. Also multiply to subtract. Dee dee dee. Young Saint Later. A list of them, as old as Pythagoras had. Even engenders odd. How would that be? Eight is five and three. There were no middle-aged saints--they were all old men or babies. Ah, god--the wise fool. The simpleton sublime. Babe in the woods, roach in the pudding, prince in the pauper, enchanted beauty in the toad. This was the wisdom of the folk and the philosopher alike--the disorder of the lyre, or the drawn-out bow of that sane madman, the holy Heraclitus. The poet Zeno. The logician Keats. Discovery after discovery: the more the mice eat, the fatter the cats. There were tears and laughter, for instance--how they shook and ran together into one gay grief. Dumb eloquence, swift still waters, shallow deeps. Let's see: impenitent remorse, careless anxiety, heedless worry, tense repose. So true of tigers. Then there was the friendly enmity of sun and snow, and the sweet disharmony of every union, the greasy mate of cock and cunt, the cosmic poles, war that's peace, the stumble that's an everlasting poise and balance, spring and fall, love, strife, health, disease, and the cold duplicity of Number One and all its warm divisions. The sameness that's in difference. The limit that's limitless. The permanence that's change. The distance of the near at home. So--to roam, stay home. Then pursue to be caught, submit to conquer. Method--ancient--of Chinese. To pacify, inflame. Love, hate. Kiss, kill. In, out, up, down, start, stop. Ah . . . from pleasure, pain. Like circumcision of the heart. Judgement and mercy. Sin and grace. It little mattered; everything seemed to Furber to be magically right, and his heart grew fat with satisfaction. Therefore there is good in every evil; one must lower away to raise; seek what's found to mourn its loss; conceive in stone and execute in water; turn profound and obvious, miraculous and commonplace, around; sin to save; destroy in order to create; live in the sun, though underground. Yes. Doubt in order to believe--that was an old one--for this the square IS in the circle. O Phaedo, Phaedo. O endless ending. Soul is immortal after all--at last it's proved. Between dead and living there's no difference but the one has whiter bones. Furber rose, the mosquitoes swarming around him, and ran inside.

Every once in a while goannas sauntered right through camp. As I chopped vegetables that first night, a big lacey showed up. “Grab it,” Steve said to me. I dropped what I was doing and picked up the lizard. John and his crew went into action. I told the camera everything I knew about lace monitors. “Lace monitors are excellent tree climbers,” I said. “They can grow up to seven feet long, but this guy looks to be between four and five feet.” I spoke about the lizard’s predatory nature and diet. Meanwhile, the star of the show flicked his forked tongue in and out. After we got some footage, I put the huge lizard down, and Steve leaned his head into the camera frame to have a last word. “And they’ve also got teeth like a tiger shark, mate,” he said with relish. “They can tear you to ribbons!” “Thanks a lot,” I said, laughing, after John stopped filming. “You should have told me that before I picked the bloody thing up!” It was a brave new world that I found myself in. At night I would hear the sounds of the fruit bats as they came into the trees. Also in the mix were the strange, far-off grunts of the koalas as they sang out their mating calls. Herds of wild pigs passed right behind the tent. Venturing outside in the middle of the night with my dunny roll to go use a bush was a daunting experience.

What I could offer Lisa was not the conventional haven of maternal love and concern but my mind and my energy. If she had not acquired these genetically then I was quite prepared to show her how to think and act. I was no good at kissing away tears or telling bedtime stories – any mother can do that: my uses were potentially far more significant.

Ancient Greek mythology claims that Dionysus, the god of wine, had been insulted by a passing mortal and swore that you would take revenge on the next one that came this way. He conjured up a team of ferocious tigers just as a beautiful young maiden was approaching. The maiden’s name was Amethyst, and she was on her way to pay tribute to the goddess Artemis. As Dionysus released the Tigers, Artemis turned Amethyst into a statue of pure crystalline to protect her from the tiger’s claws. Upon seeing the beautiful statue, Dionisio wept wine–filled tears of regret, which stained the statue a deep shade of purple. From that moment on, the amethyst stone was known to hold significant protective properties. Apparently, as the myth recounts, amethysts could even protect you from the wrath of gods themselves. - Dr. Davidson

At Gauristhalam, Bijala gave a stirring speech ; it was something Keki had made him practice for many days. He spoke about going deep into the jungle to catch this enemy of the country; how he hd wrestled with crocodiles in the river Mahishi, and tigers in the forest; how he had hiked up the ice-capped peaks of Gauriparvat to crawl into its caves and meditate on the future Mahishmathi. He talked about his sacrifices for the people-but he also made sure to talk about me he lost on the way. With tears on his eyes, he called the widows of soldiers who had died on the mission. The prince fell at their feet. 'Mothers,' he cried his voice quivering , his lips trembling with emotion. 'Your husbands were all brave men. I am a sinner. I couldn't save them . Every time a man died under my watch, I wanted to jump into the funeral pyre along with him. The only thing that kept me alive was the thought that I needed to apologie to you. Now that I have done so, allow me to jump into a pyre.

After the Old Man of the Moon told the magistrate that his son would marry the daughter of a grocer, Magistrate Tiger flew into a rage. With both hands he grabbed the page and tore it from the book. But before he could rip the page in two, the Old Man’s eyes stared into his and the light of the moon seemed to bind the magistrate still. As the silence hung in the air, Magistrate Tiger’s anger turned to fear. But, finally, the Old Man of the Moon nodded at him grimly. “Pages of the Book of Fortune do not tear easily, but that paper was being sent to you before I borrowed it,” the Old Man said. “So perhaps it is only fitting that you finally receive it. Take it. The Book has bestowed some extra qualities to it, though they will be as useless to you as the original paper would have been.” And without another word, the Old Man of the Moon stood up and walked away up the mountain. The magistrate could do nothing but stare, clutching the ripped paper in dumbfounded silence.

Everywhere we turn we are told we are wrong, that we must act the "right" way, that our own dreams and desires are either selfish or unattainable while the hopes and nightmares of the Spectral Cage must exist, even at the cost of our very lives. The tyrannical gods that would rob us of this freedom to freely give our care, love, and even fervour are the grand enemy of Egoism, wherever they might be found. They pervert the true feelings within us and make them empty rituals: instead of caring for those around me, I throw money at a church which quickly loses it, I stay home and meme for disaster relief instead of actually doing anything, I "adopt" a baby tiger or African child to "feed" instead of tearing down the very structures that cause them pain in the first place. We symbolically attack other symbols, our feelings perverted and funneled into empty vessels. The same rage that can rob a bank or burn down a building dissipates in a sea of metal masturbation and contests to determine who is the most "woke".

I love it. This is the best surprise ever, Tiger. No one has ever done something for me like this before.” She blinked back more tears. “Thank you.” His features smoothed out. “You are worth all the time I spent setting this up.” He carried her to the edge of the picnic spread and put her on her feet.

That is the dream - that someday we really will know our game, that golf won't always be lurking a few hundred more yards down the fairway. It isn't just a dream for the helpless golfhead. Everyone who has made contact with a golf ball understands a piece of the game's spirit. It's there as your hands fall towards the ball, just before your club tears the turf, when anything might happen and you can still wonder....what if? We confess it every time we tee it up, we speak it in our sleep, we feel it as we watch our ball go jumping off the screws - we love this game. What if we could give it everything just for a little while? How much would it love us back?

What is spoken of outside is not welcome inside, and vice versa. There are two spheres that must never meet, orbiting politely at a distance. With me in the middle, caught in the heavy gravity, slowly tearing apart.

The Storyteller The little boy stumbled through the forest. He was sure that wild animals were chasing him, and wanted to eat him. As he crashed through the undergrowth he suddenly emerged into a clearing. He looked around, fearing that he could hear animals, but all was quiet. The little boy walked further into the clearing. He saw a small stool with a book on it. He stopped, and looked around wondering who had left the stool, and the book there. He walked over to the stool, and picked up the book to look at it. Without thinking, he sat down, and opened the book. He started to read aloud. The only sound in the clearing was the little boy’s voice. He had forgotten about his earlier fear, and he had also stopped imagining that he could hear animals after him. Once he had finished reading the story he put the book down, and he said to the clearing, “I’ll come back tomorrow to read again.” The little boy left the clearing and reentered the forest. He wasn’t afraid anymore. It was if he had a new found confidence, and manner. The next day he returned, and found a different book on the stool, and as before, he sat down, and started to read. This went on for a week. After seven days animals started to come through the undergrowth, and entered the clearing. When they saw the boy, and heard his storytelling they would stop, find a place to sit down, and listen to him. One day he heard a roar behind him, and the little boy turned around, coming face to face with a tiger. “Shhh!” he told the tiger, and gave it a smack across the nose. The tiger was taken aback, but he did as he was told and he went to a tree. Then he too, sat and listened to the little boy. This went on for many years, and some animals died never to return, while others grew old as the little boy did. One day, when the little boy was no more but a little old man he died as he was reading one of his stories. The animals looked up, and listened to the silence. Wild dogs howled, elephants trumpeted their calls, birds tweeted and chirped, monkeys chatted and tigers roared as one. The tiger, who many years ago the little boy had smacked across the nose, carried the little boy, and laid him to rest under his tree. The animals lined up to pay their respects to the little boy who had devoted his life to reading to the animals. As they lined up, they were watched by God, Buddha, Allah and Ganesha, who were standing off to the side. They had tears in their eyes, not because the little boy had died, but because as each animal came to the body of the little boy, each animal would lay their head down on his chest, and shed tears over the boy’s body. Finally a small baby elephant came, and laid his head, and trunk down on the little boy’s body, and his tears flowed over the little boy’s chest. When the animals had left, there was an eerie silence over the clearing. Many, many years passed until one day, a small girl come running through the bushes, with a frightened look on her face. She stopped, and looked around the clearing. She saw a small stool, and so she walked over to it, wondering who would leave such a thing here in the forest. She sat down on the stool and looked down. She saw a box full of books. The little boy smiled.

The clatter of glass against metal woke Fran from the memory as the coffee jug loosened itself from her fingers and slid into the sink. She fought the pain back into its cage like a quarrelsome tiger – it was easier to handle when it was behind bars but something still wanted to escape. A feeling, a tear. That was it, she wanted to cry, to grieve. She would not. It wouldn’t bring him back. Nothing would change. Tears solved nothing. She’d still have papers in her briefcase to look over, she’d still have to meet her mother for dinner tomorrow and she’d still go to bed alone tonight. No, definitely no crying. She

A moment later, the clearing exploded. The first impact of a tiger attack does not come from the tiger itself, but from the roar, which, in addition to being loud like a jet, has an eerie capacity to fill the space around it, leaving one unsure where to look. From close range, the experience is overwhelming, and has the effect of separating you from yourself, of scrambling the very neurology that is supposed to save you at times like this. Those who have done serious tiger time—scientists and hunters—describe the tiger’s roar not as a sound so much as a full-body experience. Sober, disciplined biologists have sworn they felt the earth shake. One Russian hunter, taken by surprise, recalled thinking a dam had burst somewhere. In short, the tiger’s roar exists in the same sonic realm as a natural catastrophe; it is one of those sounds that give meaning and substance to “the fear of God.” The Udeghe, Yuri Pionka, described the roar of that tiger in the clearing as soul-rending. The literal translation from Russian is “soul-tearing-apart.” “I have heard tigers in the forest,” he said, “but I never heard anything like that. It was vicious; terrifying.

We will have to get you to the bed, Jacques.” Gregori’s voice dispelled the thick tension in the room, pushed it aside to replace it with clean, fragrant air. “Mikhail, I will need herbs. You know which ones. Tell Byron to bring me plenty of rich soil from the steam chamber in the caves.” Gregori glided closer to the couple, his graceful elegance failing to conceal the rippling strength of his muscles and the power emanating from his body. He looked totally confident, relaxed, completely fearless. The soft rumbling in Jacques’ throat increased; his fingers tightened possessively, crushing bones and tendon in Shea’s upper arm. Gregori stopped moving immediately. “I am sorry, woman, I know you are weak, but you will have to move to the other side of him or he will not allow me to help,” Gregori instructed calmly. What we need, Mikhail, is Raven’s calming influence. You look about as reassuring as a Bengal tiger. Oh, and you look like a bunny rabbit, Mikhail scoffed. “You could have brought Raven along,” Gregori chided softly, aloud. “You bring her along on every other dangerous thing she should not be involved in.” That was a clear reprimand. “You might have brought her where she could actually do some good.” Through the open doorway suddenly stepped a small woman, long ebony hair braided intricately, huge blue eyes flashing at Mikhail. As Byron shouldered his way inside behind her, she gave him a friendly smile and stood on her toes to brush his chin with a kiss. Mikhail stiffened, then immediately wrapped a possessive arm around her waist. “Carpathian women do not do that kind of thing,” he reprimanded her. She tilted her chin at him, in no way intimidated. “That’s because Carpathian males have such a territorial mentality--you know, a beat-their-chest, swing-from-the-trees sort of thing.” She turned her head to look at the couple lying on the floor. Her indrawn breath was audible. “Jacques.” She whispered his name, tears in her voice and in her blue eyes. “It really is you.” Eluding Mikhail’s outstretched, detaining hand, she ran to him.

People often describe such human cruelty as "bestial", but that's of course, unfair to animals, for no beast could ever be as cruel as man, I mean as refinedly and artistically cruel. The tiger simply gnaws and tears his victim to pieces because that's all he knows. It would never occur to a tiger to nail people to fences by their ears, even if he were able to do it.

We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes: You, Ernest, I. There is no freedom on the face of the earth nor above. The tiger that tears a lamb is not free, I am not free, you are not free. All that happens must happen; no word that is said is said in vain, in vain is raised no hand.

Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘beastly’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no beast could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it.

Because you have an instinctive horror at the idea of such a crime, to the point where it has never even entered your head,’ the old man continued. ‘For, in simple and permitted matters, our natural appetites warn us not to exceed the boundaries of what is permissible for us. The tiger, which spills blood in the natural course of things, because this is its state of being, its destiny, needs only for its sense of smell to inform it that a prey is within reach; immediately it leaps towards this prey, falls on it and tears it apart. That is its instinct, which it obeys. But mankind, on the contrary, is repelled by blood. It is not the laws of society that condemn murder, but the laws of nature.’ Dantès was struck dumb: this was indeed the explanation of what had gone on, without him knowing it, in his mind – or, rather, in his soul: some thoughts come from the head, others from the heart. Dumas, Alexandre. The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics) (p. 133). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

There are millions of people living in the United States – one of the richest countries on earth – who are denied access to basic health services, as are billions of other people. We are fishing the oceans so ferociously that stocks of many species are collapsing. Millions of sharks are caught, de-finned and then thrown back in the ocean to die each year. We are tearing down rain forests at breakneck pace. Rhinos, tigers and elephants are nearly extinct in the wild. Humans kill and eat 50 billion chickens per year. Humans pump gigatons of carbon from fossil fuels into the atmosphere each year knowing that it will cause a global catastrophe. Millions of humans are enslaved, and millions more are economically forced into the near-equivalent of slavery. Meanwhile, people in rich nations happily consume the products of these slaves without giving it a second thought.

The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

The French…wave flags for me,” Ho told an American reporter, “but it is a masquerade. We will have to fight.” It would be a war between the French elephant and the Vietnamese tiger, he said. If the tiger ever stands still the elephant will crush him with his mighty tusks. But the tiger does not stand still. He lurks in the jungle by day and emerges by night. He will leap upon the back of the elephant, tearing huge chunks from his hide, and then he will leap back into the dark jungle. And slowly the elephant will bleed to death. That will be the war of Indochina.

The Tiger Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp? Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the Lamb, make thee? Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? William Blake

I was close to tears. But I held it together, channeled all my emotion into my run, and posted one of my best times of the year. As I walked off the track I glowered at Bowerman. Happy now? He looked at me, checked his stopwatch, looked at me again, nodded. He’d tested me. He’d broken me down and remade me, just like a pair of shoes. And I’d held up. Thereafter, I was truly one of his Men of Oregon. From that day on, I was a tiger.