“
Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?" he asked.
"Watson?"
"Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing? Because it all helps."
"My dear Tony," said Bill delightedly, "need you ask?" Antony said nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, "I perceive from the strawberry-mark on your shirt-front that you had strawberries for dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my practice for a week? I can.
”
”
A.A. Milne (The Red House Mystery)
“
Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.
Some crows come overhead then, three or four, not a murder, on the wing, silent with intent, corn-bound for the pasture's wire beyond which one horse smells at the other's behind, the lead horse's tail obligingly lifted. Your shoes' brand incised in the dew. An alfalfa breeze. Socks' burrs. Dry scratching inside a culvert. Rusted wire and tilted posts more a symbol of restraint than a fence per se. NO HUNTING. The shush of the interstate off past the windbreak. The pasture's crows standing at angles, turning up patties to get at the worms underneath, the shapes of the worms incised in the overturned dung and baked by the sun all day until hardened, there to stay, tiny vacant lines in rows and inset curls that do not close because head never quite touches tail. Read these.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)
“
Just as tobacco companies have been obliged to pay the costs of helping people to quit smoking, and BP has had to pay for much of the cleanup of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is high time for the industry to at least split the bill for the climate crisis.
”
”
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
“
I had not been at all fair to myself, or to anyone or anything near me, by keeping my cigarettes right there next to me or in my shirt pocket throughout the years.
”
”
Earl Chinnici (Maybe You Should Move Those Away From You)
“
Perforated eardrums were quite common16, too; but, as Haldane reassuringly noted in one of his essays, ‘the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
When poor workers receive a pay raise, their health improves dramatically. Studies have found that when minimum wages go up, rates of child neglect, underage alcohol consumption, and teen births go down.[42] Smoking, too, decreases. Big Tobacco has long targeted low-income communities, but there is strong evidence that minimum wage increases are associated with decreased rates of smoking among low-income workers. Higher wages ease the grind of poverty, freeing people up to quit.
”
”
Matthew Desmond (Poverty, by America)
“
Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"
“Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
“
He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some images without order or coherence floated before his mind--faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once, whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the billiard table in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars in some underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a back staircase quite dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg-shells, and the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The images followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while there was an oppression within him, but it was not overwhelming, sometimes it was even pleasant.... The slight shivering still persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
“
You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!” “Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
“
His oldest child from his second marriage, Matthew, stayed up all the night before he was buried, putting his father’s history on a wooden tombstone. He began with his father’s name on the first line, and on the next, he put the years ofhis father’s coming and going. Then all the things he knew his father had been. Husband. Father. Farmer. Grandfather. Patroller. Tobacco Man. Tree Maker. The letters ofthe words got smaller and smaller as the boy, not quite twelve, neared the bottom ofthe wood because he had never made a headstone for anyone before so he had not compensated for all that he would have to put on it. The boy filled up the whole piece ofwood and at the end of the last line he put a period. His father’s grave would remain, but the wooden marker would not last out the year. The boy knew better than to put a period at the end ofsuch a sentence. Something that was not even a true and proper sentence, with subject aplenty, but no verb to pull it all together. A sentence, Matthew’s teacher back in Virginia had tried to drum into his thick Kinsey head, could live without a subject, but it could not live without a verb.
”
”
Edward P. Jones (The Known World)
“
As we drove up, Mr. Flowers himself was sitting beneath a tree out front, having a smoke. He was a wiry old white guy with the most unusual facial hair I had ever laid eyes on. If in fact it was facial hair, because it wasn’t quite that simple. Mr. Flowers’s prodigious muttonchops, once white but now stained yellow by tobacco smoke, had somehow managed to merge with the equally prodigious yellowish-white hair sprouting from his chest. I didn’t want to stare, but they appeared to form a single integrated unit, and if so represented a bold advance in human adornment.
”
”
Michael Pollan (Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation)
“
In some ways, the only thing we have in common is the color of our skin. Our ancestors came from all over the African continent. It's quite large... They had different ways of subsistence, different customs, spoke a hundred different languages. And that great mixture was brought to America in the holds of slave ships. To the north, the south. Their sons and daughters picked tobacco, cultivated cotton, worked on the largest estates and smallest farms. We are craftsmen and midwives and preachers and peddlers. Black hands built the White House, the seat of our nation's government. The word we. We are not one people, but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race - which is not one race but many, with a million desires and hopes and wishes for ourselves and our children? For we are Africans in America. Something new in the history of the world, without models for what we will become. Color must suffice. It has brought us to this night, this discussion, and it will take us into the future. All I truly know is that we rise and fall as one, one colored family living next door to one white family. We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
“
Franklin and Hume also shared an interest in language. When Hume berated him for coining new words, Franklin agreed to quit using the terms “colonize” and “unshakeable.” But he lamented that “I cannot but wish the usage of our tongue permitted making new words when we want them.” For example, Franklin argued, the word “inaccessible” was not nearly as good as coining a new word such as “uncomeatable.” Hume’s response to this suggestion is unknown, but it did nothing to diminish his ardent admiration for his new friend. “America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo,” he wrote back. “But you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are beholden to her.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life)
“
Why was he constantly forming yet never executing good resolutions? Why was he so absent-minded, so lazy, so prone to daydreaming his life away? He vowed to read more seriously. He vowed to quit chewing tobacco.
On July 21, 1756, he wrote:
'I am resolved to rise with the sun and to study Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author the other three mornings. Noons and nights I intend to read English authors... I will rouse up my mind and fix my attention. I will stand collected within myself and think upon what I read and what I see. I will strive with all my soul to be something more than persons who have had less advantages than myself.'
But the next morning he slept until seven and a one-line entry the following week read, 'A very rainy day. Dreamed away the time.
”
”
David McCullough (John Adams)
“
I’m not just blowing smoke when I say that I hope this book and the story it tells helps inspire many people to fight back against their addiction to “tobacco cigarettes.” The cigarette addiction is not glamorous. The addiction does not make anyone appear to be fun, smart, or sexy. The addiction is not enjoyable in the least. Of course, if you were to ask thirty-six people why they smoke, I am sure twenty-nine will tell you that they enjoy smoking. I have also said this a few times. However, to find even one person who enjoys being addicted to cigarettes or who enjoys being addicted to poison is another story altogether. Over the years, I have often been in the company of “tobacco cigarette smokers” and yet I do not remember once when anybody said, “I enjoy being addicted to cigarettes” or “I really do enjoy my addiction to poisons” or “My addiction is what I enjoy most about smoking.
”
”
Earl Chinnici (Maybe You Should Move Those Away From You)
“
them—or something like it. They even got the Doctor some tobacco one day, when he had finished what he had brought with him and wanted to smoke. At night they slept in tents made of palm leaves, on thick, soft beds of dried grass. And after a while they got used to walking such a lot and did not get so tired and enjoyed the life of travel very much. But they were always glad when the night came and they stopped for their resting time. Then the Doctor used to make a little fire of sticks; and after they had had their supper, they would sit round it in a ring, listening to Polynesia singing songs about the sea, or to Chee-Chee telling stories of the jungle. And many of the tales that Chee-Chee told were very interesting. Because although the monkeys had no history books of their own before Doctor Dolittle came to write them for them, they remember everything that happens by telling stories to their children. And Chee-Chee spoke of many things his grandmother had told him—tales of long, long, long ago, before Noah and the Flood—of the days when men dressed in bearskins and lived in holes in the rock and ate their mutton raw because they did not know what cooking was, never having seen a fire. And he told them of the great mammoths, and lizards as long as a train, that wandered over the mountains in those times, nibbling from the treetops. And often they got so interested listening that when he had finished they found their fire had gone right out, and they had to scurry around to get more sticks and build a new one. Now, when the King’s army had gone back and told the King that they couldn’t find the Doctor, the King sent them out again and told them they must stay in the jungle till they caught him. So all this time, while the Doctor and his animals were going along toward the Land of the Monkeys, thinking themselves quite safe, they were still being followed by the King’s men. If Chee-Chee had known this, he would most likely have hidden them again. But he didn’t know it. One day Chee-Chee climbed up a high rock and looked out over the treetops. And when he came down he said they were now quite close to the Land of the Monkeys and would soon be there. And that same evening, sure enough, they saw Chee-Chee’s cousin and a lot of other monkeys, who had not yet gotten sick, sitting in the trees by the edge of a swamp, looking and waiting for them. And when they saw the famous doctor really come, these monkeys made a tremendous noise, cheering and waving leaves and swinging out of the branches to greet him. They wanted to carry his bag and his trunk and everything he had. And one of the bigger ones even carried Gub-Gub, who had gotten
”
”
Hugh Lofting (The Story of Doctor Dolittle (Doctor Dolittle Series))
“
I saw five squaws under a bank for shelter. When the troops came up to them they ran out and showed their persons to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all. I saw one squaw lying on the bank whose leg had been broken by a shell; a soldier came up to her with a drawn saber; she raised her arm to protect herself, when he struck, breaking her arm; she rolled over and raised her other arm, when he struck, breaking it, and then left her without killing her. There seemed to be indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children. There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed, and four or five bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Every one I saw dead was scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child, as I thought, lying by her side. Captain Soule afterwards told me that such was the fact. I saw the body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them. I saw one squaw whose privates had been cut out. … I saw a little girl about five years of age who had been hid in the sand; two soldiers discovered her, drew their pistols and shot her, and then pulled her out of the sand by the arm. I saw quite a number of infants in arms killed with their mothers.
”
”
Dee Brown (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West)
“
Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. “What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?” “All of them at once,” said Bilbo. “And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine! There’s no hurry, we have all the day before us!” Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill. “Very pretty!” said Gandalf. “But I have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.” “I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them,” said our Mr. Baggins, and stuck one thumb behind his braces, and blew out another even bigger smoke-ring. Then he took out his morning letters, and began to read, pretending to take no more notice of the old man. He had decided that he was not quite his sort, and wanted him to go away. But the old man did not move. He stood leaning on his stick and gazing at the hobbit without saying anything, till Bilbo got quite uncomfortable and even a little cross. “Good morning!” he said at last. “We don’t want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water.” By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)
“
It’s all right, I got off the ship okay. I’m alive,” he said again. But his voice sounded different now. “I said I’m alive, Camille. Open your eyes and look at me.”
Camille’s heart shriveled as her eyelids fluttered open and she saw the ceiling of Monty’s shack.
“Camille?” Oscar leaned over her, his calloused hand on her cheek. “Thank God. You’ve been delirious for nearly an hour.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks as the truth stung her with renewed vigor. Her father wasn’t alive. He was truly gone. It had been nothing but a hallucination.
“Why are you crying? Does something hurt?” Oscar asked, lightly prodding her arms and then checking her head. She was lying on a cot in front of the blazing stove, blankets covering her. They were scratchy and too heavy. She tried to push them away.
“No.” Oscar blocked her arms. “Don’t do that.”
“Why?” she asked, her throat dry and sore.
Oscar looked apprehensive as he tucked the blankets tightly around her arms and neck. “Your clothes were soaked. You were shivering and flush with fever.”
“Had to take ‘em off, love,” Ira said, coming to the foot of the cot. “You gave us quite a scare. That lump on the back of your head worked you over something nasty.”
Camille stared at Ira, then Oscar. The crushed hope of her father being alive withered under the heat of embarrassment.
“You…you removed my dress?” she whispered. Oscar backed away from her, as if he’d just slid his hand over an open flame.
“No, no, I didn’t.”
She looked to Ira.
“Much as I’d been honored, the Irish bastard wouldn’t hear of it. Quite the prude.”
Frustrated and head still piercing with pain, Camille felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Well, then, who?”
“Nothin’ I ain’t seen before, woman,” Monty grumbled from his seat at the table as he sprinkled tobacco into a pipe.
Camille gasped and pressed her lips together. She caught sight of her dress hanging on a rack by the fire.
”
”
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
“
Railways, by days and by night. The flowers in the cuttings with their sooty blossoms, the birds on the wires with their sooty voices, they are their friends and long remember them.
And we also stand still, with astonished eyes, when-already from the far distant distance- there's the cry of promise. And we stand, with hair streaming, when it's there like thunder and as though it had rolled round heaven knows what worlds. And we're still standing, with sooty cheeks, when-already from the far distant distance-it cries. Cries, far, far away. Cries.
Really it was nothing. Or everything. Like us.
And they beat, beyond the windows of prisons, sweet dangerous, promising rhythms. You are all ears then, poor prisoner, all hearing, for the clattering, oncoming trains in the night and their cry and their whistle shiver the soft dark of your cell with pain and desire.
Or they crash bellowing over the bed, when at night you're harboring fever. And your veins, the moon-blue, vibrate and take up the song, the song of the freight trains: Under way-under way-under way- And your ear's an abyss, that swallows the world.
Under way. But ever and again you are spat out at stations, abandoned to farewell and departure.
And the stations raise up their pale signboards like brows beside your dark road. And they have names, those furrowed-brown signs, names, which are the world: bed, they mean, hunger and women. Ulla or Carola. And frozen feet and tears. And they mean tobacco, the stations, or lipstick or schnapps. Or God or bread. And the pale brows of the stations, the signboards, have names, that mean: women.
You are yourself a railway track, rusty, stained, silver, shiny, beautiful and uncertain. And you are divided into sections and bound between stations. And they have signboards whereon is written women, or murder, or moon. And then that is the world.
You are a railway- rumbled over, cried over- you are the track- on you everything happens and makes you rust blind and silver bright.
You are human, your brain giraffe-lonely somewhere above on your endless neck. And no one quite knows your heart.
”
”
Borchert Wolfgang
“
Most of the profit from a box of Swisher Sweets doesn’t go to the company that manufactures them or the store owner who sells them. The bulk of profit goes to the government that aggressively taxes them. That’s quite a racket. President Obama signed the largest tobacco tax increase in history in one of his first acts in office. The feds took about a nickel per cigar when the president took his oath. They now take 52.75 percent of the sale up to $402 per 1,000 cigars. “More lower-income people than higher-income people will quit,” Eric Lindblom of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids paternalistically reasoned to USA Today in 2009. Instead of a tobacco-free kid, Michael Brown became a free-tobacco kid.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Before we begin our tour of the drug war, it is worthwhile to get a couple of myths out of the way. The first is that the war is aimed at ridding the nation of drug 'kingpins' or big-time dealers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of those arrested are not charged with serious offenses. In 2005, for example, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, and one one out of five was for sales. Moreover, most people in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling activity.
The second myth is that the drug war is principally concerned with dangerous drugs. Quite to the contrary, arrests for marijuana possession - a drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol - accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s. Despite the fact that most drug arrests are for nonviolent minor offenses, the War on Drugs has ushered in an era of unprecedented punitiveness.
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
A broader view of platform governance uses insights borrowed from the practices of nation-states as modeled by constitutional law scholar Lawrence Lessig. In Lessig’s formulation, systems of control involve four main sets of tools: laws, norms, architecture, and markets.20 A familiar example can be used to clarify these four kinds of tools. Suppose leaders of a particular ecosystem want to reduce the harmful effects of smoking. Laws could be passed to ban cigarette sales to minors or forbid smoking in public spaces. Norms—informal codes of behavior shaped by culture—could be applied by using social pressure or advertising to stigmatize smoking and make it appear “uncool.” Architecture could be used to develop physical designs that reduce the impact of smoking—for example, air filters that clean the air, or smokeless devices that substitute for cigarettes. And market mechanisms could be used by taxing tobacco products or subsidizing “quit smoking” programs. Historically, those who want to control social behavior—including platform managers—have employed all four of these tools.
”
”
Geoffrey G. Parker (Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy―and How to Make Them Work for You)
“
It's about how to quit smoking and never crave for it again. I can’t tell you how to do it in 1 hour, 10 hour or 24 hour. It’s a process and it will take time. If you’re looking for some overnight miracle then forget about it, it doesn’t exist.
”
”
Abhishek Kumar (Stardust Family - We Are One!)
“
Even those social smokers who only smoke sometimes, are addicted. They just need less of it, but they need it. And occasional smoking is even worse.
”
”
Abhishek Kumar (Stardust Family - We Are One!)
“
My whole life was a mess. I had no idea what was going on in the world. I was a prisoner of weed and cigarette.
”
”
Abhishek Kumar (Stardust Family - We Are One!)
“
As far as drowning, yes, there is a society of volunteers patrolling the river. I quite agree that I would rather die with dignity than have my rear end exposed and heated with a tobacco enema. If you ask me, these gentlemen are hoping to get a peek of what’s under the ladies’ skirts.
”
”
Alina Rubin (A Girl with A Knife (Hearts and Sails #1))
“
Another time, you might pull your child close—don’t delay, because most smokers start between the ages of eight and 14—and say, “See that nice young man over there with his collar up in the wind, smoking outside that building? They won’t let him smoke inside, because a lot of people don’t like smoke, and his family is probably worried that he might get sick someday—but forget all that. Here’s his real problem. Those cigarettes he’s become addicted to cost him $6 a day. By now, he’d probably like to quit smoking, but it’s very, very hard to quit once you start. So he gives the tobacco companies $6 a day and probably will for the rest of his life. But if he hadn’t gotten hooked, or could somehow quit, and put that $6 a day into a mutual fund at 7% instead, he’d have an extra $2 million by the time he’s Grandpa’s age.
”
”
Andrew Tobias (The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, Revised Edition)
“
The most remarkable thing is that even in Adam Smith’s examples of fish and nails and tobacco being used as money, the same sort of thing was happening. In the years following the appearance of the Wealth of Nations, scholars checked into most of these examples and discovered that in just about every case, the people involved were quite familiar with the use of money, and in fact, were using money- as a unit of account. Take the example of dried cod, supposedly used as money in Newfoundland. As the British diplomat A. Mitchell pointed out almost a century ago, what Smith describes was really an illusion, created by a simple credit arrangement: In the early days of the Newfoundland fishing industry, there was no permanent European population, the fishers went there for the fishing season only, and those who were not fishers were traders who bought the dried fish and sold to the fishers their daily supplies. The latter sold their catch to the traders at the market price in pounds, shilling and pence, and obtained in return a credit on their books, which they paid for the supplies. Balances due by the traders were paid for by drafts on England or France. It was quite the same in the Scottish village. It’s not as if anyone actually walked into the local pub, plunked down a roofing nail, and asked for a pint of beer. Employers in Smith’s day often lacked coin to pay their workers; wages could be delayed by a year or more; in the meantime, it was considered acceptable for employees to carry off either some of their own products or leftover work materials, lumber, fabric, cord, and so on. The nails were de facto interest on what their employers owed to them. So they went to the pub, ran up a tab, and when occasion permitted, brought in a bag of nails to charge off against the debt. The law making tobacco legal tender in Virginia seems to have been an attempt by planters to oblige local merchants to accept their products as a credit around harvest time. In effect, the law forced all merchants in Virginia to become middlemen in tobacco business, whether they liked it or not; just as all West Indian merchants were obliged to become sugar dealers, since that’s what all their wealthier customers brought in to write off against their debt.
The primary examples, then, were ones in which people were improvising credit systems, because actual money- gold and silver coinage- was in short supply.
”
”
David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)
“
When you are staring at the face of such a formidable adversary as tobacco cigarette addiction, it can help significantly to have some powerful weapons in your arsenal. Knowledge is a remarkably powerful weapon against cigarette addiction.
”
”
Earl Chinnici (Maybe You Should Move Those Away From You)
“
Tobacco,' Jig said. 'I used to raise tobacco once. But I quit. I was plowing one morning, and the Lord said, "Jig, how'd you like for your daughter to smoke?" And I said, "I wouldn't like it, Lord. It's a sin for a woman to smoke." And I unhitched the mule right there in the middle of the row and left.'
'You say you left?'
'Left,' Jig said. 'I went fishing then. You know that's where He called them from. From fishing. One of these mornings He'll come and stand on the riverbank and He'll say, "Jig." And I'll say, "Yes, Lord?" And He'll say, "Follow me, Jig." And I will arise and follow Him. Aw, He ain't come yet. But He's coming. He's got to get my mansion ready first, but He'll be here.'
Then Jig told us about Heaven. He said it was a million miles square and a million miles high, and every street was gold and every house was a mansion. And at night every star was brighter than the sun.
'Do you know why He made the stars?'
Uncle Burley said he didn't know.
'He liked to hear them sing,' Jig said.
”
”
Wendell Berry (Nathan Coulter)
“
Tobacco is the enemy, disguised as a friend, and if you are to win the war you must get to know your enemy.
”
”
Gudjon Bergmann (Quit Smoking and Be Free: 7 Steps to a Smoke Free Life)
“
I don’t know why tobacco producers are exempt when it comes to listing ingredients, but that’s just the way it is (it’s all covered within the one word – tar).
”
”
Gudjon Bergmann (Quit Smoking and Be Free: 7 Steps to a Smoke Free Life)
“
I decided I might be able to substitute a tobacco cigarette with one made from spearmint. I made up my mind that if I was going to keep smoking, I had to find something less expensive to smoke. I did not mention this in my composition book, but have decided to mention it now. It is a good example of a bad substitute. There is no safe cigarette.
”
”
Earl Chinnici (Maybe You Should Move Those Away From You)
“
Psychologist Howard Rachlin of the State University of New York at Stony Brook has shown that one of the best first steps toward quitting tobacco is to try smoking the same number of cigarettes each day—and that offers a hint for us. Fewer opportunities for greed, plus less variability in the amount of satisfaction you can look forward to, will equal more self-control.
”
”
Jason Zweig (Your Money and Your Brain)
“
And the heavy perfume of the wild plum in blossom, drifting through an open window to braid itself softly about us, all wildness itself — how it carries us back even further, to a time before history, to a place through which we grope our way, longing for something we cannot quite define, waving a peeled and painted wand with a packet of tobacco tied to its end. Oh, dear fragrance on the swollen river of spring, sweet wistfulness turning and turning on the speeding black current.
”
”
Ted Kooser (Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives))
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I was struck, during COVID-19’s early months, that America’s Doctor, apparently preoccupied with his single vaccine solution, did little in the way of telling Americans how to bolster their immune response. He never took time during his daily White House briefings from March to May 2020 to instruct Americans to avoid tobacco (smoking and e-cigarettes/vaping double death rates from COVID); to get plenty of sunlight and to maintain adequate vitamin D levels (“Nearly 60 percent of patients with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient upon hospitalization, with men in the advanced stages of COVID-19 pneumonia showing the greatest deficit”); or to diet, exercise, and lose weight (78 percent of Americans hospitalized for COVID-19 were overweight or obese). Quite the contrary, Dr. Fauci’s lockdowns caused Americans to gain an average of two pounds per month and to reduce their daily steps by 27 percent. He didn’t recommend avoiding sugar and soft drinks, processed foods, and chemical residues, all of which amplify inflammation, compromise immune response, and disrupt the gut biome which governs the immune system. During the centuries that science has fruitlessly sought remedies against coronavirus (aka the common cold), only zinc has repeatedly proven its efficacy in peer-reviewed studies. Zinc impedes viral replication, prophylaxing against colds and abbreviating their duration. The groaning shelves that commercial pharmacies devote to zinc-based cold remedies attest to its extraordinary efficacy. Yet Anthony Fauci never advised Americans to increase zinc uptake following exposure to infection.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
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way of a nasty joke. She did not take it very well.” “Indeed.” The inspector echoed Evelyn. “I should hate to think you have been attempting to question your guests, Lady Northmoor.” “I assure you, that is most definitely not the case.” Evelyn shook her head in what she hoped looked like genuine dismay. “I would never attempt to do such a thing against your strict orders.” “Lady Northmoor!” Doris exclaimed in a loud voice. “There you are! My goodness, I have been searching everywhere for you. Do excuse us, Detective Inspector, but I must get Lady Northmoor dressed for dinner otherwise she will be embarrassingly late.” He nodded and Evelyn following Doris to the stairs. As soon as they reached the sanctuary of her room, she held her head in her hands. “I have told so many half truths and complete stretches of the truth in the last few days, Doris, I don’t know whether I am coming or going.” “Oh Lady Northmoor!” Doris laughed. “You’ve been spending too much time with young Nora coming out with such things.” “I suppose I should say I’m quite befuddled or such like?” Evelyn shook her head. “I didn’t realise remembering to talk like a countess would be such hard work.” “Well, My Lady,” Doris said. “I think you’re doing a grand job. Now let us get you ready for dinner so you can carry that on.” After dinner, Tommy excused himself and met Evelyn and Aunt Em in the small room at the front of the house that he had appropriated for his own use earlier that summer. It had been the former smoking room of the grand old house and suited Tommy’s purposes perfectly. “Why must we hide in this poky old room?” Aunt Em asked as Tommy ushered them inside. Tommy waited until his aunt had a chance to look around her. “You were saying, Aunt Em?” “My apologies.” She inclined her head. “You have performed quite the transformation.” The heavy velvet curtains that had kept out the natural light, but kept in the stale smell of years of tobacco were gone. Tommy had kept the large desk in the corner and hadn’t taken down the dark panelling on the lower half of the walls. However, a fresh coat of white paint on the upper portion of the walls, proper light fittings, and a colourful rug in the middle of the room made it look entirely different. “Evelyn and I wanted to talk to you, Aunt Em,” Tommy said. “We must be quick as our guests will think we are exceedingly rude.” “I presume you have both been busy sleuthing your way around our guests?” “Of course,” Tommy said. “We couldn’t just leave things as they are.” “Absolutely not,” his aunt agreed. “As I said before that detective arrived, you are far more capable than he in apprehending the killer.
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Catherine Coles (Murder at the Village Fete (Tommy & Evelyn Christie, #2))
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Vimes cupped his hands around the flame, sucked on the foul tobacco, tossed the match into the gutter and slouched off down the damp, puddle-punctuated alley. If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life.
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Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8))
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The second myth is that the drug war is principally concerned with dangerous drugs. Quite to the contrary, arrests for marijuana possession—a drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol—accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.6 Despite
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
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(save alcohol and tobacco, two very white, profitable American chemicals),
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Holly Whitaker (Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol)
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An old farmer said he quit tobacco for good one day when he discovered he had left his tobacco home and started to walk the two miles for it. On the way, he “saw” that he was being “used” in a humiliating way by a habit. He got mad, turned around, went back to the field, and never smoked again. Clarence Darrow, the famous attorney, said his success started the day that he “got mad” when he attempted to secure a mortgage to buy a house. Just as the transaction was about to be completed, the lender’s wife spoke up and said, “Don’t be a fool. He will never make enough money to pay it off.” Darrow himself had had serious doubts about the same thing. But something happened when he heard her remark. He became indignant, both at the woman and at himself, and determined he would be a success. A businessman friend of mine had a very similar experience. A failure at 40, he continually worried about “how things would come out,” about his own inadequacies, and whether or not he would be able to complete each business venture. Fearful and anxious, he was attempting to purchase some machinery on credit, when the seller’s wife objected. She did not believe he would ever be able to pay for the machinery. At first his hopes were dashed. But then he became indignant. Who was he to be pushed around like that? Who was he to skulk through the world, continually fearful of failure? The experience awakened “something” within him—some “new self”—and at once he saw that this woman’s remark, as well as his own opinion of himself, was an affront to this “something.” He had no money, no credit, and no way to accomplish what he wanted. But he found a way—and within three years he was more successful than he had ever dreamed of being—not in one business, but in three.
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Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded)
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The vast majority of those arrested are charged with relatively minor crimes. In 2005, for example, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, and only one out of five was for sales. Moreover, most people in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling activity.5 The second myth is that the drug war is principally concerned with dangerous drugs. Quite to the contrary, arrests for marijuana possession—a drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol—accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.6 Despite the fact that most drug arrests are for nonviolent minor offenses, the War on Drugs has ushered in an era of unprecedented punitiveness.
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
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I remember reading that pirates pulled off a massive heist here in the mid 1800s. It’s quite a story actually, but to summarise, a travelling circus had come to town, and its excited inhabitants flocked to see the show, every last one of them, including the town’s coastguards. Taking advantage of the coast being unusually clear, pirates swooped down on a vessel stuffed to the gunwales with tobacco. They used barges to sail the contraband up the Adur to the village of Beeding, where the booty was soon sold and spirited away. Such was the fury of the King’s Revenue men, all of Shoreham’s coastguards lost their jobs.
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Shani Struthers (Descension (Psychic Surveys #5))
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The second myth is that the drug war is principally concerned with dangerous drugs. Quite to the contrary, arrests for marijuana possession—a drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol—accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.6 Despite the fact that most drug arrests are for nonviolent minor offenses, the War on Drugs has ushered in an era of unprecedented punitiveness.
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)