Ultimate English Quotes

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our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get—six of the seven most common verbs in English—may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English.
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet)
Life is a lot like pizza… But in fact, Hank, the fundamental thing that all critical reading does is reveal to us there are not easy definitions that distinguish us from them. Reading with an eye toward metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about while reading about them. That’s why there are symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if the author intended a symbol to be there because the job of reading is not to understand the author’s intent. The job of reading is to use stories as a way into other people as we see ourselves, and when we do that we can look out at the world and see a giant endless set of beautiful variations of pizzas; the whole world composed of billions of beautiful, delicious pizzas.
John Green
Ultimately, the purpose of magic is to free our potential, not bind us to ideas.
Philip Carr-Gomm (The Book of English Magic)
The most common English word spoken in the nail salon was sorry. It was the one refrain for what it meant to work in the service of beauty. Again and again, I watched as manicurists, bowed over a hand or foot of a client, some young as seven, say, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," when they had nothing wrong. I have seen workers, you included, apologize dozens of times throughout a forty-five-minute manicure, hoping to gain warm traction that would lead to the ultimate goal, a tip--only to say sorry anyway when none was given. In the nail salon, sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. It no longer merely apologizes, but insists, reminds: I'm here, right here, beneath you. It is the lowering of oneself so that the client feels right, superior, and charitable. In the nail salon, one's definition of sorry is deranged into a new word entirely, one that's charged and reused as both power and defacement at once. Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat.
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
That means questioning the words we speak every day, as well as the contexts in which we use them—because without realizing it, something as simple as an address term or curse word might be reinforcing a power structure that we ultimately don’t agree with.
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misundertood. Or victims of that manipulative force: Love. Love causes war and causes death, breaks souls and breaks lives. It runs people into the ground, makes them behave like moronic, immoral beasts, before it dances off, leaving only destruction in its wake - hearts blown wide open for the whole world to see. Love puts the blame on the poor souls who succumb to it. Love, that ultimate villainess. She makes examples of us all. And yet we still come back for more. We keep playing the role she gives us. For one more chance to feel alive.
Karina Halle (Love, in English (Love, in English, #1))
Ultimately, the main reasons why I will be chubby for life are (1) I have virtually no hobbies except dieting. I can’t speak any non-English languages, knit, ski, scrapbook, or cook. I have no pets. I don’t know how to do drugs. I lost my passport three years ago when I moved into my house and never got it renewed. Video games scare me because they all seem to simulate situations I’d hate to be in, like war or stealing cars. So if I ever lost weight I would also lose my only hobby; (2) I have no discipline; I’m like if Private Benjamin had never toughened up but, in fact, got worse; (3) Guys I’ve dated have been into me the way I am; and (4) I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.
Mindy Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns))
But it so happens that everything on this planet is, ultimately, irrational; there is not, and cannot be, any reason for the causal connexion of things, if only because our use of the word "reason" already implies the idea of causal connexion. But, even if we avoid this fundamental difficulty, Hume said that causal connexion was not merely unprovable, but unthinkable; and, in shallower waters still, one cannot assign a true reason why water should flow down hill, or sugar taste sweet in the mouth. Attempts to explain these simple matters always progress into a learned lucidity, and on further analysis retire to a remote stronghold where every thing is irrational and unthinkable. If you cut off a man's head, he dies. Why? Because it kills him. That is really the whole answer. Learned excursions into anatomy and physiology only beg the question; it does not explain why the heart is necessary to life to say that it is a vital organ. Yet that is exactly what is done, the trick that is played on every inquiring mind. Why cannot I see in the dark? Because light is necessary to sight. No confusion of that issue by talk of rods and cones, and optical centres, and foci, and lenses, and vibrations is very different to Edwin Arthwait's treatment of the long-suffering English language. Knowledge is really confined to experience. The laws of Nature are, as Kant said, the laws of our minds, and, as Huxley said, the generalization of observed facts. It is, therefore, no argument against ceremonial magic to say that it is "absurd" to try to raise a thunderstorm by beating a drum; it is not even fair to say that you have tried the experiment, found it would not work, and so perceived it to be "impossible." You might as well claim that, as you had taken paint and canvas, and not produced a Rembrandt, it was evident that the pictures attributed to his painting were really produced in quite a different way. You do not see why the skull of a parricide should help you to raise a dead man, as you do not see why the mercury in a thermometer should rise and fall, though you elaborately pretend that you do; and you could not raise a dead man by the aid of the skull of a parricide, just as you could not play the violin like Kreisler; though in the latter case you might modestly add that you thought you could learn. This is not the special pleading of a professed magician; it boils down to the advice not to judge subjects of which you are perfectly ignorant, and is to be found, stated in clearer and lovelier language, in the Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley.
Aleister Crowley
Reading with an eye towards metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about, while reading about them. That’s why there is symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the author intended the symbol to be there because the job of reading is not to understand the author’s intent. The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as a we ourselves.
John Green
Unfairness – this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damm lucky by Indian standards. Let’s be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don’t. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don’t get literary praise. It’s ok. I don’t look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It’s ok. Don’t let unfairness kill your spark
Chetan Bhagat
These days, elementary school students learn English and coding at school. Tomorrow's elementary school students will learn AI. AI comes before English and coding. This is because artificial intelligence is the language and tool of the future.
Enamul Haque (The Ultimate Modern Guide to Artificial Intelligence: Including Machine Learning, Deep Learning, IoT, Data Science, Robotics, The Future of Jobs, Required Upskilling and Intelligent Industries)
I myself am a supporter of multilingualism, but multilingualism without a true understanding of universal language will only make us blind and ultimately ineffectual in realizing that very ideal.
Minae Mizumura (The Fall of Language in the Age of English)
Forgiver of sins, Accepter of repentance, Severe in punishment, Bountiful in bounty. There is no god but He. To Him is the ultimate return.
Talal Itani (Quran: English Translation. Clear, Pure, Easy to Read, in Modern English.)
First, I give my gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and soul, with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His Blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the Salvation of the one, and the Resurrection of the other;
John Donne (JOHN DONNE COMPLETE WORKS ULTIMATE COLLECTION – All Poems, Love Poetry, Holy Sonnets, Devotions, Meditations, English Poems, Sermons PLUS BIOGRAPHIES and ANNOTATIONS [Annotated])
I know we’ve left scars everywhere, and that our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get—six of the seven most common verbs in English—may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English.
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed)
In my college sociolinguistics classes, I started learning about some of the subtle ways gender stereotypes are hiding in English . . . like how the term penetration implies (and reinforces) the idea that sex is from the male perspective. Like sex is defined as something a man does to a woman. The opposite might be envelopment or enclosure. Can you imagine how different life would be if that’s how we referred to sex? If women were linguistically framed as the protagonists of any given sexual scenario, could that potentially mean that a woman’s orgasm as opposed to a dude’s would be seen as the proverbial climax—the ultimate goal? Questions like that blew my mind.
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
Ultimately, every language, including English, demonstrates its culture’s relationship to power by how it chooses to define the act of disclosure. Even the nautically derived English words that seem neutral and benign frame the act from the perspective of the institution that perceives itself wronged, not of the public that the institution has failed.
Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
All longings the essence for real liberation only, Freedom from all sides, an ultimate supremacy; - 43 -
Munindra Misra (Devi Mahatmayam in English Rhyme)
It is to be questioned whether in the whole length and breadth of the world there is a more admirable spot for a man in love to pass a day or two than the typical English village.
P.G. Wodehouse (The Ultimate Wodehouse Collection)
I went to Cambridge University. I took a number of baths—and a degree in English.
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
This business, ultimately, embodied the challenges of globalization, of the push and pull between expansion and identity, about the universalization of a product that is steeped in decidedly nonuniversal customs.
Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
The Buddha’s signature pronouncement—“Life is suffering”—is the source of a major misunderstanding, and by extension, a major PR problem. It makes Buddhism seem supremely dour. Turns out, though, it’s all the result of a translation error. The Pali word dukkha doesn’t actually mean “suffering.” There’s no perfect word in English, but it’s closer to “unsatisfying” or “stressful.” When the Buddha coined his famous phrase, he wasn’t saying that all of life is like being chained to a rock and having crows peck out your innards. What he really meant was something like, “Everything in the world is ultimately unsatisfying and unreliable because it won’t last.
Dan Harris (10% Happier)
Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.
Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate Collection)
If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.
Samuel Johnson (Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language)
I know we've left scars everywhere, and that our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get- six of the seven most common verbs in English- may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English.
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed)
I was extremely curious about the alternatives to the kind of life I had been leading, and my friends and I exchanged rumors and scraps of information we dug from official publications. I was struck less by the West's technological developments and high living standards than by the absence of political witch-hunts, the lack of consuming suspicion, the dignity of the individual, and the incredible amount of liberty. To me, the ultimate proof of freedom in the West was that there seemed to be so many people there attacking the West and praising China. Almost every other day the front page of Reference, the newspaper which carded foreign press items, would feature some eulogy of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. At first I was angered by these, but they soon made me see how tolerant another society could be. I realized that this was the kind of society I wanted to live in: where people were allowed to hold different, even outrageous views. I began to see that it was the very tolerance of oppositions, of protesters, that kept the West progressing. Still, I could not help being irritated by some observations. Once I read an article by a Westerner who came to China to see some old friends, university professors, who told him cheerfully how they had enjoyed being denounced and sent to the back end of beyond, and how much they had relished being reformed. The author concluded that Mao had indeed made the Chinese into 'new people' who would regard what was misery to a Westerner as pleasure. I was aghast. Did he not know that repression was at its worst when there was no complaint? A hundred times more so when the victim actually presented a smiling face? Could he not see to what a pathetic condition these professors had been reduced, and what horror must have been involved to degrade them so? I did not realize that the acting that the Chinese were putting on was something to which Westerners were unaccustomed, and which they could not always decode. I did not appreciate either that information about China was not easily available, or was largely misunderstood, in the West, and that people with no experience of a regime like China's could take its propaganda and rhetoric at face value. As a result, I assumed that these eulogies were dishonest. My friends and I would joke that they had been bought by our government's 'hospitality." When foreigners were allowed into certain restricted places in China following Nixon's visit, wherever they went the authorities immediately cordoned off enclaves even within these enclaves. The best transport facilities, shops, restaurants, guest houses and scenic spots were reserved for them, with signs reading "For Foreign Guests Only." Mao-tai, the most sought-after liquor, was totally unavailable to ordinary Chinese, but freely available to foreigners. The best food was saved for foreigners. The newspapers proudly reported that Henry Kissinger had said his waistline had expanded as a result of the many twelve-course banquets he enjoyed during his visits to China. This was at a time when in Sichuan, "Heaven's Granary," our meat ration was half a pound per month, and the streets of Chengdu were full of homeless peasants who had fled there from famine in the north, and were living as beggars. There was great resentment among the population about how the foreigners were treated like lords. My friends and I began saying among ourselves: "Why do we attack the Kuomintang for allowing signs saying "No Chinese or Dogs" aren't we doing the same? Getting hold of information became an obsession. I benefited enormously from my ability to read English, as although the university library had been looted during the Cultural Revolution, most of the books it had lost had been in Chinese. Its extensive English-language collection had been turned upside down, but was still largely intact.
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
Jeeves,” I said, “we’ve backed a winner.” “Sir?” “Coming to this place, I mean. Here we are in a topping hotel, with fine weather, good cooking, golf, bathing, gambling of every variety, and my Aunt Agatha miles away on the other side of the English Channel. I ask you, what could be sweeter?
P.G. Wodehouse (The Ultimate Wodehouse Collection)
I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world. summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God. I believe that health is wholeness. For many years I have returned again and again to the work of the English agriculturist SirAlbert Hovvard, who said, in The Soil and Health, that "the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man [is] one great subject." I am moreover a Luddite, in what I take to be the true and appropriate sense. I am not "against technology" so much as I am for community. When the choice is between the health of a community and technological innovation, I choose the health of the community I would unhesitatingly destroy a machine before I would allow the machine to destroy my community. I believe that the community-in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures-is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.
Wendell Berry (Another Turn of the Crank: Essays)
In Dzokchen, compassion is much more than the virtue of loving kindness. Nor does the word compassion in the Dzokchen context denote its English etymological meaning, “suffering together” or “empathy,” although both these meanings may be inferred. Essentially, compassion indicates an open and receptive mind responding spontaneously to the exigencies of an ever-changing field of vibration to sustain the optimal awareness that serves self-and-others’ ultimate desire for liberation and well-being. The conventional meaning of compassion denotes the latter, active part of this definition, and, due to the accretions of Christian connotation, response is limited to specifically virtuous activity. “Responsiveness” defines the origin and cause of selfless activity that can encompass all manner of response. On this nondual Dzokchen path virtue is the effect, not the cause; the ultimate compassionate response is whatever action maximizes Knowledge—loving kindness is the automatic function of Awareness.
Keith Dowman (The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism)
Aquitaine, or Gascony as the English preferred to call it, was actually a duchy subject to the French crown which had been inherited by English kings after the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. Its status had long been a source of dispute and conflict between the two kingdoms, leading ultimately to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in 1337.
Juliet Barker (England, Arise: The People, the King and the Great Revolt of 1381)
English. I believe the ultimate gauge of success is this: Does the text free the reader? Does it contribute to our physical and emotional health? Does it put “golden tools” into our hands that can help excavate the Beloved whom we and society have buried so deep inside? Persian poets of Hafiz’s era would often address themselves in their poems, making the poem an intimate conversation. This was also a method of “signing” the poem, as one might sign a letter to a friend, or a painting. It should also be noted that sometimes Hafiz speaks as a seeker, other times as a master and guide. Hafiz also has a unique vocabulary of names for God—as one might have endearing pet names for one’s own family members. To Hafiz, God is more than just the Father, the Mother, the Infinite, or a Being beyond comprehension. Hafiz gives God a vast range of names, such as Sweet Uncle, the Generous Merchant, the Problem Giver, the Problem Solver, the Friend, the Beloved. The words Ocean, Sky, Sun, Moon, and Love, among others, when capitalized in these poems, can sometimes be synonyms for God, as it is a Hafiz trait to offer these poems to many levels of interpretation simultaneously. To Hafiz, God is Someone we can meet, enter, and eternally explore.
Hafez (The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master (Compass))
Prior to modern times, the term 'Islamic' (Islami in Arabic) was almost never used to define the provenance, status, or substance of things. There was no such thing as 'Islamic art', 'Islamic economics', or even 'Islamic law.' ... The encounter with the modern West, however, ultimately changed the status of 'Islamic.' Inasmuch as the rise of the West converted the achievements of Darwin, Descartes, and Hegel from mere English, French, or German achievements into explicitly 'Western' ones, it also engendered the need for a parallel convention for demarcating the non-Western 'other.' The Western provenance of the modern neologism 'Islamic' is perhaps best revealed in its tendency to connote geography and ethnicity. 'Islamic', in other words, connotes not simply that which is related to or a product of Islam as a religion but that which relates to a particularly non-European people in a non-European part of the world. In this capacity, it carries both a descriptive and a prescriptive force... For no modern Muslim nor non-Muslim would include the likes of such Arab Christians as Michel Aflaq or San' Allah Ibrahim among the 'thinkers of Islam.' Rather, in Western parlance, the modern 'Islamic' began as an instrument to demarcate the boundary between the west and a particular set of 'others.' In Muslim hands, it would go on to evolve into a full-blown signifier of normative Islam and a tool for delineating the boundary between it and Islam. Its added utility, moreover, as a mechanism for elevating the achievements of Muslims to the level of a civilization rivaling that of Europe rendered it all the more irresistible and gained for it universal acceptance throughout the Muslim world.
Sherman A. Jackson (Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection)
The history of Noah teaches the lesson that lovers of falsehood may appear to be all-powerful and they may be very long-lived, but they are nevertheless destined to face destruction. On the contrary, men of Faith may be very few in number and may appear to be quite powerless, but by God’s will, these are the very people who will ultimately share His grace in the present world, in the beginning and, finally, in the Hereafter.
Anonymous (The Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword))
know we’ve left scars everywhere, and that our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get—six of the seven most common verbs in English—may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English. Even though we know that none of our marks will truly last, that time is coming not just for all of us but for all we make, we can’t stop scribbling, can’t stop seeking relief wherever we can find it.
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet)
128. Moses reassured his people, “Seek Allah’s help and be patient. Indeed, the earth belongs to Allah ˹alone˺. He grants it to whoever He chooses of His servants. The ultimate outcome belongs ˹only˺ to the righteous.” 129. They complained, “We have always been oppressed—before and after you came to us ˹with the message˺.” He replied, “Perhaps your Lord will destroy your enemy and make you successors in the land to see what you will do.
Anonymous (The Clear Quran: A Thematic English Translation)
What would have happened if Einstein had advanced something equally new in the sphere of religion or politics? English people would have found elements of Prussianism in his theory; anti-Semites would have regarded it as a Zionist plot; nationalists in all countries would have found it tainted with lily-livered pacifism, and proclaimed it a mere dodge for escaping military service. All the old-fashioned professors would have approached Scotland Yard to get the importation of his writings prohibited. Teachers favourable to him would have been dismissed. He, meantime, would have captured the Government of some backward country, where it would have become illegal to teach anything except his doctrine, which would have grown into a mysterious dogma not understood by anybody. Ultimately the truth or falsehood of his doctrine would be decided on the battlefield, without the collection of any fresh evidence for or against it. This method is the logical outcome of William James’s will to believe.
Bertrand Russell (The Will to Doubt)
Mr. Schmidt had screamed at me in New York: LOSER! You English Loser…I suppose he thought it was the most grievous insult he could hurl. But such a curse doesn’t really have any effect on an English person—or a European—it seems to me. We know we’re all going to lose in the end so it is deprived of any force as a slur. But not in the USA. Perhaps this is the great difference between the two worlds, this concept of Loserdom. In the New World it is the ultimate mark of shame—in the Old it prompts only a wry sympathy.
William Boyd
I had been walking through the town trying to find a particular address, and being thoroughly lost I stopped to ask for directions from a man in the street. I knew this mightn’t be easy because I don’t speak German, but I was still surprised to discover just how much difficulty I was having communicating with this particular man. Gradually the truth dawned on me as we struggled in vain to understand each other that of all the people in Innsbruck I could have stopped to ask, the one I had picked did not speak English, did not speak French and was also deaf and dumb.
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep him. For Fat, finding God (if indeed he did find God) became, ultimately, a bummer, a constantly diminishing supply of joy, sinking lower and lower like the contents of a bag of uppers. Who deals God? Fat knew that the churches couldn’t help, although he did consult with one of David’s priests. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. Kevin suggested dope. Being involved with literature, I recommended he read the English seventeenth century minor metaphysical poets such as Vaughan and Herbert: “He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where, He sayes it is so far That he hath quite forgot how to go there.” Which
Philip K. Dick (VALIS)
As I write, I see in an article on Wordsworth, in one of the current English magazines, the lines. "A few weeks ago an eminent French critic said that, owing to the special tendency to science and to its all-devouring force, poetry would cease to be read in fifty years." But I anticipate the very contrary. Only a firmer, vastly broader, new area begins to exist—nay, is already form'd—to which the poetic genius must emigrate. Whatever may have been the case in years gone by, the true use for the imaginative faculty of modern times is to give ultimate vivification to facts, to science, and to common lives, endowing them with the glows and glories and final illustriousness which belong to every real thing, and to real things only.
Walt Whitman
I like to see y’all as an efficient and socially conscious way to handle the English language’s lack of a second-person plural pronoun.” The mother raised an eyebrow. I continued, “I could have used the word you to address the two girls, but I wanted to make sure your daughter knew I was including her in the conversation. I could also have said you guys, which has become surprisingly customary in casual conversation, but to my knowledge, neither of these children identifies as male, and I try to avoid using masculine terms to address people who aren’t men, as it ultimately works to promote the sort of linguistic sexism many have been fighting for years. I mean, if neither of these girls is a guy, then surely together they aren’t guys, you know?
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
Every day since TUB (The Ultimate Betrayal) had been a disaster. He had English with Anika, who never failed to shoot him a forced smile. Then chemistry with Mason, where they were lab partners. Gael refused to talk to either of them. In the past week, he’d barely exchanged words with anyone. Things were even awkward with Danny. Even though he was Gael’s best friend besides Mason, the dude was gaga for Jenna, and Jenna had long been Anika’s BFF. As such, this had become the unspoken rule among them: Jenna was Team Anika, Danny was Team Jenna, and by the transitive property, Danny couldn’t be on Gael’s side. Gael hadn’t ever thought to make friends outside of their little group. He hadn’t hedged his bets, if you will. He’d put all his eggs in one basket. And those eggs had decided to hook up with each other behind his back.
Leah Konen (The Romantics)
There’s also the human urge to make things, to paint cave walls and doodle in the margins of to-do lists. Doi once said, “I have to keep on working, otherwise nothing will be brought into existence.” But sometimes I feel like the paper is better before we get ahold of it, when it is still wood. Other times, I love the marks we leave. They feel like gifts and signs, like trail markers in the wilderness. I know we’ve left scars everywhere, and that our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get—six of the seven most common verbs in English—may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English. Even though we know that none of our marks will truly last, that time is coming not just for all of us but for all we make, we can’t stop scribbling, can’t stop seeking relief wherever we can find it.
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet)
The compendium of texts known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead contains exquisitely written guidance and practices related to transforming our experience in daily life, on how to address the processes of dying and the after-death state, and on how to help those who are dying. These teachings include: methods for investigating and cultivating our experience of the ultimate nature of mind in our daily practice (Chapters 2-7), guidance on the recognition of the signs of impending death and a detailed description of the mental and physical processes of dying (Chapter 8), rituals for the avoidance of premature death (Chapter 9), the now famous guide ‘The Great Liberation by Hearing’ that is read to the dying and the dead (Chapter 11), aspirational prayers that are read at the time of death (Chapter 12), an allegorical masked play that lightheartedly dramatises the journey through the intermediate state (Chapter 13), and a translation of the sacred mantras that are attached to the body after death and are said to bring ‘Liberation by Wearing’ (Chapter 14).
Graham Coleman (The Tibetan Book of the Dead. First Complete English Translation)
There had been moments when it seemed as though from the ferment of radical ideas a culture might emerge which might be different both from the traditional aristocratic culture and from the bourgeois culture of the protestant ethic which replaced it. We can discern shadows of what this counter culture might have been like. rejecting private property for communism, religion for rationalistic and materialistic pantheism, the mechanical philosophy for dialectical science, asceticism for unashamed enjoyment of the good things of the flesh, it might have achieved unity through a federation of communities, each based on the fullest respect for the individual. Its ideal would have been economic self-sufficiency, not world trade or world domination. The economic significant consequence of the Puritan emphasis on sin was the compulsion on labour, to save, to accumulate, which contributed so much to making the Industrial Revolution possible in England. Ranters simply rejected this; Quakers ultimately came to accept it. Only Winstanley put forward an alternative....... ...It came nearest to realisation in the Digger communities, which might have given the counter-culture some economic base.
Christopher Hill (The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution)
My time at Eton did develop in me a character trait that is essentially, I guess, very English: the notion that it is best to be the sort of person who messes about and plays the fool but who, when it really matters, is tough to the core. I think it goes back to the English Scarlet Pimpernel mentality: the nobility of aspiring to be the hidden hero. (In fact, I am sure it is no coincidence that over the years, so many senior SAS officers have also been Old Etonians. Now explain that one, when the SAS really is the ultimate meritocracy? No school tie can earn you a place there. That comes only with sweat and hard work. But the SAS also attracts a certain personality and attitude. It favors the individual, the maverick, and the quietly talented. That was Eton for you, too.) This is essentially a very English ethos: work hard, play hard; be modest; do your job to your utmost, laugh at yourself; and sometimes, if you have to, cuff it. I found that these qualities were ones that I loved in others, and they were qualities that subconsciously I was aspiring to in myself--whether I knew it or not. One truth never changed for me at Eton: however much I threw myself into life there, the bare fact was that I still really lived for the holidays--to be back at home with my mum and dad, and Lara, in the Isle of Wight. It was always where my heart really was.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
Gallipoli was one of a series of military ‘Easterner’ adventures launched without proper analysis of the global strategic situation, without consideration of the local tactical situation, ignoring logistical realities, underestimating the strength of the opposition and predicated on a hugely optimistic assessment of the military capabilities of their own troops. Not for nothing is hubris regarded as the ‘English disease’. But the Gallipoli Campaign was a serious matter: vital resources had been drawn away from where it really mattered. The Turks were all but helpless if left on their own. They had tried to launch an ambitious attack across the Sinai Desert on the Suez Canal but had been easily thwarted. Gallipoli achieved nothing but to provide the Turks with the opportunity to slaughter British and French troops in copious numbers in a situation in which everything was in the defenders’ favour. Meanwhile, back on the Western Front, was the real enemy: the German Empire. Men, guns and munitions were in the process of being deployed to Gallipoli during the first British offensive at Neuve Chapelle; they were still there when the Germans launched their deadly gas attack at Ypres in April, during the debacles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, and during the first ‘great push’ at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. At sea Jellicoe was facing the High Seas Fleet which could pick its moment to contest the ultimate control of the seas. This was the real war – Gallipoli was nothing but a foolish sideshow.
Peter Hart (The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War)
It is untrue that I or anybody else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests. I have made so many offers for the reduction and elimination of armaments, which posterity cannot explain away for all eternity, that the responsibility for the outbreak of this war cannot rest on me. Furthermore, I never desired that after the first terrible World War a second war should arise against England or even against America. Centuries may pass, but out of the ruins of our cities and monuments of art there will arise anew the hatred for the people who alone are ultimately responsible: International Jewry and its helpers! As late as three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish War, I proposed to the British Ambassador in Berlin a solution for the German-Polish problem -- similar to the problem of the Saar area, under international control. This offer cannot be explained away, either. It was only rejected because the responsible circles in English politics wanted the war, partly in the expectation of business advantages, partly driven by propaganda promoted by international Jewry. But I left no doubt about the fact that if the peoples of Europe were again only regarded as so many packages of stock shares by these international money and finance conspirators, then that race, too, which is the truly guilty party in this murderous struggle would also have to be held to account: the Jews! I further left no doubt that this time we would not permit millions of European children of Aryan descent to die of hunger, nor millions of grown-up men to suffer death, nor hundreds of thousands of women and children to be burned and bombed to death in their cities, without the truly guilty party having to atone for its guilt, even if through more humane means.
Adolf Hitler
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
Anonymous
..reincarnation is a truth, because in existence nothing dies. Even the physicist will say, about the objective world, that nothing dies. You can destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki but you cannot destroy a single drop of water. You cannot destroy. Physicists have become aware of this impossibility. Whatever you do, only the form changes. But nothing can be destroyed in the objective world. The same is true about the world of consciousness, of life. There is no death. Death is only a change from one form into another form, and ultimately from form to formlessness. Only Gautam Buddha has given the right word for this experience. In English it is difficult to translate it, because languages develop only after experience. It is just arbitrarily that I am calling it "enlightenment." But it is very arbitrary; it does not really give you the sense that Buddha's word gives. He calls it nirvana. Nirvana means ceasing to be. Strange... ceasing to be. Not to be is nirvana. That does not mean that you are no more; it simply means you are no longer an entity, embodied. The dewdrop drops into the ocean. Now it is the whole ocean. Existence is alive at every stage. Nothing is dead. Even a stone - which you think seems to be completely dead - is not dead. So many living electrons are running so fast inside it that you cannot see them, but they are all living beings. Their bodies are so small that nobody has seen them; we don't even have any scientific instrument to see the electron, it is only guesswork. We can see the effect; hence we think there must be a cause. The cause has not been seen, only the effect has been seen. But the electron is as alive as you are. The whole existence is synonymous with life. Here nothing dies. Death is an impossibility. Yes, things change from one form to another form till they become mature enough that they need not go to school again. Then they move into a formless life, then they become one with the ocean itself.
Osho (From the false to the truth: Answers to the seekers of the path)
It was clear to me that, if nothing could be achieved by means of voluntary discussion and negotiation in Geneva, we had to leave Geneva. Never in my life have I imposed on anyone. Whoever does not want to speak to me does not have to. I don’t care! We are eighty-five million Germans, and these Germans do not need that; they have a mighty historic past. They already had an empire when England was only a small island. And that for more than three hundred years. For England these colonies are useless. It has forty million square kilometers [this forty-million figure consists mostly of the colonies]. What is it doing with them? Nothing at all. It is the avarice of old usurers, who do not want to give away what they possess. They are sick creatures. If they see that their neighbor has nothing to eat, they would still rather throw what they possess into the sea than give it away, even if they cannot use it themselves. They get ill at the thought that they could lose something. And I did not even ask for anything that belonged to the English. I asked only for what they robbed us of and stole from us in the years 1918 and 1919! Robbery and theft contrary to the solemn assurances of the American president Wilson! We did not ask anything of them, we did not make any demands. Again and again, I stretched my hand out to them, and, still, everything was in vain. The reasons are clear to us: for one, it is German unification as such. They hate this, our state, irrespective of what it looks like, whether it is imperial or National Socialist, democratic or authoritarian. That makes no difference to them. And second: above all, they hate the rise of this Reich. And here lust for power abroad and base egoism at home join forces. When they say, “We can never come to an understanding with this world,” then this world is the world of the awakening social conscience, with which they cannot come to an understanding. I can make only one response to these gentlemen on both sides of the ocean: the socialist world will be the victorious one in the end! The social conscience of all people will be roused. They can wage wars for their capitalist interests, but these wars themselves will ultimately pave the way for social upheaval among their people. It is not possible in the long run to gear hundreds of millions of people to the interests of a few individuals. The common interest of mankind will gain the victory over the interests of these small, plutocratic profiteers! Just a short while ago, they conclusively proved to us that our officers and generals are worthless because they are young and infected with National Socialist thinking, that is, they have some contact with the broad masses. Now events have shown where the better generals are, over there or here! If this war lasts any longer, then this will be a great misfortune for England. They will get to see real action. And, one day, perhaps the English will send a commission over here in order to adopt our platform! National Socialism will determine the coming millennia in German history, which would be unthinkable without it. It will fade away only when its political planks have become self-evident. Speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, January 30, 1941
Adolf Hitler (Collection of Speeches: 1922-1945)
We’ve driven wedges between parents and children, between liberals and conservatives, between whites and ethnic groups, and between the religious and non religious. We’ve all but destroyed feelings of patriotism and blocked all attempts to stop illegal immigration, improve border control, and establish a national language. And with our nationwide campaign of law suits, we’ve stretched your Constitution almost beyond recognition."       Rulon paused to study O’Brien’s face. "Don’t see it yet? The tremendous influx of Hispanics will ultimately result in large portions of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Florida being dominated by people speaking English only as a second language or not at all. Add the immigration—legal and illegal—of Muslims from Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, with all their cultural baggage, and you’ve got real diversity.
Robert Goddard (Upper House Conspiracy)
All our desires are desires of the soul, ultimately, Though they look like desires mental or sensory; - 39 -
Munindra Misra (Devi Mahatmayam in English Rhyme)
They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep him. For Fat, finding God (if indeed he did find God) became, ultimately, a bummer, a constantly diminishing supply of joy, sinking lower and lower like the contents of a bag of uppers. Who deals God? Fat knew that the churches couldn’t help, although he did consult with one of David’s priests. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. Kevin suggested dope. Being involved with literature, I recommended he read the English seventeenth century minor metaphysical poets such as Vaughan and Herbert: He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where,   He sayes it is so far That he hath quite forgot how to go there.
Anonymous
A pronoun, too, will aptly reflect the number of its antecedent: 'they' does not refer to one person, no matter how many personalities she or he has, or how eager you are to skirt the gender frays.
Karen Elizabeth Gordon (The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed)
allusion to its white-crowned head. bal·dric   n. HISTORICAL a belt for a sword or other piece of equipment, worn over one shoulder and reaching down to the opposite hip.  Middle English baudry, from Old French baudre, of unknown ultimate origin. Bald·win 1   Henry (1780-1844), U.S. Supreme Court associate justice 1830-44. He also served in Congress as a representative from
Anonymous
Whatever is absolutely valuable in itself and is also capable of being sought and obtained by God is his ultimate end in creating the world.
Jonathan Edwards (The End for Which God Created the World: Updated to Modern English)
Linguists aim to describe language while teachers prescribe how English or any other language should be properly used.
Adrian J. Williams (Linguistics: Language Mastery! The Ultimate Information Book (Linguistics, Language, Semantics, Syntax, Pragmatics, Etymology, Phonetics))
There is an analogy to this in the way you express a thought. Modern psychology and philosophy both tell us that the initial part of thinking does not take place in words. We pull up our ideas-the thought-from some unconscious level, then find a combination of words and phrases to express them. The thought exists, and its expression in words follows. You can see this, or I should say feel this, if you speak more than one language. Suppose your company is doing business in Moscow and some of the people around the table with you speak only Russian, some only English. You have something to say and you express that thought in Russian; a moment later you express the same thought in English. The "thought" exists somehow independent of how you put it in words. You have an intention of saying something, and find words by some subconscious process to express it. The result is utterance. It can be short and spontaneous, as in a conversation; or lengthy, put together piece by piece, as with a speech you are preparing. Either way it is a combination of ideas and concepts linked together for some purpose, expressed in sentences and phrases, and ultimately in words. You are not mindful of creating a combination, but you have done that nonetheless. It is the same with technology. The designer intends something, picks a toolbox or language for expression, envisions the concepts and functionalities needed to carry it out in his or her "mind's eye," then finds a suitable combination of components to achieve it. The envisioning can happen at one time more or less spontaneously. Or it can be drawn out, and put together in parts with much revision. We will look at how such creation works in more detail in the next chapter. But for now, notice that as with language, intention comes first and the means to fulfill it- the appropriate combination of components-fall in behind it. Design is expression.
W. Brian Arthur (The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves)
ASL conveys the differences between subject and object as specifically as English does. It simply employs a change of direction rather than a change of pronouns or of sign order. Liz uses the grammar of ASL, which is perfectly clear and reasonable to the students, to teach them English grammar, which they find so unwieldy. The former is nothing they were ever taught; they acquired it naturally through use, just as hearing students understand how to form proper English sentences before they ever receive any formal instruction. This method ultimately serves two purposes. As the students learn the rules of English grammar, they are also receiving a subtler message: that ASL has an equally complex and worthy grammar, a grammar they have already mastered.
Leah Hager Cohen (Train Go Sorry)
But I came to the government under circumstances calculated to generate peculiar acrimony. I found all its offices in the possession of a political sect who wished to transform it ultimately into the shape of their darling model the English government.” The Republican victory of 1800, Jefferson said, “had blown all their designs, and they found themselves and their fortresses of power and profit put in a moment into the hands of other trustees. Lamentations and invective were all that remained to them.” The
Jon Meacham (Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power)
models like this are a key component of machine-translation systems, like Google Translate, which lets you see the whole web in English (or almost), regardless of the language the pages were originally written in.
Pedro Domingos (The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World)
English children have lost their innocence, for their first lessons have been in the exploitation of their adult slave. A sterilized parent is a eunuch in his children's harem m. to be sure, I recognize that efficient contraception is necessary for sexual pleasure, and that sexual pleasure is necessary, but contraception for economic reasons is another matter. 'We can only afford two children' is a squalid argument, but more acceptable in our society than 'we don't like children'. A sterilized parent is forever bound to those children he has, more than ever immobile and predictable, and those children are more securely bound to him. 'We can only afford two children' really means, 'We only like clean, well-discipline middle-class children who grow up to be professionals', for children manage to use up all the capital that is made available for that purpose, whatever proportion it may be of the family's whole income, just as housework expands to fill the time available. The sterilized parent is the ultimate domestic animal.
Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch)
Three men—one French, one English, one Italian—were seated next to each other on an international flight. After a few drinks, the men began discussing their sex lives. “Last night I made love to my wife four times,” the Englishman bragged. “And this morning she told me how much she adored me.” “Not bad,” the Frenchman says, “though last night I made love to my wife six times. And this morning she told me she could never love another man.” When the Italian remained silent, the Frenchman asked, “And you? How many times did you make love to your wife last night?” “Once,” the Italian man replied. “Only once?” the Frenchman smugly asked. “And what did she say to you this morning?” “Don’t stop.
Scott McNeely (Ultimate Book of Jokes: The Essential Collection of More Than 1,500 Jokes)
Three immigrants—one Italian, one French, one Spanish—are applying for American citizenship. As part of the interview process, they’re told they must compose a sentence in English with three primary words: GREEN, PINK, and YELLOW. The Italian goes the first. “I wake up in the morning. I see the YELLOW sun. I see the GREEN grass. And I think to myself, I hope it will be a PINK day.” The Frenchman is the next. “I wake up in the morning. I eat a YELLOW banana and a GREEN pepper. In the evening I watch PINK Panther on TV.” Finally it’s the Spaniard’s turn. “I wake up in the morning, I hear the phone GREEN, GREEN, GREEN. Then I PINK up the phone and say YELLOW!
Scott McNeely (Ultimate Book of Jokes: The Essential Collection of More Than 1,500 Jokes)
Researchers say that when babies babble, they produce all the possible sounds of all human languages, randomly generating phonemes from Japanese to English to Swahili. As children learn the language of their parents, they narrow their sound repertoire to fit the model to which they are exposed. They begin to produce not just the sound of their native language but also its classical intonation patterns. Children lose their polymath talents so effectively that they ultimately become unable to produce some language sounds.
Christine Kenneally (The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language)
begin with lexical items and show how they need to be grammatically modified to be communicatively effective.’ At around the same time, research using language corpora was highlighting the combinatory power, and ultimate learning potential, of grammar words (or functors), such as auxiliaries, determiners, prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions. As Sinclair and Renouf (1988: 155) pointed out, ‘English makes excessive use, e.g. through phrasal verbs, of its most frequent words, and so they are well worth learning.’ And they add, ‘verb tenses, for example, which are often the main organizing feature of a course, are combinations of some of the commonest words in the language.’ This suggests to me that there are two
Scott Thornbury (Big Questions in ELT)
abyss. Abyss is one of the few English words that derive from Sumerian, the world's first written language, which evolved some 5,000 years ago in the lower Tigris and Euphrates Valley of what is now called Iraq. The word came into English in the late 14th century from the Latin word abyssus, meaning "bottomless, the deep," but has been traced ultimately to the primordial sea that the Sumerians called Abzu. Another word with Sumerian roots is Eden, the word for the lost paradise that came into English from a Hebrew word.
Robert Hendrickson (The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins)
ä - sounds like “ay” as in the word “melon” ö  - sounds like “ir” as in the word “girl” or “earl” ü - there is no equivalent sound in English but the closest it sounds is “eeh” as in “eBook or eBar
Amanda Richards (German: Learn German FAST! Start Speaking Basic German In Less Than 24 Hours – The Ultimate Mini Crash Course For Beginners (Germany, German Language, German for Beginners))
Buddhist practice is an ongoing investigation of reality, a microscopic examination of the very process of perception. Its intention is to pick apart the screen of lies and delusions through which we normally view the world, and thus to reveal the face of ultimate reality.
Henepola Gunaratana (Mindfulness in Plain English)
This, unlike the Dianazene raid, received significant press attention both in the United States and throughout the English-speaking world. In Victoria, Australia, the FDA’s action added fuel to a debate that had been raging for some time over Scientology’s physical and mental health benefits. As early as 1960, the Australian Medical Association and its Mental Health Authority had taken a keen interest in Scientology, and a formal board of inquiry would ultimately produce a scathing, 173-page report thoroughly denouncing Scientology and its founder. “If there should be detected in this report a note of unrelieved denunciation of Scientology, it is because the evidence has shown its theories to be fantastic and impossible, its principles perverted and ill-founded, and its techniques debased and harmful,” the report concluded. “Scientology is a delusional belief system, based on fiction and fallacies and propagated by falsehood and deception . . . Its founder, with the merest smattering of knowledge in various sciences, has built upon the scintilla of his learning a crazy and dangerous edifice.
Janet Reitman (Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion)
Our language, one of our most precious natural resources in the English-speaking countries, is also a dwindling one that deserves at least as much protection as our woodlands, streams and whooping cranes. We don’t write letters, we make long-distance calls; we don’t read, we are talked to, in the resolutely twelve-year-old vocabulary of radio and television. Under the banner of Timesaving we are offered only the abbreviated, the abridged, the aborted. Our Noble Eightfold Path consists entirely of shortcuts.
James Lipton (An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition)
The reader of this book may already know the popular philological story that usually takes Oxford as its locale. In it, four dons, each representing a different academic discipline and therefore a different viewpoint, were flapping along the Oxford High when their path was crossed by a small but conspicuous group of prostitutes. The quickest of the dons muttered, “A jam of tarts.”” The second, obviously a fellow in Music, riposted, ‘“No, a flourish of strumpets.”’ From the third, apparently an expert on nineteenth-century English literature, came, ‘““Not at all...an essay of Trollope’s.”” The fourth—Modern English Literature—said, “An anthology of pros.” (I have heard versions that included “‘a peal of Jezebels,” ‘‘a smelting of ores” and even “a troop of horse,” but this begins to be flogging a dead one. )
James Lipton (An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition)
In your distress you’re making so much noise that you wouldn’t hear a communication from God even if He were transformed into an anthropomorphic deity who could thunder instructions to you in impeccable BBC English. The way forward at this moment, I assure you, is not to thrash around making a noise. What you have to do is to listen—to listen to the silence and be calm.
Susan Howatch (Ultimate Prizes (Starbridge book 3))
Surkov himself is the ultimate expression of this psychology. As I watch him give his speech to the students and journalists, he seems to change and transform like mercury, from cherubic smile to demonic stare, from a woolly liberal preaching "modernization" to a finger-wagging nationalist, spitting out willfully contradictory ideas: "managed democracy," "conservative modernization." Then he steps back, smiling, and says: "We need a new political party, and we should help it happen, no need to wait and make it form by itself." And when you look closely at the party men in the political reality show Surkov directs, the spitting nationalists and beetroot-faced communists, you notice how they all seem to perform their roles with a little ironic twinkle. Elsewhere Surkov likes to invoke the new postmodern texts just translated into Russian, the breakdown of grand narratives, the impossibility of truth, how everything is only "simulacrum" and "simulacra" . . . and then in the next moment he says how he despises relativism and loves conservatism, before quoting Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra," in English and by heart. If the West once undermined and helped to ultimately defeat the USSR by uniting free market economics, cool culture, and democratic politics into one package (parliaments, investment banks, and abstract expressionism fused to defeat the Politburo, planned economics, and social realism), Surkov's genius has been to tear those associations apart, to marry authoritarianism and modern art, to use the language of rights and representations to validate tranny, to recut and paste democratic capitalism until it means the reverse of its original purpose.
Peter Pomerantsev (Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia)
There emerged a ladder of humanity, global in nature, as the upper-rung people would descend from Europe with rungs inside that designation, the English Protestants at the very top as their guns and resources would ultimately prevail in the bloody fight over North America. Everyone else would rank in descending order on the basis of their proximity to those deemed most superior. The ranking would continue downward until one arrived at the very bottom—African captives transported to build the New World and to serve the victors for all their days, one generation after the next, for twelve generations.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
Am I rooted in sincere fidelity and love to Jesus? If my heart remains unsoftened and unfertilized by grace, the good seed may germinate for a season, but it must ultimately wither, for it cannot flourish on a rocky, unbroken, unsanctified heart. Let me dread a godliness as rapid in growth and as lacking in endurance as Jonah’s vine; let me count the cost of being a follower of Jesus. Above all let me feel the energy of His Holy Spirit, and then I shall possess an abiding and enduring seed in my soul. If my mind remains as stubborn as it was by nature, the sun of trial will scorch, and my hard heart will help cast the heat the more terribly upon the ill-covered seed, and my religion will soon die, and my despair will be terrible. Therefore, O heavenly Sower, plow me first, and then cast the truth into me, and let me yield a bounteous harvest
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening: A New Edition of the Classic Devotional Based on The Holy Bible, English Standard Version)
Such is the weak constitution of grace, that it can neither well bear smiles or frowns from God without a snare; as one said of our English nation,[2] it cannot well bear liberty nor bondage in the height.  So neither can the soul.
William Gurnall (The Christian in Complete Armour - The Ultimate Book on Spiritual Warfare)
The most characteristic English statement about belief is ‘Well, I’m not particularly religious’, faintly embarrassed by the suggestion that there might be something more to life. It sometimes seems the Church of England thinks God is just the ultimate ‘good chap’.
Jeremy Paxman (The English: A Portrait of a People)
Why do economic inequality and unemployment both stimulate violence? Ultimately, because both increase feelings of shame. For example, we speak of the poor as the lower classes, who have lower social and economic status, and the rich as the upper classes who have higher status. But the Latin for lower is inferior, and the word for the lower classes in Roman law was the humiliores. Even in English, the poor are sometimes referred to as the humbler classes. Our language itself tells us that to be poor is to be humiliated and inferior, which makes it more difficult not to feel inferior. The word for upper or higher was superior, which is related to the word for pride, superbia (the opposite of shame), also the root of our worb superb (another antonym of inferior). And a word for the upper classes, in Roman law, was the honestiores (related to the word honor, also the opposite of shame and dishonor). Inferiority and superiority are relative concepts, which is why it is relative poverty, not absolute poverty, that exposes people to feelings of inferiority. When everyone is on the same level, there is no shame in being poor, for in those circumstances the very concept of poverty loses its meaning.
James Gilligan (Preventing Violence (Prospects for Tomorrow))
SS Seawise Giant Seawise Giant Ordered in 1974 and delivered in 1979, the longest ship ever built was the supertanker Seawise Giant. Larger than the largest Cruise Ship afloat, the Oasis of the Seas, which is 1,186 feet long. She was over 1,504 feet long and weighed in at 260,941 gross tons. Having a beam of 220 feet and drawing 79 feet of water, she was so large that she couldn't navigate through the Panama Canal the Suez Canal or even the English Channel. After having been sunk during the 1980 -1988 Iran–Iraq War she was raised, renamed a few times and used for oil storage until she was ultimately scrapped in India, in 2010. Read “The Exciting Story of Cuba” by Captain Hank Bracker
Hank Bracker
ENGLISH: the ultimate body language. If not spoken by the English.
G.S. Oldman
There was a little praise given, no doubt in irony, to the duchesses who served Mr Melmotte. There was a little praise, given of course in irony, to Mr Melmotte’s Board of English Directors. There was a good deal of praise, but still alloyed by a dash of irony, bestowed on the idea of civilizing Mexico by joining it to California. Praise was bestowed upon England for taking up the matter, but accompanied by some ironical touches at her incapacity to believe thoroughly in any enterprise not originated by herself. Then there was something said of the universality of Mr Melmotte’s commercial genius, but whether said in a spirit prophetic of ultimate failure and disgrace, or of heavenborn success and unequalled commercial splendour, no one could tell.
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
The English letter ‘O’ is similar to zero (0) in appearance. Iago’s [I am Ego = ‘I’ ‘a’m e‘go’] name starts with an egoistic ‘I’ and ends with an ‘O’ or zero. His ‘ego’ and envy lead him towards nothingness or zero! On the other hand, Othello’s name both starts and ends with ‘O’. It may be interpreted as- Othello has started his career from a ‘zero’, becomes successful, Iago’s deception makes him jealous or mad and he ultimately becomes a ‘zero’ by killing Desdemona and himself. However, Othello must not be called a ‘murderer’ because Iago has used Othello as a weapon to murder Desdemona and also led Othello towards death!
Ziaul Haque
who can stand toe-to-toe with the best and brightest of the secular world, either in person or online, and swell Catholic hearts everywhere by making the faith appear not only plausible but more convincing, more humane, and ultimately more loving than its cultured despisers are. Here’s one clear sign of his success: In the English language, after Pope Francis, Barron is the most-followed Catholic figure on social media.
Robert Barron (To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age)
Machigonne” was the Abenaki Indian name for Portland. Christopher Levett, an English naval captain, landed the first settlement in Casco Bay on the 6,000 acres granted him by King James I. Upon his return to England, Levett wrote A Voyage into New England, seeking support for the settlement, which ultimately failed. He returned to America becoming the Governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, but never returned to the site of his first settlement. Little is known of those people he left behind, but it wasn’t until ten years later that the first permanent colony was founded in Falmouth, Maine. Fort Levett, named after him, was built in 1898 on the seaward side of Cushing Island, and was manned during the Spanish-American War, as well as the two World Wars.
Hank Bracker
In effect, the Scots became English speakers and culture bearers, but remained Scots. Instead of forgetting their roots, they acquired new ones. Men such as Boswell, Hume, and Robertson freely conceded the superiority of English culture so that they could analyze it, absorb it, and ultimately master it. They refused to be intimidated, because they intended to beat the English at their own game. They would reshape the dominant English culture so that both the English and the Scots could find a home in it.
Arthur Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything In It)
I know we've left scars everywhere, and that our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get - six of the seven most common verbs in English - may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English. Even though we know that none of our marks will truly last, that time is coming not just for all of us but for all we make, we can't stop scribbling, can't stop seeking relief wherever we can find it.
John Green
To justify their plans, they took preexisting notions of their own centrality, reinforced by their self-interested interpretation of the Bible, and created a hierarchy of who could do what, who could own what, who was on top and who was on the bottom and who was in between. There emerged a ladder of humanity, global in nature, as the upper-rung people would descend from Europe with rungs inside that designation, the English Protestants at the very top as their guns and resources would ultimately prevail in the bloody fight over North America.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
To justify their plans, they took preexisting notions of their own centrality, reinforced by their self-interested interpretation of the Bible, and created a hierarchy of who could do what, who could own what, who was on top and who was on the bottom and who was in between. There emerged a ladder of humanity, global in nature, as the upper-rung people would descend from Europe with rungs inside that designation, the English Protestants at the very top as their guns and resources would ultimately prevail in the bloody fight over North America. Everyone else would rank in descending order on the basis of their proximity to those deemed most superior. The ranking would continue downward until one arrived at the very bottom—African captives transported to build the New World and to serve the victors for all their days, one generation after the next, for twelve generations.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
The Blasters proved to be the most prominent and popular of these acts by far. Originally a quartet, the band was bred in Downey, just down the freeway from East L.A. In their teens, brothers Phil and Dave Alvin were bitten by the blues bug; they became habitués of the L.A. club the Ash Grove, where many of the best-known folk and electric blues performers played, and they sought out the local musicians who could teach them their craft, learning firsthand from such icons as Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, and Little Richard’s saxophonist Lee Allen (who would ultimately join the band in the ’80s). But the Blasters’ style was multidimensional: they could play R&B, they loved country music, and they were also dyed-in-the-wool rockabilly fans who were initially embraced by the music’s fervent L.A. cultists. Their debut album, 1980’s American Music, was recorded in a Van Nuys garage by the Milan, Italy–born rockabilly fanatic Rockin’ Ronnie Weiser, and released on his indie label Rollin’ Rock Records, which also issued LPs by such first-generation rockabilly elders as Gene Vincent, Mac Curtis, Jackie Waukeen Cochran, and Ray Campi. By virtue of Phil Alvin’s powerful, unmannered singing and Dave Alvin’s adept guitar playing and original songwriting, the Blasters swiftly rose to the top of a pack of greasy local bands that also included Levi and the Rockats (a unit fronted by English singer Levi Dexter) and the Rockabilly Rebels (who frequently backed Ray Campi). Los Lobos were early Blasters fans, and often listened to American Music in their van on the way to their own (still acoustic) gigs. Rosas says, “We loved their first record, man. We used to play the shit out of that record. Dave [Hidalgo] was the one who got a copy of it, and he put it on cassette.
Chris Morris (Los Lobos: Dream in Blue)
For a while, the English tried softer tactics. But ultimately, it was back to annihilation. The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
As nation states emerged in Europe, the need to develop national standard languages became keenly felt. Prescriptive linguistic works condemned all but the usage of a narrow social elite. Grammars of European languages generally followed the Latin model of Priscian, for which in many cases they were unsuited. Many modern prescriptive rules of English derive ultimately from Latin grammar.
David Hornsby (Linguistics: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself (Ty: Complete Courses Book 1))
comble /kɔ̃bl/ I. adj [salle] packed • faire salle ~ (pour une conférence) to have a capacity audience; (à un spectacle) to play to packed houses • la mesure est ~, je démissionne! | that's the last straw, I resign! II. nm 1. (point extrême) • le ~ de l'injustice/du mauvais goût | the height of injustice/of bad taste • c'est le ~ de l'horreur/du ridicule | it's absolutely horrific/ridiculous • il était au ~ de la colère/joie | he was absolutely furious/delighted • être à son ~ | [émotion, tension, suspense] to be at its height • porter qch à son ~ | to take sth to its extreme • être au ~ du désespoir | to be in the depths of despair • c'est le ~ du paradoxe | it's a complete paradox • pour ~ de malheur or malchance j'ai raté mon avion! | to crown it all ou as if that wasn't enough, I missed my plane! • et, ~ du raffinement, les draps étaient en soie! | and, as the ultimate in refinement, there were silk sheets! • c'est un or le ~○! | that's the limit! 2. roof space • faux ~, ~ perdu | (Archit) lost roof space, unused roof space • ~ aménageable | usable roof space • de fond en ~ | [fouiller, nettoyer] from top to bottom; [changer, détruire] completely III. nmpl attic (sg); (Archit) eaves
Synapse Développement (Oxford Hachette French - English Dictionary (French Edition))
The reason for their ire goes back to the eighteenth century, and an analogy drawn by grammarians between Latin and English. English infinitives supported by the preposition to were required to remain fused as single unit, like their one-word Latin counterparts, e.g. amare (to love). The grammar of English was for many years described using the same categories as those applied to Latin, and many of our prescriptive rules (e.g. that one should not end a sentence with a preposition, or that one should say ‘It is I’ rather than ‘It is me’) derive ultimately from Latin. But it’s patently nonsensical to require one language to follow the rules of another, and English is very different from Latin in almost every respect.
David Hornsby (Linguistics: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself (Ty: Complete Courses Book 1))
Similarly, the word ‘autumn’ – another borrowing from French, though like ver ultimately deriving from Latin – only appeared in English at the end of the fourteenth century. Before that, the season was hærfest, the origin of Modern English ‘harvest’. With this season, too, there was variety in naming right through the later Middle Ages and the early modern period: ‘harvest’ persisted alongside ‘autumn’ and another term, ‘fall’, first recorded in the mid-sixteenth century.
Eleanor Parker (Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year)
The evolution from hlaf- to la- in the modern form is comparable to two words with the same root, ‘lord’ and ‘lady’: these words ultimately derive from the Old English compounds hlafweard and hlæfdige, which originally meant something like ‘bread-guardian’ and ‘bread-kneader’, suggesting those who protect and provide for a household.
Eleanor Parker (Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year)
case in point is English following the Norman Conquest, which borrowed heavily from Norman French: estimates have suggested that around 30–40 per cent of modern English vocabulary is ultimately of French origin.
David Hornsby (Linguistics: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself (Ty: Complete Courses Book 1))
around 30 per cent of English words are ultimately of French or Norman French origin, the vast majority of which pass unnoticed.
David Hornsby (Linguistics: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself (Ty: Complete Courses Book 1))
Horseball This English-style team sport is like polo, football, and basketball all in one. It is a fast, mounted competition where a ball is carried by hand and shot through a high net to score points. During the competition, riders use the weight of their horses to shove their opponents out of the playing area without unseating themselves.
Robyn Smith (Horse Life: The Ultimate Guide to Caring for and Riding Horses for Kids)