“
This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with its beautiful stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King In Yellow.
”
”
Robert W. Chambers (The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories)
“
A moment later, Helen had returned; she was walking slowly now, and carefully, her hand on the back of a thin boy with a mop of wavy brown hair. He couldn’t have been older than twelve, and Clary recognized him immediately. Helen, her hand firmly clamped around the wrist of a younger boy whose hands were covered with blue wax. He must have been playing with the tapers in the huge candelabras that decorated the sides of the nave. He looked about twelve, with an impish grin and the same wavy, bitter-chocolate hair as his sister.
Jules, Helen had called him. Her little brother.
The impish grin was gone now. He looked tired and dirty and frightened. Skinny wrists stuck out of the cuffs of a white mourning jacket whose sleeves were too long for him. In his arms he was carrying a little boy, probably not more than two years old, with the same wavy brown hair that he had; it seemed to be a family trait. The rest of his family wore the same borrowed mourning clothes: following Julian was a brunette girl about ten, her hand firmly clasped in the hold of a boy the same age: the boy had a sheet of tangled black hair that nearly obscured his face. Fraternal twins, Clary guessed. After them came a girl who might have been eight or nine, her face round and very pale between brown braids.
The misery on their faces cut at Clary’s heart. She thought of her power with runes, wishing that she could create one that would soften the blow of loss. Mourning runes existed, but only to honor the dead, in the same way that love runes existed, like wedding rings, to symbolize the bond of love. You couldn’t make someone love you with a rune, and you couldn’t assuage grief with it, either. So much magic, Clary thought, and nothing to mend a broken heart.
“Julian Blackthorn,” said Jia Penhallow, and her voice was gentle. “Step forward, please.”
Julian swallowed and handed the little boy he was holding over to his sister. He stepped forward, his eyes darting around the room. He was clearly scouring the crowd for someone. His shoulders had just begun to slump when another figure darted out onto the stage. A girl, also about twelve, with a tangle of blond hair that hung down around her shoulders: she wore jeans and a t-shirt that didn’t quite fit, and her head was down, as if she couldn’t bear so many people looking at her. It was clear that she didn’t want to be there — on the stage or perhaps even in Idris — but the moment he saw her, Julian seemed to relax. The terrified look vanished from his expression as she moved to stand next to him, her face ducked down and away from the crowd.
“Julian,” said Jia, in the same gentle voice, “would you do something for us? Would you take up the Mortal Sword?
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
“
I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.
”
”
Robert W. Chambers (The King in Yellow)
“
The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened.
I'm really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don't remember!
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)
“
Our whole soul meets in heaven and the depth of the connection is imprinted on one another forever.
”
”
A Psycho-Spiritual- Author- Certified-Meditation, Laughter, & Kundalini Tantra Yoga Teacher.
“
This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.
”
”
Robert W. Chambers (The King in Yellow)
“
For all Ty’s frightening intellect, for all his strangeness and indifference to other people, he was inseparable from his twin. If Livvy was sick, Ty slept at the foot of her bed; if she got a scratch, he panicked, and it was the same the other way around.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
“
I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.
”
”
Robert W. Chambers (The King in Yellow)
“
Between gods and men, territories are set up. At least in the no-man’s land of the heights of heaven, the depths of hell, and inside the boundary traced by the oceans. Dimensions installed by a cosmogonic trilogy that leaves each term in its generic place. There remains the earth ancestress, a fourth term, that was once the most fertile, that has been progressively buried and forgotten beneath the architectonic of patriarchal sovereignty. And this murder erupts in the form of ambivalences that have constantly to be solved and hierarchized, in twinned pairs of more or less good doubles.
”
”
Luce Irigaray (Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (European Perspectives S))
“
Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! By Jove, I have it! Look, you Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick)
“
Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name. He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one. As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive. The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man. Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head.
It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
“
Take me on a journey to the place of souls,” she whispered as he moved closer. “I want to close my eyes and feel a little piece of heaven…with you.
”
”
Tracey-anne McCartney (A Carpet of Purple Flowers)
“
Inside the church, the bondsmaids were walking slowly down the aisle,
with the little petal girls. Trinity turned to give Mimi her last words of
motherly advice: 'Walk straight. Don't slouch. And for heavens's sake,
smile! It's your bonding!?' Then she too walked through the door and
down the aisle. The door shut behind her, leaving Mimi alone.
Finally, Mimi heard the orchestra play the first strains of the 'Wedding
March.' Wagner. Then the ushers opened the doors and Mimi moved to the threshold. There was an appreciative gasp from the crowd as they took in the sight of Mimi in her fantastic dress. But instead of acknowledging her triumph as New York?s most beautiful bride, Mimi looked straight ahead, at Jack, who was standing so tall and straight at the altar. He met her eyes and did not smile.
'Let's just get this over with.'
His words were like an ice pick to the heart. He doesn't love me. He has
never loved me. Not the way he loves Schuyler. Not the way he loved Allegra. He has come to every bonding with this darkness. With this regret and hesitation, doubt and despair. She couldn't deny it. She knew her twin, and she knew what he was feeling, and it wasn't joy or even relief.
What am I doing?
"Ready" Forsyth Llewellyn suddenly appeared by her side. Oh, right, she
remembered, she had said yes when Forsyth had offered to walk her
down the aisle.
Here goes nothing. As if in a daze, Mimi took his arm, Jack's words still
echoing in her head. She walked, zombie-like, down the aisle, not even
noticing the flashing cameras or the murmurs of approval from the
hard-to-impress crowd.
”
”
Melissa de la Cruz (The Van Alen Legacy (Blue Bloods, #4))
“
They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already imbodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connexions with the worlds around us, than those of science and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man's soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house wherein he abides.
”
”
George MacDonald (Phantastes)
“
A piety that sees death as the moment of “going home at last,” the time when we are “called to God’s eternal peace,” has no quarrel with power-mongers who want to carve up the world to suit their own ends. Resurrection, by contrast, has always gone with a strong view of God’s justice and of God as the good creator. Those twin beliefs give rise not to a meek acquiescence to injustice in the world but to a robust determination to oppose it.
”
”
N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
“
The last few strokes filled me with searing heat, electric pulses surging through my body and my soul, as our orgasms burst forth together, a million nerve endings suddenly flashing like twin rockets exploding fireworks, the multitude of sparks joining with a billion stars in the heavens above.
”
”
Simone Freier (Birthday Experience: A Celebration of Openness and Submission Among Adventurous Friends)
“
Wedding song (reprise)
But you and I, through burning plains,
through darkness of the earth,
affirm the world, its people,
the heavens that gave them birth,
the breath that passes between us,
this new home where we stand,
and all those things made larger by
the vows between woman and man.
”
”
Margaret Weis (Test of the Twins (Dragonlance: Legends, #3))
“
Father said that sealing the Heavenly Rift took everything in him. Did you think you were the only one struck by the fiendish energy of the ghost realm? The Discernment Barrier is twinned! Whatever damage you took, he suffered the same! It’s just that he endured it in silence and said nothing to anyone.
”
”
Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou (The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 3)
“
I was in heaven, married to the devil.
”
”
Jettie Woodruff (Suit (The Twin Duo, #1))
“
She was an angel, that made even the devil want to get to heaven.
”
”
S.M. Soto (Bury Me with Lies (Twin Lies, #2))
“
I found a big groove ready waiting for me when I grew up, and in that I was expected to live whether it suited me or not. It did not suit me. It was deep and narrow, and gave me no room to move.
”
”
Sarah Grand (The Heavenly Twins (Ann Arbor Paperbacks))
“
O where are you going with your love-locks flowing
On the west wind bellowing along this valley track?”
“The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.”
So they two went together in glowing August weather,
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
“Oh, what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?”
“Oh, that’s a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt>”
“Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly?” “A scaled and hooded worm.”
”Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?”
“Oh, that’s a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.”
“Turn again, O my sweetest,--turn again, false and fleetest:
This beaten way thou beatest, I fear is hell’s own track.”
“Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back.
”
”
Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems)
“
An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth’s atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn’t get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor’s path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame. One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth’s surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it. For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. Within minutes, over an area stretching from Denver to Detroit and encompassing what had once been Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, the Twin Cities—the whole of the Midwest, in short—nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to a thousand miles away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a thousand miles the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that’s just the initial shockwave. No one can do more than guess what the associated damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew. Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. The massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivors would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or where to turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean “selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort, since Earth’s ability to support life would be universally diminished.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
Homer's Hymn to Castor and Pollux
Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.
Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove,
Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love
With mighty Saturn's Heaven-obscuring Child,
On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild,
Brought forth in joy: mild Pollux, void of blame,
And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.
These are the Powers who earth-born mortals save
And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.
When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea
Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly
Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,
Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow,
And sacrifice with snow-white lambs,—the wind
And the huge billow bursting close behind,
Even then beneath the weltering waters bear
The staggering ship—they suddenly appear,
On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,
And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity,
And strew the waves on the white Ocean's bed,
Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread
The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight,
And plough the quiet sea in safe delight.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley)
“
The soldiers demanded that President Kayibanda’s portrait be hung in every house. The missionaries made sure the image of Mary was put up beside him. We lived our lives under the twin portraits of the President who’d vowed to exterminate us and Mary who was waiting for us in heaven.
”
”
Scholastique Mukasonga (Cockroaches)
“
The last few strokes filled me with searing heat, and electric pulses traveled through my body and my soul, as our orgasms burst forth together, a million nerve endings suddenly flashing like twin rockets exploding fireworks, the multitude of sparks joining with a billion stars in the heavens above.
”
”
Simone Freier (Birthday Experience: A Celebration of Openness and Submission Among Adventurous Friends)
“
i had a dream of you last night, i was all alone in the desert, surrounded by darkness on a desolate playa, and then you came to me and gave me light, you were the moon...i knew it was you, for you were the brightest of all the heavenly bodies, and something of this sort of certainty come but once in a lifetime
”
”
D. Bodhi Smith (Bodhi Simplique Impressionist Photography and Insights (#5))
“
Men are selfish and petty,” argued Erlang Shen, Grand Marshal of the Heavenly Forces. “Their life spans are so short that they give no thought to the future of the land. If we lend them aid, they will drain this earth and squabble among themselves. There will be no peace.” “But they are suffering now.” Erlang Shen’s twin sister, the beautiful Sanshengmu, led the opposing faction. “We have the power to help them. Why do we withhold it?” “You are blind, sister,” said Erlang Shen. “You think too highly of mortals. They give nothing to the universe, and the universe owes them nothing in return. If they cannot survive, then let them die.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1))
“
with twins, the midwife told her, you had to serve the Marassa, the sacred twins who united heaven and earth. They were powerful but jealous child gods. You had to worship both equally—leave two candies on your altar, two sodas, two dolls. Adele, catechized at St. Catherine’s, knew that she should have been scandalized, listening to Madame Theroux talking about her heathen religion at the birth of her children, but the stories distracted her from the pain.
”
”
Brit Bennett (The Vanishing Half)
“
Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They multiply and spread from one host to another, occasionally weakening the hosts and sometimes even killing them. A cultural idea – such as belief in Christian heaven above the clouds or Communist paradise here on earth – can compel a human to dedicate his or her life to spreading that idea, even at the price of death. The human dies, but the idea spreads. According to this approach, cultures are not conspiracies concocted by some people in order to take advantage of others (as Marxists tend to think). Rather, cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them. This approach is sometimes called memetics. It assumes that, just as organic evolution is based on the replication of organic information units called ‘genes’, so cultural evolution is based on the replication of cultural information units called ‘memes’.1 Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts. Most scholars in the humanities disdain memetics, seeing it as an amateurish attempt to explain cultural processes with crude biological analogies. But many of these same scholars adhere to memetics’ twin sister – postmodernism. Postmodernist thinkers speak about discourses rather than memes as the building blocks of culture.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Cast as Lucy Moran, the eccentric secretary at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, Kimmy Robertson recalled the shooting of the pilot as “heaven. It was pure fun, and there were silly things with David that were magical to me. If I asked him nicely, he let me run my fingers through his hair. The hair that grows on top of that head and what’s inside that head—you can feel that in his hair. David’s hair does something and it has a function and the function has to do with God.”17
”
”
David Lynch (Room to Dream)
“
The twin rivulets gleamed on his prison cheeks, and then the image became blurred and she felt a corresponding wetness on her own – tears for Daphne that were also tears for him; for lovers who could never be described as star-crossed because they had had no stars. For them heaven had drawn an implacable band of dark across its constellations and the dark was lit by nothing except the trust they had had in each other not to tell the truth because the truth had seemed too dangerous to tell.
”
”
Paul Scott (The Day of the Scorpion (The Raj Quartet, #2))
“
I have received hundreds and hundreds of letters concerning Twin Flames. You have to realize this knowing has nothing to do with the human sense of the word. They will tell me; they found their Twin Flame on a basis of a human love experience, or that their astrology is in polarity, or all sorts of verifications they look in the outer sense.
You must remember that Jesus Christ said, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. We are not Twin Flames or [Soul Mates] by the virtue of our flesh and blood condition.
”
”
Elizabeth Clare Prophet (Twin Flames in Love ~ Audiobook 3 Cassette Tapes)
“
Homer's Hymn to the Sun
Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.
Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more
To the bright Sun, thy hymn of music pour;
Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth
Euryphaessa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth;
Euryphaessa, the famed sister fair
Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear
A race of loveliest children; the young Morn,
Whose arms are like twin roses newly born,
The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun,
Who borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run
Unconquerably, illuming the abodes
Of mortal Men and the eternal Gods.
Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes,
Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise
And are shot forth afar, clear beams of light;
His countenance, with radiant glory bright,
Beneath his graceful locks far shines around,
And the light vest with which his limbs are bound,
Of woof aethereal delicately twined,
Glows in the stream of the uplifting wind.
His rapid steeds soon bear him to the West;
Where their steep flight his hands divine arrest,
And the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he
Sends from bright Heaven beneath the shadowy sea
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley)
“
That night was memorable to the Argonauts, for it was then that Nauplius taught them the names of the heavenly constellations, so far as he knew them, such as Callisto the Bear Woman, her son Arcas (usually called the Bear Warden), the Pleiads (which were just rising), and Cassiopeia. They amused themselves by naming others for themselves; some of which names gained currency in Greek ports after the return of the Argo. Thus the twin stars Castor and Pollux, at the shining of which the roughest seas subside; and the great lumbering constellation of Hercules at Labour; and the Lyre of Orpheus; and the constellation of Cheiron the Centaur (which Jason named) – all these are still remembered. So is the Dolphin of Little Ancaeus: for that evening all but he dined on mutton fried in dolphin oil, which was a food forbidden him; he therefore ate dried tunny instead and named the constellation ‘The Dolphin of Little Ancaeus.’ it was many years before the Argo herself was set in the heavens, low on the southern horizon: a constellation of twenty-three stars. Four stars form the mast, five the port rudder, and four the starboard; five the keel, five the gunwale; but the prow is not shown, because of a homicide that it caused.
”
”
Robert Graves (The Golden Fleece)
“
I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram— lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull— he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins— that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path— he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales—happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick: or, the White Whale)
“
Fine Knacks for Ladies
Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new!
Good pennyworths! but money cannot move.
I keep a fair but for the fair to view.
A beggar may be liberal of love,
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true.
Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again;
My trifles come as treasures from the mind.
It is a precious jewel to be plain;
Sometimes in shell the Orient’s pearls we find.
Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain.
Within this pack pins points laces and gloves,
And diverse toys fitting a country fair.
But in my heart, where duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, court’s brood, a heavenly pair.
Happy the heart that thinks of no removes!
”
”
John Dowland
“
Christianity, the grown-up child of Judaism, time to time got free from the leash of the Jews but it was always brought back under their secret control. The secret Jewish influence on the Christian Church never was more powerful and more effective than in our day. This is the time of the last revolutionary activity of the subversive Jews, which - according to their plan - has to culminate in taking over all the world under their control. The Judaic twins, Christianity and Communism have only a temporary role in the Jewish plan; the twins have to prepare the way to the universal one-world of the chosen-people. Thus will be the real Kingdom of Heaven, the Rabbinical One-World, the Messianic Age, established on the Earth, eternal peace and eternal happines for the "Jews", as they dream it, eternal slavery, hopeless as the grave, for all the other nations on the Earth.
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Anton U. Brown (Dignitarian Way - Criticism of Christianity, The Jews and Religion, by Great Authorities)
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The unique platform at Baalbek has been there from bygone days, and it is still there intact in its enigmatic immensity; Mount St. Katherine is still there, rising as the highest peak of the Sinai peninsula, hallowed since ancient days, enveloped (together with its twin-peaked neighbor, Mount Mussa) in legends of gods and angels; Fig. 124 The Great Pyramid of Giza, with its two companions and the unique Sphinx, is situated precisely on the extended Ararat-Baalbek line; and The distance from Baalbek to Mount St. Katherine and to the Great Pyramid of Giza is exactly the same. This, let us add at once, is only part of the amazing grid which—as we shall show—was laid out by the Anunnaki in connection with their post-Diluvial Spaceport. Therefore, whether or not the conversation had taken place aboard a shuttlecraft, we are pretty certain that that is how the pyramids came to be in Egypt.
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Zecharia Sitchin (The Stairway to Heaven (The Earth Chronicles, #2))
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He wanted to lead a division in the army of - who? God, right, goodness, they were names for the same thing - into battle against EVIL. He wanted issues and battle lines and never mind standing in the cold outside supermarkets handing out leaflets about the lettuce boycott or the grape strike. He wanted to see EVIL with its cerements of deception cast aside, with every feature of its visage clear. He wanted to slug it out toe to toe with EVIL, like Muhammad Ali against Joe Frazier, the Celtics against the Knicks, Jacob against the Angel. He wanted this struggle to be pure, unhindered by the politics that rode the back of every social issue like a deformed Siamese twin. He had wanted all this since he had wanted to be a priest, and that call had come to him at the age of fourteen, when he had been inflamed by the story of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who had been stoned to death and who had seen Christ at the moment of his death. Heaven was a dim attraction compared to that of fighting - and perhaps perishing - in the service of the Lord. But there were no battles. There were only skirmishes of vague resolution. And EVIL did not wear one face but many, and all of them were vacuous and more often than not the chin was slicked with drool. In fact, he was being forced to the conclusion that there was no EVIL in the world at all but only evil - or perhaps (evil).
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Stephen King
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Dinner with Trimalchio as explained on Angelfire.com
Fragment 35
The next course is not as grand as Encolpius expects but it is novel. Trimalchio has a course made that represent the 12 signs of the Zodiac, again showing his superstitious nature. Over each sign of the zodiac is food that is connected with the subject of the sign of the zodiac.
Ares the ram - chickpeas (the ram is a sign of virility and chickpeas represent the penis in satire)
Taurus the bull - a beefsteak . Beef is from cattle and the bull represents strength.
Gemini (The heavenly twins) - Testicles and kidneys (since they come in pairs!)
Cancer the Crab- a garland (which looks like pincers) but we also learn later (fragment 39 ) that the is Trimalchios sign and by putting a garland over his sign he is honouring it.
Leo the Lion - an African fig since lions were from Africa.
Virgo the Virgin - a young sows udder , symbol of innocence.
Libra the scales - A pair of balance pans with a different dessert in each!
Scorpio - a sea scorpion
Sagittarius the archer - a sea bream with eyespots, you need a good eye to practise archery.
Capricorn- a lobster
Aquarius the water carrier - a goose i.e. water fowl.
Pisces the fish - two mullets (fish!)
In the middle of the dish is a piece of grass and on the grass a honey comb. We are told by Trimalchio himself that this represents mother earth (fragment 39) who is round like a grassy knoll or an egg and has good things inside her like a honey comb.
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Petronius (Satyricon & Fragments: Latin Text (Latin Edition))
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Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name. He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one. As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive. The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man. Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head. It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in.
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Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
“
The Sumerian pantheon was headed by an "Olympian Circle" of twelve, for each of these supreme gods had to have a celestial counterpart, one of the twelve members of the Solar System. Indeed, the names of the gods and their planets were one and the same (except when a variety of epithets were used to describe the planet or the god's attributes). Heading the pantheon was the ruler of Nibiru, ANU whose name was synonymous with "Heaven," for he resided on Nibiru. His spouse, also a member of the Twelve, was called ANTU. Included in this group were the two principal sons of ANU: E.A ("Whose House Is Water"), Anu's Firstborn but not by Antu; and EN.LIL ("Lord of the Command") who was the Heir Apparent because his mother was Antu, a half sister of Anu. Ea was also called in Sumerian texts EN.KI ("Lord Earth"), for he had led the first mission of the Anunnaki from Nibiru to Earth and established on Earth their first colonies in the E.DIN ("Home of the Righteous Ones")—the biblical Eden. His mission was to obtain gold, for which Earth was a unique source. Not for ornamentation or because of vanity, but as away to save the atmosphere of Nibiru by suspending gold dust in that planet's stratosphere. As recorded in the Sumerian texts (and related by us in The 12th Planet and subsequent books of The Earth Chronicles), Enlil was sent to Earth to take over the command when the initial extraction methods used by Enki proved unsatisfactory. This laid the groundwork for an ongoing feud between the two half brothers and their descendants, a feud that led to Wars of the Gods; it ended with a peace treaty worked out by their sister Ninti (thereafter renamed Ninharsag). The inhabited Earth was divided between the warring clans. The three sons of Enlil—Ninurta, Sin, Adad—together with Sin's twin children, Shamash (the Sun) and Ishtar (Venus), were given the lands of Shem and Japhet, the lands of the Semites and Indo-Europeans: Sin (the Moon) lowland Mesopotamia; Ninurta, ("Enlil's Warrior," Mars) the highlands of Elam and Assyria; Adad ("The Thunderer," Mercury) Asia Minor (the land of the Hittites) and Lebanon. Ishtar was granted dominion as the goddess of the Indus Valley civilization; Shamash was given command of the spaceport in the Sinai peninsula. This division, which did not go uncontested, gave Enki and his sons the lands of Ham—the brown/black people—of Africa: the civilization of the Nile Valley and the gold mines of southern and western Africa—a vital and cherished prize. A great scientist and metallurgist, Enki's Egyptian name was Ptah ("The Developer"; a title that translated into Hephaestus by the Greeks and Vulcan by the Romans). He shared the continent with his sons; among them was the firstborn MAR.DUK ("Son of the Bright Mound") whom the Egyptians called Ra, and NIN.GISH.ZI.DA ("Lord of the Tree of Life") whom the Egyptians called Thoth (Hermes to the Greeks)—a god of secret knowledge including astronomy, mathematics, and the building of pyramids. It was the knowledge imparted by this pantheon, the needs of the gods who had come to Earth, and the leadership of Thoth, that directed the African Olmecs and the bearded Near Easterners to the other side of the world. And having arrived in Mesoamerica on the Gulf coast—just as the Spaniards, aided by the same sea currents, did millennia later—they cut across the Mesoamerican isthmus at its narrowest neck and—just like the Spaniards due to the same geography—sailed down from the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica southward, to the lands of Central America and beyond. For that is where the gold was, in Spanish times and before.
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Zecharia Sitchin (The Lost Realms (The Earth Chronicles, #4))
“
Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They multiply and spread from one host to another, occasionally weakening the hosts and sometimes even killing them. A cultural idea – such as belief in Christian heaven above the clouds or Communist paradise here on earth – can compel a human to dedicate his or her life to spreading that idea, even at the price of death. The human dies, but the idea spreads. According to this approach, cultures are not conspiracies concocted by some people in order to take advantage of others (as Marxists tend to think). Rather, cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them. This approach is sometimes called memetics. It assumes that, just as organic evolution is based on the replication of organic information units called ‘genes’, so cultural evolution is based on the replication of cultural information units called ‘memes’.1 Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts. Most scholars in the humanities disdain memetics, seeing it as an amateurish attempt to explain cultural processes with crude biological analogies. But many of these same scholars adhere to memetics’ twin sister – postmodernism. Postmodernist thinkers speak about discourses rather than memes as the building blocks of culture. Yet they too see cultures as propagating themselves with little regard for the benefit of humankind. For example, postmodernist thinkers describe nationalism as a deadly plague that spread throughout the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, causing wars, oppression, hate and genocide. The moment people in one country were infected with it, those in neighbouring countries were also likely to catch the virus. The nationalist virus presented itself as being beneficial for humans, yet it has been beneficial mainly to itself. Similar
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature’s God in America and China’s Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington.
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Patrick Mendis (Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order)
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Made a home within. For it came from heaven. And heaven came from it then - Our Love
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Farah Ayaad (Coming Home)
“
I have been in hell. I have been to heaven. I have not been home - Not Yet
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Farah Ayaad (Coming Home)
“
Your eyes are heaven. My soul has been. Living in. All my lifetimes - Boomerang
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”
Farah Ayaad (Coming Home)
“
These outcasts, or osu, seeing that the new religion welcomed twins and such abominations, thought that it was possible that they would also be received. And so one Sunday two of them went into the church. There was an immediate stir, but so great was the work the new religion had done among the converts that they did not immediately leave the church when the outcasts came in. Those who found themselves nearest to them merely moved to another seat. It was a miracle. But it only lasted till the end of the service. The whole church raised a protest and was about to drive these people out, when Mr. Kiaga stopped them and began to explain. "Before God," he said, "there is no slave or free. We are all children of God and we must receive these our brothers."
"You do not understand," said one of the converts. "What will the heathen say of us when they hear that we receive osu into our midst? They will laugh." "Let them laugh," said Mr. Kiaga. "God will laugh at them on the judgment day. Why do the nations rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision." "You do not understand," the convert maintained. "You are our teacher, and you can teach us the things of the new faith. But this is a matter which we know." And he told him what an osu was. He was a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart--a taboo for ever, and his children after him. He could neither marry nor be married by the free-born. He was in fact an outcast, living in a special area of the village, close to the Great Shrine. Wherever he went he carried with him the mark of his forbidden caste
-long, tangled and dirty hair. A razor was taboo to him. An osu could not attend an assembly of the free-born, and they, in turn, could not shelter under his roof. He could not take any of the four titles of the clan, and when he died he was buried by his kind in the Evil Forest. How could such a man be a follower of Christ? "He needs Christ more than you and I," said Mr. Kiaga. "Then I shall go back to the clan," said the convert. And he went. Mr. Kiaga stood firm, and it was his firmness that saved the young church. The wavering converts drew inspiration and confidence from his unshakable faith. He ordered the outcasts to shave off their long, tangled hair. At first they were afraid they might die. "Unless you shave off the mark of your heathen belief I will not admit you into the church," said Mr. Kiaga. "You fear that you will die. Why should that be? How are you different from other men who shave their hair? The same God created you and them. But they have cast you out like lepers. It is against the will of God, who has promised everlasting life to all who believe in His holy name. The heathen say you will die if you do this or that, and you are afraid. They also said I would die if I built my church on this ground. Am I dead? They said I would die if I took care of twins. I am still alive. The heathen speak nothing but falsehood. Only the word of our God is true." The two outcasts shaved off their hair, and soon they were the strongest adherents of the new faith. And what was more, nearly all the osu in Mbanta followed their example.
”
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Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart)
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To tell a lie is to recognize that all truths are half-truths. There can be no pure truth or lie, they are identical twins who cannot be separated.
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Mwanandeke Kindembo
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Both men and women are called to be mirrors of God on Earth and to work together to create harmony and peace for all people. Just as a pomegranate seed cannot grow into a tree without soil, and soil cannot birth from itself pomegranate fruit without a seed, the divine masculine and divine feminine complement one another on the path of blossoming the soul. Men and women are not physically identical, but they are equal in value in the eyes of God, for the soul has no gender.5 As the Prophet Muhammad says, “Verily, women are the twin halves of men.”6 In fact the word for “Eve” in Arabic is the same as the Hebrew word Hawwaah, which comes from a root word that means “source of life.”7 In essence, every time we reference Eve, we are reminded that although the prophets of God that were mentioned in the Qur’an were men, without women there would be no prophets born into this world. This is why women are seen as the bridges of creation between Heaven and Earth.8
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A. Helwa (Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam (Studying Qur'an & Hadith Book 2))
“
Let me kiss you Irma!
There in the middle, in the space between the light and dark,
Let me love you in the corners bright,
Where your heart beat is the mark,
To guide me through the mist of time with all my might,
Because my love it is you that spreads like brightness in my world,
Where your memories cast everlasting light,
On the darkest and desolate corners of my world,
And then fills me with the spirit to fight,
All my demons and my fears,
Your simple look offers me endless joy,
As my existence the drapery of your brightness wears,
And I begin to foil life’s every ploy,
To oust me from my dominion, that is mine,
But little does it know one can never steal the scent from the rose,
And your memories that enrich me, become my goldmine,
Granting me courage that before the brightest flash of life, I may put up my best pose,
So come let me bear you in my arms,
Let me kiss you like the night kisses everything beyond those shadows,
And as my heart with these beautiful feelings warms,
Let me offer smiles to the life’s marooned widows,
Who have moaned enough and grieved a lot,
Let me kiss you and then wage the war,
Between the right and the evil in the reality’s merciless plot,
It may happen that then stars that seem too far,
Would tumble from the skies,
To bury the evil in the star dust,
But let us tread with caution for haste is only good when catching flies,
For lovers always do what they must,
It is the destiny of love and maybe the price of the kiss,
That we all pay for with our heart beats,
So let me hold you in my arms and feel my real bliss,
Before my fate confronts the destiny and my courage both of them meets,
In the open playground of life and chance,
Where the truthful and the valiant always wins,
Because it is a well coordinated dance,
Where one always has to win though it is a competition between the twins,
So kiss me and wish for my victory,
Because through me you shall win too,
As we are cast in the life’s endless trajectory,
Where there shall always be one constant Irma, that, I love you,
So, let the stars bear witness to valour of love,
And as you kiss me, let the stars tumble from the skies,
Then let no one seek the Heavens above,
Because for our love, our passions and joys, here is where a lover dies,
And this is where Christ died,
This is where crusades were waged,
This is where goodness was promoted and this is where Judas lied,
And this is where lovers are caged,
So let our battles of love be fought here,
For a kiss, for a warm embrace, for a sweet memory’s sake,
Then as I see you and your beauty everywhere,
Let me love you forever for love’s and my own sake,
Tonight when the sky shall be lit with many a twinkling star,
I shall wait under the open sky and the moonlight,
And as my eyes behold their darling most star,
We shall then be the shadows in the darkness secretly kissing our heart beats in the cover of the night.
To cast particles of darkness and cover the moonlight,
And make it a part of our own shadows,
Then we shall create a romantic night,
As we freely fleet across the night’s endless love meadows.
”
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Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
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The Gemini were twin brothers named Castor and Pollux. They were warriors and one of them, Castor, was killed. Pollux missed his brother so badly, he begged Jupiter, the king of the gods, to be permitted to give his own life as a ransom for his brother. Jupiter was moved to pity - sometimes, if you efface yourself enough and get them in the right mood, the old-bastard gods come through - and allowed Castor and Pollux both to live, but not at the same time. Castor lived one day in the heavens, while Pollux was in Hades, or hell; then Pollux lived one day in the heavens, while Castor was in hell. They alternated life and death but they didn't see each other. Then Jupiter took pity on them again. He rewarded their love for each other by placing them up there in the stars together. See? The Gemini. Forever.
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Joyce Carol Oates (Blonde)
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Love is a boundless destination each one of us want to reach. All of us travel through time and space searching for our twin flame, our One True Destiny and when the Divine Time comes, the heavens will open, the angels will play their harps as True Love finally reveals itself in front of us. " - "Mystic Love" series of love quotes by Author/Poet Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo
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Elizabeth E. Castillo
“
She ignored the boy’s protest and kept walking. He shouldn’t be watching street fights at his age, impressionable as he was. Uncle and Auntie Yin had enough to complain about without her being a bad influence on her little cousin. The swordsman caught up with her easily, keeping an arm’s length between them while they walked together down the dusty street. There was none of the posturing and swagger she’d come to expect from Zhou’s lackeys. From outward appearances, they could have been joining one another for an afternoon stroll. “Those are exquisite.” He was talking about the swords. Twin blades; short, light and quick. Many called them butterfly swords, but there was nothing delicate about them. They were ideal weapons for a woman fighting a larger opponent. Heaven forbid he’d look at her with the same interest. She sniffed, but a thread of doubt worked loose inside her. He was the first to be interested in her skill rather than the novelty of this odd girl who dared to challenge men. “You don’t seem like one of Zhou’s thugs,” she said.
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Jeannie Lin (The Taming of Mei Lin (Tang Dynasty, #.5))
“
Their mother, Maxine Kettle, is president of the Australian Mothers of Multiples Association, a regular speaker at events for mothers of twins and triplets, and author of the book Mothering Multiples: The Heaven, the Hell, which has sold in countries around the world. Their father, Frank Kettle, is a well-known Sydney property developer. Their parents divorced when the girls were six.
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Liane Moriarty (Three Wishes)
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The star prophecy that Belial alluded to had a long history of importance. When Yahweh had originally created the heavens and earth, he placed the constellations of stars and planets in the sky not merely for seasons but for signs to mankind. And the most imaginative sign was the story of redemption that he embedded within the very structure of the twelve constellations that revolved around the earth. The narrative was of a virgin (Virgo) who would bear the promised seed and pay the price of justice (Libra) to overcome the “wounder of the heel” (Scorpio). This promised one would be a conqueror (Sagittarius the archer), who would be the scapegoat of atonement (Capricorn), and bring living waters for his people (Aquarius the water-bearer). Those people would be blessed though bound (Pisces the fish). Their blessings would be consummated through a ram of sacrifice (Aries) who would become a ruling leader (Taurus the bull), a king with two natures (Gemini the twins). He would hold his people fast in his grip (Cancer the crab), and would ultimately reign as king over the earth (Leo the lion). Yahweh’s enemies eventually subverted the original intent of the constellations and twisted the entire system into a form of idolatry that worshipped the stars instead of Yahweh as the determiner of destinies.
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Brian Godawa (Jesus Triumphant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #8))
“
First time, shame on you,” she began, her husky tone serious. “Second time, shame on me.
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Niobia Bryant (Heavenly Match (Jamison Twins Book 2))
“
I tried to compose a letter to my father this morning, while you beavered away on my mundane business, and somehow, Mrs. Seaton, I could not come up with words to adequately convey to my father the extent to which I want him to just leave me the hell alone.” He finished that statement through clenched teeth, alarming Anna with the animosity in his tone, but he wasn’t finished. “I have come to the point,” the earl went on, “where I comprehend why my older brothers would consider the Peninsular War preferable to the daily idiocy that comes with being Percival Windham’s heir. I honestly believe that could he but figure a way to pull it off, my father would lock me naked in a room with the woman of his choice, there to remain until I got her pregnant with twin boys. And I am not just frustrated”—the earl’s tone took on a sharper edge—“I am ready to do him an injury, because I don’t think anything less will make an impression. Two unwilling people are going to wed and have a child because my father got up to tricks.” “Your father did not force those two people into one another’s company all unawares and blameless, my lord, but why not appeal to your mother? By reputation, she is the one who can control him.” The earl shook his head. “Her Grace is much diminished by the loss of my brother Victor. I do not want to importune her, and she will believe His Grace only meant well.” Anna smiled ruefully. “And she wants grandchildren, too, of course.” “Why, of course.” The earl gestured impatiently. “She had eight children and still has six. There will be grandchildren, and if for some reason the six of us are completely remiss, I have two half siblings, whose children she will graciously spoil, as well.” “Good heavens,” Anna murmured. “So your father has sired ten children, and yet he plagues you?” “He does. Except for the one daughter of Victor’s, none of us have seen fit to reproduce. There was a rumor Bart had left us something to remember him by, but he likely started the rumor himself just to aggravate my father.
”
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Grace Burrowes (The Heir (Duke's Obsession, #1; Windham, #1))
“
YOUR TWIN-FLAME IS ON BACK ORDER.
THE HEAVENLY FATHER IS BUILDING YOUR SOULMATE TAILOR MADE FOR YOU SPECIAL ORDER.
WHEN YOUR MATE IS COMPLETE
THE UNIVERSE WILL SHIP THEM OUT SPECIAL DELIVERY, WITH A BOW.
WHEN YOU MEET THEM YOU'LL KNOW!
YOU DESERVE THE BEST.
SINCERELY,
#FRIENDINYOURPOCKET
”
”
Qwana Reynolds-Frasier (Friend In Your Pocket Conversations Session One)
“
And I know something you don't know... I know where your twin sister is. Emma. I've been watching her for weeks. I found her for you, Sutton. - Ethan
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Sara Shepard (Seven Minutes in Heaven (The Lying Game, #6))
“
As he lit the leaves within, savoring the first fragrant puff through the red clay bowl, it was this stem that gave him his first question for his girls. The three of them were lined up eagerly before him as the recalcitrant twins scrubbed and piled dishes in the tub by the door under Namara’s watchful eye-and her watchful spoon as well. He gazed at his brood, from the smallest with her smudged face and pigtails, all the way to the twins, tall and growing broader every day. With the solemn air of a holy man presiding on a ritual in the Hall of the Ancestors, Judan began.
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Christopher Lyon (A Crown of Radiant Night: The Seven Thunders of Heaven: Book I Volume I)
“
Those twin beliefs give rise not to a meek acquiescence to injustice in the world but to a robust determination to oppose it. English
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N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
“
She lives here now, Mom. With me. And it won’t be long before you can meet her, but there’s one more thing. During that short time we knew each other in Grants Pass, we had a little…ah, a little…blessing, that’s what it was. We had a blessing. Well, actually a couple of blessings. On the way. Soon.” Dead silence answered him. “It came as a shock to poor Abby at first, and I admit—I was pretty surprised, but we’re very happy about it. Happy and excited.” Silence. It stretched out. “Mom? Twins. We know one is a boy, but the other one is hiding.” Again, a vacuum. Then he heard his mother shriek, “Edward! Come here! Cameron got some girl pregnant!” “Mom! Just have a little sip of that wine!” “I think it’s going to take something a little stronger! Twins? You got some girl pregnant with twins?” He couldn’t help it—he laughed. “Mom,” he said. “She’s not some girl—she’s not a girl. Her name is Abby and she’s thirty-one.” “Cameron, how in the world—” “Now, Mother, I’m not going to explain. You’ll just have to trust me, I’ve never been careless and neither has Abby. So—here’s the deal. She’s probably going to go early, though the babies are due the second of July. Anytime, Mom. Abby wants to have her mother come as soon as they’re delivered, so I hope you can be a little patient. Twins is a pretty big—” “Cameron! Are you married?” “Not yet, Mom. Even though we’re in this together, completely, we just haven’t had time to get married. That will come—we’ll take care of the details. No point in rushing it now. Besides, we’re not going to be fooling anybody, including the great-grandmothers and great-aunt Jean, by rushing into it right now. They’re nearly here.” “Dear God in heaven,” his mother said. And in the background he could hear his father, Ed, saying, “What? What? What?” “I’ll call you the moment they’re born. Tomorrow, when I’m at the clinic, I’ll get Mel to take a picture of me and Abby and e-mail it to you. By then you will have calmed down.” “But, Cameron,” she said, “you haven’t given me time to knit anything!” He laughed again. “Well, get started. Abby’s really ready to unload. She just has to make it a couple more weeks to be completely safe.” “Oh, dear God in heaven,” she muttered.
”
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Robyn Carr (Paradise Valley)
“
Then you repeat. The thing that goes badly wrong means that the someone we like has to take another step to get around the bad wrongness and back toward the something he wants VERY BADLY. He takes the next step, and everything goes even more badly wrong. Then he loses his map. Then his flashlight falls into a storm drain and he has an asthma attack and his seeing eye dog dies. Then the cop who pulls him over for speeding while driving drunk in the nude turns out to be the short-tempered father of the bride he is marrying tomorrow. Then it goes more badly wrong for the someone we like, much more badly. Then the party is attacked and scattered by a band of goblins, and then the Gollum is on his trail, and the lure of the Ring is slowly destroying his mind. Then he finds the blasted corpses of his foster parents killed by Imperial Storm Troopers, and his house burnt to the ground. Then Lex Luthor chains a lump of Kryptonite around his neck and pushes him into a swimming pool and fires twin stealth atomic rockets at the San Andreas Fault in California and at Hackensack, New Jersey. And the spunky but beautiful girl reporter falls into a crack in the earth and dies. Then he is stung by Shelob and dies. Then he is maimed by Darth Vader and discovers his arch foe is his very own father, and he loses his grip and falls. Then he steps out unarmed to confront Lord Voldemort and dies. Then Judas Iscariot kisses him, Peter denounces him, he is humiliated, spat upon, whipped, betrayed by the crowd, tortured, sees his weeping mother, and dies a painful, horrible death and dies. Then he is thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale and dies. Then he gets help, gets better, arises from his swoon, is raised from the dead, the stone rolls back, the lucky shot hits the thermal exhaust port, and the Death Star blows up, the Dark Tower falls, the spunky but beautiful girl reporter is alive again due to a time paradox, and he is given all power under heaven and earth and either rides off into the sunset, or goes back to the bat-cave, or ascends into heaven, and we roll the credits.
”
”
John C. Wright
“
Even as he was smiling, the form of Krishna began to glow like lightning. All the devas emerged out of his body. They could be seen. But by the side of Krishna whose form had now assumed a terrifying aspect, they looked smaller then the thumb of the hand. On his forehead could be seen Brahma, the Creator. On his huge chest could be seen the eleven Rudras. On his shoulders could be seen the lords of the four quarters: Indra, Varuna, Kubera and Yama. Agni could be seen glowing from his mouth. The Adityas who were twelve in number, and the Vasus and the Asvin twins, the Maruts and all the gods of the heavens could be seen in his form. Out of his left hand could be seen the heroes on the side of the Pandavas. Balarama was seen to emerge from his left hand and on his right could be seen Arjuna with the Gandiva in his hand. Behind him were Bheema, Nakula, Sahadeva and Yudhishthira. All the heroes of the Vrishni and Andhaka clan were seen standing by his side with their arms and armours. The arms of Krishna were many. They held all the weapons. There could be seen the reputed Sankha called Panchajanya, the Chakra called Sudarsana, the Gada called Kaumodaki and the sword by name Nandana. Fire could be seen flaming out of his eyes and his nostrils. His aspect was terrible. It looked as though Death, which has no shape, had now decided to take shape and reveal to the world her dread form. No one had the power to look on this unique spectacle.
”
”
Kamala Subramaniam (Mahabharata)
“
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
”
”
I.T. Lucas (Dark Witch: Twin Destinies (The Children of the Gods #84))
“
Elysian Mates are the most unpredictable of all the Star Bonds,” Zenith started. “An Elysian Mate is your absolute perfect match. Your other half, your soul mate, your twin flame, your one true love. It has many names. But in Solaria we call it this. Your Elysian Mate is Star Bound to you somewhere in this world. And if you come into contact with each other, the Zodiac will draw you together like two ends of a rope bound to a turning wheel. And the more time you spend together, the more you will be pulled magnetically and inescapably toward one another. But...” She trailed off and my heart pounded harder as the sky turned blood red above us. Two stars sailed across the heavens from opposing ends of the ceiling, tearing toward each other on a collision course. “The stars will test you. The longer you are in each other’s company, the more volatile the universe will become. And if you pass all of the tests the stars throw at you, you will be presented with your Divine Moment.
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Ruthless Fae (Zodiac Academy, #2))
“
Krishna, the incarnation of the Lord, had asked the gods to be born in the world of men to help Him in His work: the destruction of Evil and the establishment of Dharma. Indra, Vayu, Dharma and the Aswini twins were on the earth for a time. The earth was to be cleansed of the poisons which were choking her. The earth was made pure because these gods had walked on it. The seed of Dharma had been planted in the soil which was prepared by the blood of the noblest of men. The purpose of their birth had been served. They had to return to heaven once more. The Pandavas were absorbed into the gods who were their fathers. The world is richer for the few years of glory that was hers when Krishna walked on it. The story of the lives has become immortal. So long as the world lives, so long as the sun and the moon move in their orbits, so long as there is a spark of goodness in the heart of man, the story of the Pandavas will be read in the world of men.
”
”
Kamala Subramaniam (Mahabharata)
“
Woe, woe is me! That sin hath made so many madmen, seeking the fool's paradise, fire under ice, and some good and desirable things, without and apart from Christ. Christ, Christ, nothing but Christ can cool our love's burning languor. O thirsty love! Wilt thou set Christ, the well of life, to thy head, and drink thy fill? Drink and spare not; drink love and be drunken with Christ! Nay, alas! The distance betwixt us and Christ is a death. O, if we were clasped in other's arms! We should never twin again, except heaven twinned and sundered us; and that cannot be.
”
”
Samuel Rutherford (The Letters of Samuel Rutherford)
“
Tourists enter Tehran from the south on a carriageway built by order of the Shah. On the city’s outskirts they pass through the green belt he envisioned would protect Tehran from the twin scourges of desert wind and dust. In the central city visitors pass by the government ministries, hospitals, universities, schools, concert halls, monuments, bridges, sports complexes, hotels, museums, galleries, and gleaming underground metro that were among his many pet projects. … He championed the social welfare state that today provides Iranians with access to state-run health care and education. He raised the scholarship money that allowed hundreds of thousands of Iranian university students, including many luminaries of the Islamic Republic, to study abroad at leading American and European universities. The Shah ordered the fighter jets that made Iran’s air force the most powerful in southwestern Asia. He established the first national parks and state forests and ordered strict water, animal, and conservation measures. Perhaps it is no surprise that Iran today has the look and feel of a haunted house. The man who built modern Iran is nowhere to be seen but his presence is felt everywhere. The revolutionaries who replaced the Shah may not like to hear it, but Iran today is as much his country as it is theirs.
”
”
Andrew Scott Cooper (The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran)
“
Withholding education from women was the original sin of man," she concludes.
”
”
Sarah Grand (The Heavenly Twins (Classic Illustrated Edition))
“
Elliptical orbits. Langdon recalled that much of Galileo’s legal trouble had begun when he described planetary motion as elliptical. The Vatican exalted the perfection of the circle and insisted heavenly motion must be only circular. Galileo’s Illuminati, however, saw perfection in the ellipse as well, revering the mathematical duality of its twin foci. The Illuminati’s ellipse was prominent even today in modern Masonic tracing boards and footing inlays.
”
”
Dan Brown (Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon #1))
“
Ahura Mazda, God of Persians, fathered twin sons. He gave each the will to choose. The one, Ohrmazd, opted for light and life and benevolence. The other, Ahriman, chose death and darkness and evil. Ahura Mazda divided the world between his sons. Ohrmazd created the heavens and the earth. Ahriman created demons and death.
'It is not,' Ahriman said to his father, 'that I am incapable of good. It is I choose evil.'
To prove to the world his ability or greatness, Ahriman created the Peacock.
”
”
Gina B Nahai
“
According to my Baptist Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly. This was the sticking point in my own little lame march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age five I raised my good left hand in Sunday school and used a month’s ration of words to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Saviour as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn? I waited for Leah and the other pupils to seize on this very obvious point of argument and jump in with their overflowing brace of words. To my dismay, they did not. Not even my own twin, who ought to know about unearned privilege. This was before Leah and I were gifted; I was still Dumb Adah. Slowpoke poison-oak running joke Adah, subject to frequent thimble whacks on the head. Miss Betty sent me to the corner for the rest of the hour to pray for my own soul while kneeling on grains of uncooked rice. When I finally got up with sharp grains imbedded in my knees I found, to my surprise, that I no longer believed in God. The other children still did, apparently. As I limped back to my place, they turned their eyes away from my stippled sinner’s knees. How could they not even question their state of grace? I lacked their confidence, alas. I had spent more time than the average child pondering unfortunate accidents of birth.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
“
That another world is trying to talk to us, and that the more we listen, the more we will understand. The twin streams of science and spirit, rather than fighting, are entwined
”
”
Eben Alexander (The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife)
“
Understanding this dual nature in women sometimes causes men, and even women themselves, to close their eyes and hail heaven for help. The paradox of women’s twin nature is that when one side is more cool in feeling tone, the other side is more hot . When one side is more lingering and rich relationally, the other may be somewhat glacial. Often one side is more happy and elastic, while the other has a longing for “I know not what.” One may be sunny, while the other is bittersweet and wistful. These “two-women-who-are-one” are separate but conjoined elements which combine in the psyche in thousands of ways.
”
”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
“
But most imperial elites earnestly believed that they were working for the general welfare of all the empire’s inhabitants. China’s ruling class treated their country’s neighbours and its foreign subjects as miserable barbarians to whom the empire must bring the benefits of culture. The Mandate of Heaven was bestowed upon the emperor not in order to exploit the world, but in order to educate humanity. The Romans, too, justified their dominion by arguing that they were endowing the barbarians with peace, justice and refinement. The wild Germans and painted Gauls had lived in squalor and ignorance until the Romans tamed them with law, cleaned them up in public bathhouses, and improved them with philosophy. The Mauryan Empire in the third century BC took as its mission the dissemination of Buddha’s teachings to an ignorant world. The Muslim caliphs received a divine mandate to spread the Prophet’s revelation, peacefully if possible but by the sword if necessary. The Spanish and Portuguese empires proclaimed that it was not riches they sought in the Indies and America, but converts to the true faith. The sun never set on the British mission to spread the twin gospels of liberalism and free trade. The Soviets felt duty-bound to facilitate the inexorable historical march from capitalism towards the utopian dictatorship of the proletariat. Many Americans nowadays maintain that their government has a moral imperative to bring Third World countries the benefits of democracy and human rights, even if these goods are delivered by cruise missiles and F-16s.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
I’m so fucking grateful for his existence, for being my brother, my true family. Now’s not the place in my story for this but shit, damnit, fuckit, when he started writing lyrics over my bass lines his artistry gave me new life. My heart grew a couple of sizes. The color of his words, the sharp sound of the syllables cracking together. Both his lyrics and my bass lines pulsed together, same as the heartbeat of our friendship. It was the conversation we’d started in the Fairfax gymnasium translated into music. When his words met my grooves they flowed together unconsciously, like they’d always been together, like baby wolf twins bursting out of the dark den of their infancy, joyfully embracing the infinite light of the outside world for the first time. When he wrote “Green Heaven,” a long and dynamic rap narrative over our hard funk, I was on the phone for hours, trembling with emotion, calling everyone I knew and excitedly reciting the entire song.
”
”
Flea (Acid for the Children: A Memoir)
“
Resurrection, by contrast, has always gone with a strong view of God’s justice and of God as the good creator. Those twin beliefs give rise not to a meek acquiescence to injustice in the world but to a robust determination to oppose it.
”
”
N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
“
What is your opinion of Lady Helen?” he asked as Quincy arranged the meal on the table in front of him.
“She is the jewel of the Ravenels,” Quincy said. “A more kind-hearted girl you’ll never meet. Sadly, she’s always been overlooked. Her older brother received the lion’s share of her parents’ interest, and what little was left went to the twins.”
Rhys had met the twins a few days earlier, both of them bright-eyed and amusing, asking a score of questions about his department store. He had liked the girls well enough, but neither of them had captured his interest. They were nothing close to Helen, whose reserve was mysterious and alluring. She was like a mother-of-pearl shell that appeared to be one color, but from different angles revealed delicate shimmers of lavender, pink, blue, green. A beautiful exterior that revealed little of its true nature.
“Is she aloof with all strangers?” he asked, arranging a napkin on his lap. “Or is it only with me?”
“Aloof?” The valet sounded genuinely surprised. Before he could continue, a pair of small black spaniels entered the parlor, panting happily as they bounded up to Rhys. “Good heavens,” he muttered with a frown.
Rhys, who happened to like dogs, didn’t mind the interruption. What he found disconcerting, however, was the third animal that trotted into the room after them and sat assertively by his chair.
“Quincy,” Rhys asked blankly, “why is there a pig in the parlor?”
The valet, who was busy shooing the dogs from the room, said distractedly, “A family pet, sir. They try to keep him in the barn, but he will insist on coming into the house.”
“But why--” Rhys broke off, realizing that regardless of the explanation, it would make no sense to him. “Why is it,” he asked instead, “that if I kept livestock in my home, people would say I was ignorant or daft, but if a pig wanders freely in the mansion of an earl, it’s called eccentric?”
“There are three things that everyone expects of an aristocrat,” the valet replied, tugging firmly at the pig’s collar. “A country house, and a weak chin, and eccentricity.” He pushed and pulled at the pig with increasing determination, but the creature only sat more heavily. “I vow,” the valet wheezed, budging him only an inch at a time, “I’ll have you turned into sausage and collops by tomorrow’s breakfast!”
Ignoring the determined valet, the pig stared up at Rhys with patient, hopeful eyes.
“Quincy,” Rhys said, “look sharp.” He picked up a bread roll from his plate and tossed it casually in the air.
The valet caught it deftly in a white-gloved hand. “Thank you, sir.” As he walked to the door with the bread in hand, the pig trotted after him.
Rhys watched with a faint smile. “Desire,” he said, “is always better motivation than fear. Remember that, Quincy.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
“
The philosopher and ethicist Jonathan Glover reports the story of Odilo Globocnik, the Nazi SS leader in Lublin, Poland, who recalled an incident in which he expressed to another Nazi officer, a Major Hofle, how much it bothered him to think about the Polish children freezing to death while being transported by the Nazis from Lublin to Warsaw. He could not look at these young children without thinking of his own three-year-old niece. Hofle, he recalled, looked at me 'like [I was] an idiot.' Sometime later, Hofle’s own baby twins died of diphtheria and, at the cemetery, he cried out that it was heaven’s punishment for his misdeeds.
”
”
Dennis Prager (The Rational Bible: Exodus)
“
The Twin Flame Mirroring Effect exists solely as a reflection of your personal relationship with God, who is your Divine Creator in heaven. That’s one of the main functions of your Twin Flame Union: to reflect to you your relationship, choices and consciousness regarding your Divine Creator. This is truly the one piece that many struggle with on their Twin Flame journey.
”
”
Jeff Ayan (Twin Flames: Finding Your Ultimate Lover)
“
According to my Baptist Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly. This was a sticking point in my own little lame march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age five I raised my good left hand in Sunday school and used a month’s ration of words to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Savior as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn? I waited for Leah and the other pupils to seize on this very obvious point of argument and jump in with their overflowing brace of words. To my dismay, they did not. Not even my own twin, who ought to know about unearned privilege.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)