Unsuccessful Love Quotes

I've been popular and unpopular successful and unsuccessful loved and loathed and I know how meaningless it all is. Therefore I feel free to take whatever risks I want.

From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light--a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes. In about one and a half centuries--after the lovers who made the glow will have long been laid permanently on their backs--metropolises will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Shtetls will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples, invisible. The glow is born from the sum of thousands of loves: newlyweds and teenagers who spark like lighters out of butane, pairs of men who burn fast and bright, pairs of women who illuminate for hours with soft multiple glows, orgies like rock and flint toys sold at festivals, couples trying unsuccessfully to have children who burn their frustrated image on the continent like the bloom a bright light leaves on the eye after you turn away from it. Some nights, some places are a little brighter. It's difficult to stare at New York City on Valentine's Day, or Dublin on St. Patrick's. The old walled city of Jerusalem lights up like a candle on each of Chanukah's eight nights...We're here, the glow...will say in one and a half centuries. We're here, and we're alive.

We love men because they can never fake orgasms, even if they wanted to. Because they write poems, songs, and books in our honor. Because they never understand us, but they never give up. Because they can see beauty in women when women have long ceased to see any beauty in themselves. Because they come from little boys. Because they can churn out long, intricate, Machiavellian, or incredibly complex mathematics and physics equations, but they can be comparably clueless when it comes to women. Because they are incredible lovers and never rest until we’re happy. Because they elevate sports to religion. Because they’re never afraid of the dark. Because they don’t care how they look or if they age. Because they persevere in making and repairing things beyond their abilities, with the naïve self-assurance of the teenage boy who knew everything. Because they never wear or dream of wearing high heels. Because they’re always ready for sex. Because they’re like pomegranates: lots of inedible parts, but the juicy seeds are incredibly tasty and succulent and usually exceed your expectations. Because they’re afraid to go bald. Because you always know what they think and they always mean what they say. Because they love machines, tools, and implements with the same ferocity women love jewelry. Because they go to great lengths to hide, unsuccessfully, that they are frail and human. Because they either speak too much or not at all to that end. Because they always finish the food on their plate. Because they are brave in front of insects and mice. Because a well-spoken four-year old girl can reduce them to silence, and a beautiful 25-year old can reduce them to slobbering idiots. Because they want to be either omnivorous or ascetic, warriors or lovers, artists or generals, but nothing in-between. Because for them there’s no such thing as too much adrenaline. Because when all is said and done, they can’t live without us, no matter how hard they try. Because they’re truly as simple as they claim to be. Because they love extremes and when they go to extremes, we’re there to catch them. Because they are tender they when they cry, and how seldom they do it. Because what they lack in talk, they tend to make up for in action. Because they make excellent companions when driving through rough neighborhoods or walking past dark alleys. Because they really love their moms, and they remind us of our dads. Because they never care what their horoscope, their mother-in-law, nor the neighbors say. Because they don’t lie about their age, their weight, or their clothing size. Because they have an uncanny ability to look deeply into our eyes and connect with our heart, even when we don’t want them to. Because when we say “I love you” they ask for an explanation.

Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.

Everyone has it in them to express themselves that fundamental thing that they know they are inside. That rather beautiful afraid person. Which might get translated into aggression, or silence, or shyness, or all kinds of other things. But inside we know that we are huggable and lovable, and we want to love and be loved. That person is yearning for fulfillment. To be the person they know they can be and that’s a constant journey; that’s a process. It’s not acquiring about this thing and then that thing, getting to this place, learning this technique, and finding out how this works. It’s about the fact that other people are always more interesting than oneself. Let’s forget what successful people have in common, if there’s a thing unsuccessful people have in common it’s that they talk about themselves all the time.

Had he ever lost his heart so much to something, had he ever loved any person thus, thus blindly, thus sufferingly, thus unsuccessfully, and yet thus happily?

It was, of course, a great failure in a woman's life - to never have achieved even a doomed and unsuccessful love. But she was not quite sure whether she had failed or not. When she was young there had been moments, of course. But those moments had never amounted to much more than a little fever of admiration - a little flutter and agitation in a ballroom - so slight a feeling that the cautious Dido had never considered it a secure foundation for a lifetime of living together. And then, sooner or later, she had always made and odd remark, or laughed at the wrong moment, and the young men became alarmed or angry - and the flutter and the agitation all turned to irritation. Dido could laugh and gossip about love as well as any woman but, deep down, she suspected that she had not the knack of falling into it.

The current girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, or husband is often an utterly unsuccessful attempt to stop missing or loving the previous one.

As the renowned leadership expert John Maxwell says, “Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.

Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness.

Nobody goes no contact with a loving, caring, gentle, safe family. They end toxic relationships because all the other alternatives were exhausted and unsuccessful. They broke connections to abusive people because it was their last resort.

Now, here is what I had wanted to happen: I had tried to love, and I had tried to kill, and both had been unsuccessful by themselves.

Difference between a successful and an unsuccessful person is not the action but the vision.

You look at love, and especially woman, as something hostile, something against which you put up a defense, even if unsuccessfully. You feel that their power over you gives you a sensation of pleasurable torture, of pungent cruelty. This is a genuinely modern point of view.

All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But others remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream: some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic sceptic has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there.

Many times he had tried unsuccessfully to let go his hand on her. They had many fine times together, fine talks between the loves of the white nights, but always when he turned away from her into himself he left her holding Nothing in her hands and staring at it, calling it many names, but knowing it was only the hope that he would come back soon.

Stop chasing society’s definition of success and chase your own definition of success. Success is an emotion that is experienced when you are completely fulfilled and content with where you are in life; it has nothing to do with a specific job, a specific amount of money in your bank account, or the quality of material possessions you acquire. You can be the richest man in the world, but still, feel unsuccessful, and you can be the poorest man in the world, but still, feel extremely successful.

By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence.

What I’m most deeply grateful for is that God’s love for us, approval of us, and commitment to us does not ride on our resolve but on Jesus’s resolve for us. The gospel is the good news announcing Jesus’s infallible devotion to us despite our inconsistent devotion to Him. The gospel is not a command to hang on to Jesus; it’s a promise that no matter how weak and unsuccessful our faith and efforts may be, God is always holding on to us.

What do you mean 'warn me'?" Why did they both think I was going to claw her eyes out? The old me must've been psychotic." "I told you she has a soft spot for me." "Yeah, and I have a soft spot for tater tots, but that doesn't require me to warn people." "I think I can safely say she doesn't feel about me like you feel about tater tots," Cheney said, unsuccessfully trying to suppress his amusement. "I don't know, I really like tater tots," I mumbled. Cheney's laughter filled the room. "I stand corrected. Apparently your love for fried potato nuggets is much deeper that I gave credit.

The main problem for women trying to emulate male sexuality is that as a ruling-class sexuality, it is constructed around the fact that they have a subordinate class on whom to act sexually. Women are that subordinate class. The elements that constitute male sexuality depend upon the possession of ruling-class status such as objectification, aggression, and the separation of sex from loving emotion. Women are bound to be unsuccessful in seeking to acquire a form of sexuality which depends upon the possession of ruling-class power. It might be possible for some lesbians to seek a close emulation of ruling-class sexuality because they are able to practise on other women. Heterosexual women cannot practise ruling-class sexuality on men because they are not the ruling class. All that heterosexual women are in a position to do is to accommodate male sexual interests... In male supremacy men's sexual access to women gives them power and status. It does not make much difference who initiates the act, the men still gain the advantage.

The fact that it took me eleven years to become an overnight success should also reassure him. It’s not my fault success has brought my unseemly arrogance and braggadocio to the surface: I was always thus tainted, but when you’re poor and unsuccessful it’s just vulgar ostentation to flaunt such character flaws: success wears very badly on me: I’m a sore winner. But those who have known and loved me through the Dismal Swamps of all the lies that are my life will testify that it is not merely the acquisition of pocket money that has made me an elitist. The seeds were always present. Only becoming a Writer of Stature has made them flower.

think about the word ‘success’. I think about how often people use it about me. About how my time with that word is running out because the goalposts are changing. If I don’t get married and don’t have children then soon I will be seen as less successful. Even if my new book sells ten million copies, my lack of a man loving me, of that man spunking into my womb and growing a person, will deem me unsuccessful. ‘Because it came at a cost, didn’t it?’ they will say. And don’t pretend for a moment that they won’t say it. ‘I guess true success,’ I start to say, nervous I’ve got the answer wrong. ‘True success is living the life you want to live and not caring what other people think.

individuals who are prepared unflinchingly to confront the truth about their childhood and to see their parents in a realistic light. Unfortunately, it is very often the case that therapeutic success can be seriously endangered if therapy (as frequently happens) is subjected to the dictates of conventional morality, thus making it impossible for adult clients to free themselves of the compulsive persuasion that they owe their parents love and gratitude. The authentic feelings stored in the body remain untapped, and the price the clients have to pay for this is the unremitting persistence of the severe symptoms affecting them. I assume that readers who have themselves undergone a number of unsuccessful therapies will readily recognize their plight in this problem. In

Heartbreak is very hard to live with. In the morning, it made me wish that I could just snooze my alarm and hide from the sunlight. In the afternoon, I cried at work silently, then I ran to the washroom so that nobody noticed. In the late afternoon, my brain would unsuccessfully try to take control for an hour after which I would be exhausted from the emotional roller coaster led by my heart. At night, I would squeeze my pillow, howling inside and yet not being able to scream, wishing that I could stop feeling the stinging pain.

Many times he had tried unsuccessfully to let go his hold on her. They had many fine times together, fine talks between the loves of the white nights, but always when he turned away from her into himself he left her holding Nothing in her hands and staring at it, calling it many names, but knowing it was only the hope that he would come back soon.

I’ve eventually come away with, after trying unsuccessfully to train my parents to be what I thought they should be, is that the fewer expectations I have from people to give me what I need, the better. I can forage for it or it can drop on my head, but I can’t demand support, love, or even the right kind of attention from anyone, especially family. If and when it comes, I’m delighted.

The Caitlin books, which ran as a set of three trilogies (Loving, Promises, and Forever) published between 1985 and 1988, chart a decade or so in the life of the beautiful, terrible poor little rich girl as she repeatedly breaks up and makes up with her first love, Montana-based hunk Jed (Jed!), rides many horses, drives many luxury cars, is emotionally neglected by her family, accidentally lets an elementary schooler eat poison (it’s okay, he survives, everyone calm down!), gets trapped in a mine, reconnects with her long-lost father, goes to college, is forced against her will to become a successful model, gets trapped in a barn fire, is forced against her will to become the head of a successful mining company, and is the subject of numerous unsuccessful plots by evil men who wish to “ruin” her.

In general, here is how it works: The teacher stands in front of the class and asks a question. Six to ten children strain in their seats and wave their hands in the teacher’s face, eager to be called on and show how smart they are. Several others sit quietly with eyes averted, trying to become invisible, When the teacher calls on one child, you see looks of disappointment and dismay on the faces of the eager students, who missed a chance to get the teacher’s approval; and you will see relief on the faces of the others who didn’t know the answer…. This game is fiercely competitive and the stakes are high, because the kids are competing for the love and approval of one of the two or three most important people in their world. Further, this teaching process guarantees that the children will not learn to like and understand each other. Conjure up your own experience. If you knew the right answer and the teacher called on someone else, you probably hoped that he or she would make a mistake so that you would have a chance to display your knowledge. If you were called on and failed, or if you didn’t even raise your hand to compete, you probably envied and resented your classmates who knew the answer. Children who fail in this system become jealous and resentful of the successes, putting them down as teacher’s pets or even resorting to violence against them in the school yard. The successful students, for their part, often hold the unsuccessful children in contempt, calling them “dumb” or “stupid.” This competitive process does not encourage anyone to look benevolently and happily upon his fellow students.77

Other people were so unsuccessful at fending off love! Members of Congress who had affairs with their aides, or students who I'd known in college, girls who as freshmen declared themselves lesbians, then graduated with boyfriends- to give in to such love represents, for them, a capitulation or a betrayal, yet apparently the pull was so strong that they couldn't resist. That was what I didn't understand, how people made the leap from not mattering in each others' lives to mattering.

Over against the successful, God sanctifies pain, lowliness, failure, poverty, loneliness, and despair in the cross of Christ. Not that all this has value in itself; it is made holy by the love of God, who takes it all and bears it as judgment. The Yes of God to the cross is judgment on the successful. But the unsuccessful must realize that it is not their lack of success, not their place as pariahs[59.] as such, that lets them standbefore God, but only their acceptance of the judgment of divine love.

No one is completely defined by their knowledge or what they've accomplished. At the end of each of our lives, if you ask the people who knew us what they'll miss the most, it'll be the small ways we loved the people around us. It'll be the memories we made and the big mess-ups we walked through together. It will be our kindness, not our qualifications, that outlast us. It will be the time we unsuccessfully tried to wrap a puppy up for Christmas, not the perfect vacation we planned or the raise we got. It will be the fire we started by mistake in the house while trying to make indoor s'mores during a storm. We won't be missed because of the lectures we gave or arguments we won. We'll be missed because someone will want to call us to share a joy from the day and remember we're no longer there to share the celebration.

Only people who have a world-historical perspective can change history. The average person has only a domestic, ahistorical perspective. Look at social media. It’s full of people without a clue what’s going on. Immense historical forces have been unleashed all around them, and all they care about is posting their brain-dead, vacuous observations and their self-pitying, whining woe-is-me statements about how shitty their lives are and how no one understands them. As well as countless memes and selfies, of course. You just have to love those lolcats on skateboards, right, hoomans? They are forever trapped in their parochial little world of trivia. Why are our books so unsuccessful? It’s because they announce, with the volume of Stentor at Troy, a world-historic agenda, but we are surrounded by pygmies who stare at us like cows in line at the abattoir.

George Washington was in love with one girl after another during his youth, but for some reason he was unsuccessful in all these early courtships. He was probably shy and awkward in the presence of Tidewater belles. He was never to become a fluent conversationalist, had not been educated in England and, comparatively speaking, was a poor young man. In fact he was not a particularly good "catch"--and the Virginia girls let him realize it. This made him so miserable that he wrote at least two unhappy love poems in a perfect welter of bad grammar and emotional tumult. These poems make him seem far from the statuesque and wooden figure of the Stuart portraits or of the Weems' fables. In fact, they reveal a most human and even pitiable young man. . . . [A]mong the other girls he courted, there must have been several who in later years wondered why they had been so cool and calculating in refusing the hand of the young man who was soon to become Virginia's greatest hero.

Leonard: I remember Marianne and I were in a hotel in Piraeus, some inex- pensive hotel. We were both about twenty-five and we had to catch the boat back to Hydra. We got up and I guess we had a cup of coffee or something and got a taxi, and I’ve never forgotten this. Nothing happened, just sitting in the back of the taxi with Marianne, [lighting] a cigarette, a Greek cigarette that had that delicious deep flavour of a Greek cigarette that has a lot of Turkish to- bacco in it, and thinking, I have a life of my own, I’m an adult, I’m with this beautiful woman, we have a little money in our pocket, we’re going back to Hydra, we’re passing these painted walls. That feeling I think I’ve tried to recreate hun- dreds of times unsuccessfully. Just that feeling of being grown up, with some- body beautiful that you’re happy to be beside and all the world is in front of you. Your body is suntanned and you’re going to get on a boat. That’s a feeling I remember very, very accurately.

I was certainly not the best mother. That goes without saying. I didn’t set out to be a bad mother, however. It just happened. As it was, being a bad mother was child’s play compared to being a good mother, which was an incessant struggle, a lose-lose situation 24 hours a day; long after the kids were in bed the torment of what I did or didn’t do during those hours we were trapped together would scourge my soul. Why did I allow Grace to make Mia cry? Why did I snap at Mia to stop just to silence the noise? Why did I sneak to a quiet place, whenever I could? Why did I rush the days—will them to hurry by—so I could be alone? Other mothers took their children to museums, the gardens, the beach. I kept mine indoors, as much as I could, so we wouldn’t cause a scene. I lie awake at night wondering: what if I never have a chance to make it up to Mia? What if I’m never able to show her the kind of mother I always longed to be? The kind who played endless hours of hide-and-seek, who gossiped side by side on their daughters’ beds about which boys in the junior high were cute. I always envisioned a friendship between my daughters and me. I imagined shopping together and sharing secrets, rather than the formal, obligatory relationship that now exists between myself and Grace and Mia. I list in my head all the things that I would tell Mia if I could. That I chose the name Mia for my great-grandmother, Amelia, vetoing James’s alternative: Abigail. That the Christmas she turned four, James stayed up until 3:00 a.m. assembling the dollhouse of her dreams. That even though her memories of her father are filled with nothing but malaise, there were split seconds of goodness: James teaching her how to swim, James helping her prepare for a fourth-grade spelling test. That I mourn each and every time I turned down an extra book before bed, desperate now for just five more minutes of laughing at Harry the Dirty Dog. That I go to the bookstore and purchase a copy after unsuccessfully ransacking the basement for the one that used to be hers. That I sit on the floor of her old bedroom and read it again and again and again. That I love her. That I’m sorry. Colin

Africa’s coastline? great beaches, really, really lovely beaches, but terrible natural harbours. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems which help explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America. There are lots of places that are unsuccessful, but few have been as unsuccessful as Africa, and that despite having a head start as the place where Homo sapiens originated about 200,000 years ago. As that most lucid of writers, Jared Diamond, put it in a brilliant National Geographic article in 2005, ‘It’s the opposite of what one would expect from the runner first off the block.’ However, the first runners became separated from everyone else by the Sahara Desert and the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Almost the entire continent developed in isolation from the Eurasian land mass, where ideas and technology were exchanged from east to west, and west to east, but not north to south.

Kyle worked in technology; he knew it would only be a matter of time before the video of Daniela and the A-list actor went viral and spread everywhere. So he did what any pissed-off, red-blooded computer geek would do after catching his girlfriend giving an underwater blowjob to another man: he hacked into Twitter and deleted both the video and her earlier tweet from the site. Then, raging at the world that had devolved so much in civility that 140-character breakups had become acceptable, he shut down the entire network in a denial-of-service attack that lasted two days. And so began the Great Twitter Outage of 2011. The Earth nearly stopped on its axis. Panic and mayhem ensued as Twitter unsuccessfully attempted to counteract what it deemed the most sophisticated hijacking they’d ever experienced. Meanwhile, the FBI waited for either a ransom demand or political statement from the so-called “Twitter Terrorist.” But neither was forthcoming, as the Twitter Terrorist had no political agenda, already was worth millions, and had most inconveniently taken off to Tijuana, Mexico to get shit-faced drunk on cheap tequila being served by an eight-fingered bartender named Esteban.

He tried to answer the question of why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have still never become a major world power. Why are they the planet’s masters of verbal diplomacy, but still so inept at home government? Why are they so individually valiant, yet so collectively unsuccessful as an army? How can they be such shrewd merchants on the personal level, yet such inefficient capitalists as a nation? His answers to these questions are more complex than I can fairly encapsulate here, but have much to do with a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one’s own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent “opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors…” In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.

It was dusk when Ian returned, and the house seemed unnaturally quiet. His uncle was sitting near the fire, watching him with an odd expression on his face that was half anger, half speculation. Against his will Ian glanced about the room, expecting to see Elizabeth’s shiny golden hair and entrancing face. When he didn’t, he put his gun back on the rack above the fireplace and casually asked, “Where is everyone?” “If you mean Jake,” the vicar said, angered yet more by the way Ian deliberately avoided asking about Elizabeth, “he took a bottle of ale with him to the stable and said he was planning to drink it until the last two days were washed from his memory.” “They’re back, then?” “Jake is back,” the vicar corrected as Ian walked over to the table and poured some Madeira into a glass. “The servingwomen will arrive in the morn. Elizabeth and Miss Throckmorton-Jones are gone, however.” Thinking Duncan meant they’d gone for a walk, Ian flicked a glance toward the front door. “Where have they gone at this hour?” “Back to England.” The glass in Ian’s hand froze halfway to his lips. “Why?” he snapped. “Because Miss Cameron’s uncle has accepted an offer for her hand.” The vicar watched in angry satisfaction as Ian tossed down half the contents of his glass as if he wanted to wash away the bitterness of the news. When he spoke his voice was laced with cold sarcasm. “Who’s the lucky bridegroom?” “Sir Francis Belhaven, I believe.” Ian’s lips twisted with excruciating distaste. “You don’t admire him, I gather?” Ian shrugged. “Belhaven is an old lecher whose sexual tastes reportedly run to the bizarre. He’s also three times her age.” “That’s a pity,” the vicar said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice blank as he leaned back in his chair and propped his long legs upon the footstool in front of him. “Because that beautiful, innocent child will have no choice but to wed that old…lecher. If she doesn’t, her uncle will withdraw his financial support, and she’ll lose that home she loves so much. He’s perfectly satisfied with Belhaven, since he possesses the prerequisites of title and wealth, which I gather are his only prerequisites. That lovely girl will have to wed that old man; she has no way to avoid it.” “That’s absurd,” Ian snapped, draining his glass. “Elizabeth Cameron was considered the biggest success of her season two years ago. It was pubic knowledge she’d had more than a dozen offers. If that’s all he cares about, he can choose from dozens of others.” Duncan’s voice was laced with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “That was before she encountered you at some party or other. Since then it’s been public knowledge that she’s used goods.” “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” “You tell me, Ian,” the vicar bit out. “I only have the story in two parts from Miss Throckmorton-Jones. The first time she spoke she was under the influence of laudanum. Today she was under the influence of what I can only describe as the most formidable temper I’ve ever seen. However, while I may not have the complete story, I certainly have the gist of it, and if half what I’ve heard is true, then it’s obvious that you are completely without either a heart or a conscience! My own heart breaks when I imagine Elizabeth enduring what she has for nearly two years. When I think of how forgiving of you she has been-“ “What did the woman tell you?” Ian interrupted shortly, turning and walking over to the window.

There’s no efficient way to kill yourself with a dressmaker’s pin (I wouldn’t call contracting gangrene an efficient way to kill yourself) – I puzzled over it for a long time, seeing as they’d left the pins there, but it’s just not possible. Useful for picking locks though. I so loved the burglary lessons we got when we were training. Didn’t so much enjoy the bleak aftermath of my unsuccessful attempt to put them to use – very good at picking locks but not so good at getting out of the building. Our prison cells are only hotel bedrooms, but we are guarded like royalty. And also, there are dogs. After that episode with the pins, they had a good go at making sure I wouldn’t be able to walk if I did manage to get out – don’t know where you pick up the skills for disabling a person without actually breaking her legs, Nazi School of Assault and Battery? Like everything else it wasn’t permanent damage, nothing left this week but the bruises, and they check me carefully now for stray bits of metal. I got caught yesterday trying to hide a pen nib in my hair (I didn’t have a plan for it, but you never know). Oh – often I forget I am not writing this for myself, and then it’s too late to scratch it out. The evil Engel always snatches everything away from me and raises an alarm if she sees me trying to retract anything. Yesterday I tried ripping off the bottom of the page and eating it, but she got to it first. (It was when I realised I had thoughtlessly mentioned the factory at Swinley. It is refreshing sometimes to fight with her. She has the advantage of freedom, but I am a lot more imaginative. Also I am willing to use my teeth which she is squeamish about.) Where was I? Hauptsturmführer von Linden has taken away everything I wrote yesterday. It is your own fault, you cold and soulless Jerry bastard, if I repeat myself.

You never asked. How would I like you to kill it? You are a captain in the Red Army, for goodness’ sake. What do they teach you there?” “How to kill human beings. Not mice.” She barely touched her food. “Well, throw a grenade at it. Use your rifle. I don’t know. But do something.” Alexander shook his head. “You went out into the streets of Leningrad while the Germans were throwing five-hundred-kilo bombs that blew arms and legs off the women standing ahead of you in line, you stood fearless in front of cannibals, you jumped off a moving train to go and find your brother, but you are afraid of mice?” “Now you got it,” Tatiana said defiantly. “It doesn’t make sense,” Alexander said. “If a person is fearless in the big things—” “You’re wrong. Again. Are you done with your questions? Anything else you want to ask? Or add?” “Just one thing.” Alexander kept his face serious. “It looks like,” he said slowly, his voice calm, “we’ve found three uses for that too-high potato countertop I built yesterday.” And he burst out laughing. “Go ahead, laugh,” Tatiana said. “Go ahead. I’m here for your amusement.” Her eyes twinkled. Putting his own plate on the bench, Alexander took the plate out of her hands and brought her to him to stand between his legs. Reluctantly she came. “Tania, do you have any idea how funny you are?” He kissed her chest, looking up at her. “I adore you.” “If you really adored me,” she said, trying to twist herself out of his arms, unsuccessfully, “you wouldn’t be sitting here idly flirting when you could be militarizing that cabin.” Alexander stood up. “Just to point out,” he said, “it’s not called flirting once you’ve made love to the girl.” After Alexander went inside, a smiling Tatiana sat on the bench and finished her food. In a few minutes he emerged from the cabin holding his rifle in one hand, his pistol in the other, and a bayonet attachment between his teeth. The dead mouse was swinging at the end of the bayonet. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “How did I do?” Tatiana failed to keep a straight face. “All right, all right,” she said, chortling. “You didn’t have to bring out the spoils of war.” “Ah, but I know you wouldn’t believe in a dead mouse unless you saw it with your own eyes.” “Will you stop quoting me back to me? Shura, you tell me, I will believe it,” said Tatiana. “Now, go on, get out of here with that thing.” “One last question.” “Oh, no,” said Tatiana, covering her face, trying not to laugh. “Do you think this dead mouse is worth the price of a…killed mouse?” “Will you just go?” Tatiana heard his boisterous laughter all the way to the woods and back.

To be loved, we must love first, and to love first, we must love ourself, but to love ourselves we must try to love others first. It turns out, our failed first attempt to love, was really the only possible beginning of love. Like a baby learning to walk, any step no matter how awkward or unsuccessful is the first step towards walking. We’ve already started loving, and we are probably closer to doing it well than we think. Love is seeing an asset to life and supporting it. We can’t pick and choose what assets we want to see or recognize. This doesn’t mean whatever asset we happen to stumble into, that we have to invest all of our energy in it—it means simply that we allow ourselves to see assets where ever they are. Where we choice to invest our time and energy is up to us.

Miranda was still trying to process the intrusion. “Just tell me one thing--how do you guys get away with sneaking out at night? My mom would have a fit!” “Right.” Parker’s grin turned scornful. “Like my mom and dad ever know if I’m there or not.” Ashley was totally unconcerned. “Oh, we just tell them we’re going to the tree house. They never check on us there.” “What’s the tree house?” Miranda wanted to know. “Well, when we were little, Gage’s daddy built a tree house for the three of us in his backyard. We used to have a secret club. And we’d play over there, and hide from people, and pretend we were knights in a castle.” “Gage and I were knights,” Roo corrected her. “You always had to be rescued.” “Well, I liked the way Gage threw me over his shoulder and carried me down from the tower.” “Gage did that?” Clasping his hands over his heart, Parker sighed. “My hero.” Gage ignored him. “We used to camp out in that tree house at night.” Ashley nibbled a potato chip. “In fact, we still like sleeping together over there.” Parker wiggled his eyebrows and gave Miranda a stage whisper. “Very kinky.” “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Parker--not that kind of sleeping together.” Ashley paused for a second. “It is just Gage, after all.” Gage stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Oh, nothing.” Ashley plopped down on the bed next to Miranda. “Just that we love and respect you so much, we wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of you.” “Sometimes I dream of you two taking advantage of him,” Parker said seriously. “It’s one of my favorite fantasies.” Gage tried unsuccessfully not to look embarrassed. “You need a life.

But we didn't always egg each other on like that - more often, it was the opposite. Instead of yelling at her, I'd find myself sucked in by her hypnotic stare and unrelenting train of logical thought until I was letting her do something like pluck out my nose hair for an experiment. (To be fair, she did promise to do my chemistry homework for a month in exchange.) She taught me how to pick a basic lock, and after I'd finally maneuvered my pins into the right position and heard the telltale click and fallen back against the love seat in relief, she pulled a blindfold over my eyes and made me do it again. Later, after Holmes said she hadn't been allowed any when she was little, I bought a full-to-bursting bag of bulk candy from the union store and set it before her like an offering to a king. Deep in thought, she'd refused to try any of it, rolling her eyes at the very suggestion. When I returned from stepping out to take a call from my mother, I found her trying, very unsuccessfully, to bite into an everlasting gobstopper.

What I’ve eventually come away with, after trying unsuccessfully to train my parents to be what I thought they should be, is that the fewer expectations I have from people to give me what I need, the better. I can forage for it or it can drop on my head, but I can’t demand support, love, or even the right kind of attention from anyone, especially family. If and when it comes, I’m delighted.

If the snitch had told him that Keisha and Trigga would be there, Gunplay was willing to bet that Lloyd would be on his way to give the snitch a major ass whooping or worse since he’d been unsuccessful at getting rid of them for good.

Green Card Immigration and Nationalization by Green Card Organization One of the most highly sought-after visa programs ran anywhere in the world is the United State Green Card Lottery program, and for most people around the world, it is a symbol of their dreams come through - one day, to move to America. For this reason, the United State Green Card program is always filled with millions of applicants fighting for a Green Card. However, out of all these people, only about 50,000 people to make the cut yearly. Migration of people from one country to another is mainly for some reasons which range from economic motivations to reuniting with loved ones living abroad. Often in most scenario, for an immigrant to be a citizen of the new country, it is required for such to renounce their homeland and permanently leave their home country. Under the United States legal system, naturalization is the process through which an immigrant acquires U.S. citizenship. This is a major requirement for someone who was not born a citizen of the U.S. and or did not acquire citizenship shortly after birth but wishes to acquire citizenship of the united states. A person who becomes a U.S. citizen through naturalization enjoys all the freedoms and protections of citizenship just like every other citizens of the States, such as the right to vote and be voted for, to hold political offices and register, the right to hold and use a U.S. passport, and the right to serve as a jury in a court of law among other numerous benefits. Year in, year out, people apply from different nations of the world for the Green Card program. However, many people are disqualified from the DV lottery program, because they unsuccessfully submit their applications in a manner that does not comply with the United States governments requirements. It should be noted that The United States of America stands with a core principle of diversity and of giving every different person irrespective of background, race or color the same chances at success and equal opportunities. In order to forestall the rate at which intending immigrants were denied the Green Card, The Green Card Organization was established for the sole aim of providing help for those who desire to immigrate and provide them the best shot at success, and throughout the last 8 years of the existence of the Green Card Organization, the organization have helped countless number of people make their dream come through (their dream of being a part of our incredible country) GOD BLESS AMERICA! It is important to note that a small amount of mistake ranging from inconsistent information supplied or falsified identity in the application forms a major cause for automatic disqualification, therefore, it is crucial and important to make sure that the Green Card application is submitted correctly and timely. A notable remark that ought to be nurtured in the mind of every applicant is that the United States do not take a No for any mistake on your application. Therefore, the Green Card Organization is here to help simplify the processes involved for you and guarantee that your application will be submitted correctly and guarantee you 100% participation. A task that since the inception of the organization, has been their priority and has achieved her success in it at its apex.

Jesus has always stayed with me. Even during times when people I loved turned their backs on me, I was physically and verbally abused, members told lies about me, local leaders eschewed me, a gift of wrapped dog poop was left for me, letters were sent to me telling me to leave the Church because I didn’t belong, threats to kill me were made, and the unsuccessful attempts to harm me. Jesus has always stayed with me, blessing me and teaching me and reassuring me.

I am bound to you by love, the most magical spell of all, which instead of quickly fading can grow more powerful over time.” She couldn’t help smiling at him. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?” Alain nodded. “Unsuccessfully, it appears.

Every time my seven-year-old daughter puts on a pair of shorts, I remember the way we used to be. I think of my Hmong grandmother who came to this country in the autumn of her life, too old to shift with its seasons. My Hmong American mother who came to this country young enough to compromise pieces and parts of herself so that she could work and care for her children through the harshest of seasons. And I think of myself, a girl wanting desperately to celebrate spring and summer, to be strong for her mother and her grandmother, and who tried unsuccessfully in many ways to fit in. Now that Grandma is gone, my mother is an old woman, and I am a working mother myself, it is only in my memories that we get to be together the way we were then. My Asian American girl loves shorts and T-shirts, her thin legs often darkened by bruises from her runs around me, beside me, and often ahead of me. From the distance of nearly twenty years, I wish I could have told that young girl yearning to let her legs breathe free that all of our lives in America were just beginning, that where we were was only one part of our story. I wish I could have told her that her family was as good as they knew how to be to each other, and that in their own ways they were trying to help each other, not hurt. I want to tell the girl I used to be that these first years of life in America would teach her how to love across space and time, to one day stand strong in her family’s discomforts, and give her the power and the ability to declare them all: new Americans.

Is that what got under your skin? That I shut you out, or that it was so easy for Tarquin to get in?' 'What got under my skin,' Rhys said, his breathing a bit uneven, 'is that you smiled at him.' The rest of the world faded to mist as the words sank in. 'You are jealous.' His shook his head, stalking to the little table against the far wall and knocking back a glass of amber liquid. He braced his hands on the table, the powerful muscles of his back quivering beneath his shirt as the shadow of those wings struggled to take form. 'I heard what you told him,' he said. 'That you thought it would be easy to fall in love with him. You meant it, too.' 'So?' It was the only thing I could think of to say. 'I was jealous- of that. That I'm not... that sort of person. For anyone. The Summer Court has always been neutral; they only showed backbone during those years Under the Mountain. I spared Tarquin's life because I'd heard how he wanted to even out the playing field between High Far and lesser faeries. I've been trying to do that for years. Unsuccessfully, but... I spared him for that alone. And Tarquin, with his neutral court... he will never have to worry about someone walking away because the threat against their life, their children's lives, will always be there. So, yes, I was jealous of him- because it will always be easy for him. And he will never know what it is to look up at the night sky and wish.

We went toward the military base, my anxiety ratcheting up the closer to our destination we came. The Cokyrians now controlled this area, and no Hytanicans were allowed to enter; but Saadi ignored the odd looks of the guards, who did not question him, confirming my suspicions about his status. He took me to the stables that my father had once controlled, and where I had unsuccessfully attempted my prank, and we walked up and down the line of stalls. “Is this the one then?” Saadi asked, when I stopped to give Briar a pat. I shook my head. While I would have loved to reclaim the mare, she was young and refined, without the power and stamina required for racing. “My father’s stallion--the black-and-white. That’s the horse I want to ride.” I heard his low whistle from behind me. “That’s a mighty spirited animal. Are you sure you can handle that much horse?” “If I can’t, you’ll have an easy victory,” I retorted, turning to face him. Saadi considered me, one eyebrow raised, no doubt trying to assess my riding ability, not because I was a woman, but because I was a Hytanican woman. Then he stepped past me, motioning for me to follow. “To the stallion barn,” he said. His tone was patronizing, but I didn’t care. I would have my father’s prized stallion back. Saadi’s horse was a gelding, and we shared a laugh at the problems we might have had if he’d happened to pick a mare. The animal was strong and long-legged, good for distance running, but Saadi had no idea what my father’s King could do.

I’m saving your life, baby. Give me just a minute. Well, not a minute. I can go longer than that.” Tony slapped her hands away, unsuccessfully. “I’ll make sure you live, preciosa, if I have to make love to you every night for a month.” “Tony,

The subconscious mind is where you hold deep-seeded beliefs about yourself, including whether you see yourself as talented or untalented, intelligent or unintelligent, successful or unsuccessful, deserving of love or undeserving of love, just to name a few. These deep-seeded beliefs about yourself are the result of all of your life’s experiences, including your childhood experiences.

Pitter Patter I love to hear the pitter patter of little feet ~ as they unsuccessfully struggle to break free of my choke hold.

Ruxs lifted Green’s limp cock and sucked into his mouth, making an obscene slurping noise. He gripped Green’s ass and yanked him hard against his face, taking all of the flaccid meat, down to Green’s pubic hair. He swallowed and licked, keeping his nose buried in that scratchy bush. Green was growing by the millisecond and he knew he’d have to pull back soon, only being able to take half of Green’s erect cock. It was exhilarating for him to have his lips pressed against Green’s pelvis and his own cock was hard as steel. He just barely stroked himself; he didn’t want to come yet. Green was more than half-hard and Ruxs could feel his throat resisting the intrusion. He eased back but Green grabbed the back of his head with both hands and held him there. Kept his nose buried in his pubes. Forcing him to take it. Ruxs squeezed Green’s ass, slapped him hard on it. Hard enough to leave a mark. Green grunted his name, kept forcing him to take more. Ruxs felt the head of Green’s cock against the back of his tongue; he tasted the saltiness from the precome. He balked hard, his choke muffled. Green held him tight. The bastard rocked his hips forward, making him take even more. Damn, it was hot as fuck. He got a solid grip on Green’s hip and tried unsuccessfully to push him back. He gagged hard. And oh how his lover was loving it. Ruxs’ eyes watered as he tried to fight his gag reflex. Tried to relax his throat. Wasn’t working. But the domination Green was exhibiting was sure as hell working on his cock. His dick pulsed untouched, twitched on its own. Fuck, he needed to come. He was gonna come.  “Take it.” Green’s voice was barely recognizable. The command was made on a throaty growl. Almost evil. The thick steam billowing from the shower engulfed his lover and made him appear as if he had emerged from fire. Green thrust again, his solid grip on the back of Ruxs’ head still uncompromising. His strength unyielding. Ruxs rose up higher, gagged and spit, trying to open his mouth wider. He scrambled at Green’s tight ass, took his middle finger, and pressed it deep into him. No spit, no lube. You fuckin’ take it. Green shouted, releasing Ruxs’ head. Ruxs yanked back, gasping in a much need breath, still coughing and choking from the lack of oxygen. “Motherfucker,” he gasped. Ruxs pushed his finger in further, pressed against that spongy bundle of nerves that had Green cursing him back and clasping his big hand around his throat. Green’s knees buckled but he didn’t go down. The look on his face was absolute feral ecstasy. Ruxs watched him through hooded eyes as Green’s orgasm hurtled to the surface, full throttle. Green pulled on his shaft one, two, three times, and then he was coming all over Ruxs’ neck, his cheek, his lips. Green’s body jerked and jolted with each jet of come that hit Ruxs’ face. Ruxs just barely got out his own guttural shout before his balls tightened exquisitely and come burst from him, hitting Green’s shins, coating his foot. With his head bowed, and bathed in his partner’s come, he bit into the fleshy part of Green’s thigh and let his orgasm course through him. Lived in it. Loved it. “Fuuuuck,” he moaned. No one could make him come this hard but the man he loved. They

Oh, for God’s sake,” she spat out. “Just say it. You’re involved with someone and it doesn’t work into your plans to spend time in Virgin River!” “That’s not it,” he said nervously. “You know everything about me! Yet you couldn’t even casually mention you were seeing someone at home?” “It’s not like that. Listen, I just need some time on this. Some patience. Because I really intend to do better by you than I have. I know I haven’t been here for you like I meant to be and—” “Stop!” she said. “I haven’t asked you for anything except to stay in touch! Stop whimpering!” He scowled. His neck got red. “I’m not whimpering!” “Well, you sure as hell aren’t talking! Man up!” “I’m trying! But you’re doing all the talking for me!” She had a few more hot retorts, but bit her tongue against them. She pursed her lips. He had been in Virgin River for months, but he went back to Grants Pass almost every week for a day or two. He had said it was to check on the construction company he’d left in the hands of his father and brothers. And to check on her? It must’ve been pretty hard on her to be asked to understand he had to be away so much, tending to his best friend’s widow. Imagine now, being told he’d have to make frequent trips to Virgin River to make sure the widow and baby were doing all right. Talk about complicated. Well, she wasn’t interested in that kind of relationship. “I think you’re trying to tell me there’s a woman back in Grants Pass who’s counting on you. You have obligations there.” “Yeah,” he said weakly. “But, Vanni, I have obligations here, as well. You and Mattie, you’re awful important to me…” Being referred to as an obligation should have made her want to cry, but instead it made her furious. “Well, don’t worry your little head. We’re getting along just fine—better every day. You have a life in Grants Pass. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.” “You’re not listening,” he said, his voice raising to match hers. “I want to be here with you, as often as possible,” he said. “I’m doing my damn best!” “It sounds like you have other things, other people you’d better pay attention to.” “Listen, things can happen that you don’t plan, don’t expect!” “Oh really?” she asked sarcastically. “Tell me about it,” she said. She hadn’t expected her husband to die, or to fall in love with Paul. If there was one thing she knew about the men in her life—her father, her late husband, Paul and all the guys who seemed to gather around him—they didn’t make commitments lightly, and once a promise was made, they never broke an oath. “I’m sure you’ll get everything straightened out,” she said. She tried to keep the angry edge out of her voice, but she was thoroughly unsuccessful. “Please, you have no obligations here. We’ll be fine. I don’t know why you didn’t just tell me—a long time ago! Did you think I wouldn’t understand you had to get home because there was someone there? Someone who was counting on you?” “It isn’t like that!” “You could have just told me!” “Vanessa! For God’s sake—” Paul attempted. Walt walked into the room. He looked stricken, startled. “Are you having an argument about something?” “No!” they both said. “Oh,” Walt said. “Poetry, I guess. Some new kind of poetry?” Vanessa hissed and Paul just shook his head. “I hear the baby,” she said, whirling out of the room. “I hear something, too,” Paul said, leaving in the opposite direction, charging out the front door and letting it slam behind him. Walt was left alone in the great room in front of a blazing hearth. “Well,” he said to himself. “Glad to know that wasn’t an argument.” *

Three days before Christmas, Tony Dungy’s phone rang in the middle of the night. His wife answered and handed him the receiver, thinking it was one of his players. There was a nurse on the line. Dungy’s son Jamie had been brought into the hospital earlier in the evening, she said, with compression injuries on his throat. His girlfriend had found him hanging in his apartment, a belt around his neck. Paramedics had rushed him to the hospital, but efforts at revival were unsuccessful.3.34 He was gone. A chaplain flew to spend Christmas with the family. “Life will never be the same again,” the chaplain told them, “but you won’t always feel like you do right now.” A few days after the funeral, Dungy returned to the sidelines. He needed something to distract himself, and his wife and team encouraged him to go back to work. “I was overwhelmed by their love and support,” he later wrote. “As a group, we had always leaned on each other in difficult times; I needed them now more than ever.” The team lost their first play-off game, concluding their season. But in the aftermath of watching Dungy during this tragedy, “something changed,” one of his players from that period told me. “We had seen Coach through this terrible thing and all of us wanted to help him somehow.” It is simplistic, even cavalier, to suggest that a young man’s death can have an impact on football games. Dungy has always said that nothing is more important to him than his family. But in the wake of Jamie’s passing, as the Colts started preparing for the next season, something shifted, his players say. The team gave in to Dungy’s vision of how football should be played in a way they hadn’t before. They started to believe.

1000 times before inventing the light bulb. There’s also that witty quote about how he interpreted his unsuccessful attempts not as failures, but as lessons on how not to make a light bulb.

When no answer came after the second letter to Ostwald, Hermann Einstein took it upon himself, without his son’s knowledge, to make an unusual and awkward effort, suffused with heart-wrenching emotion, to prevail upon Ostwald himself: Please forgive a father who is so bold as to turn to you, esteemed Herr Professor, in the interest of his son. Albert is 22 years old, he studied at the Zurich Polytechnic for four years, and he passed his exam with flying colors last summer. Since then he has been trying unsuccessfully to get a position as a teaching assistant, which would enable him to continue his education in physics. All those in a position to judge praise his talents; I can assure you that he is extraordinarily studious and diligent and clings with great love to his science. He therefore feels profoundly unhappy about his current lack of a job, and he becomes more and more convinced that he has gone off the tracks with his career. In addition, he is oppressed by the thought that he is a burden on us, people of modest means. Since it is you whom my son seems to admire and esteem more than any other scholar in physics, it is you to whom I have taken the liberty of turning with the humble request to read his paper and to write to him, if possible, a few words of encouragement, so that he might recover his joy in living and working. If, in addition, you could secure him an assistant’s position, my gratitude would know no bounds. I beg you to forgive me for my impudence in writing you, and my son does not know anything about my unusual step.25

A moralist will be unsuccessful in trying to displace his love of the world by reviewing the ills of the world. Misplaced affections need to be replaced by the far greater power of the affection of the Gospel.

Relationships are either successful or unsuccessful, but they’re never perfect. The successful ones…they’re the ones where the couple never gives up.

No matter how greatly sin has damaged your life … no matter how many dull, ugly layers of paint and veneer you may have applied in an unsuccessful attempt to cover the cracks … no matter if the colors are faded or the picture is so obscured that you can barely see the original … God is in the restoration business. He is a great, redeeming God who is making all things new, through the work of Christ on our behalf. His divine power and love can re-create and restore your life to its original design—that beautiful work of art intended to display the loveliness of Christ!

It was frustrating how they were all willing to spread their legs for him, but were too timid to consider the kink he proposed to them. Whenever he mentioned punishment, he either got a look of horror or disgust. He hoped Lilliana wouldn’t turn out to be another unsuccessful endeavor. It seemed to him that because they had so much in common, surely they would be a better fit for each other.

Adults should want two things, he said, and these were the two things he wanted from his own life: First, he wanted to have a successful marriage. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn't matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn't matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled. Then, Harold continued, he wanted to find some activity, either a job or hobby, which would absorb his abilities. He imagined himself working really hard at something, suffering setbacks and frustrations, and then seeing that sweat and toil lead to success and recognition.

Ours is a lost cause.  But, Krishna, unsuccessful life, like love unreturned, has its own rainbow.

All acts and facts are a product of spiritual power, the successful ones of power which is strong enough; the unsuccessful ones of power which is too weak. Does my behavior in respect of love affect nothing? That is be¬ cause there is not enough love in me. Am I powerless against the untruthfulness and the lies which have their being all around me? The reason is that I myself am not truthful enough. Have I to watch dislike and ill will carrying on their sad game? That means that I myself have not yet completely laid aside small-mindedness and envy. Is my love of peace misunderstood and scorned? That means that I am not yet sufficiently peace-loving.

I turned over to do just that. The “In” track played in the backdrop of my head like a hushed lullaby for minutes long as my mind raced. Then, out of nowhere, I was struck with an onslaught of emotions I had no idea existed. I’d just had a vaginal orgasm. With a man. My husband. A man who was essentially a stranger, because I really didn’t know Ezra. A man that caused me to see and feel so much and so quickly. It was easy falling into a sexual affair with Ezra: he was handsome, compelling, and confident. What woman wouldn’t be taken by those qualities? But I was able to keep a modicum of a barricade of control because I had places within that no one could penetrate without my consent. My shoulders trembled as I tried to unsuccessfully stifle my sobs, because in that instance, I realized Ezra took that, too. It was one thing to impress me with his eloquent articulation and infinite knowledge, but an entirely different matter to infiltrate a deep, private, and vulnerable place within. I felt raw, emotionally. Felt exposed beyond what I could identify. My mother’s mental illness had always hovered over me with gloom. I was predisposed to the same, which is why I didn’t allow myself to feel so much. It’s why I hadn’t cried in years. That shit was for the weak. As my dad would chant, “Alexis is no weakling. She’s a fucking warrior!” It was true. It was what I believed and had to against having a genetic linking to a feeble brain like my mother’s. So, I fought for mental stability, alertness, and protection. Had I just given that to Ezra, a man I technically didn’t know, but was drawn to for some inexplicable reason? I couldn’t have that. My father taught me to always be tough, to fight any force no matter how big or strong. How could I fight what I couldn’t understand or identify? What weapons do you battle intimacy with? “Shhhhhh…” Ezra soothed while rocking me in his hard frame, his touch more gentle than any he ever applied with me. “That type of sensation, and for the first time, can take your mind to low places after having been so high.” How did he know I was battling emotionally, sinking deeper and deeper into self-pity? “Don’t let it take you under, Alexis. Just breathe it off.” Ezra patted my damp hair, with calmative care. “Breathe, baby,” he whispered. Taken by his comfort, I was already halfway into my slumber.

Successfully unsuccessful.

Heeding Myrna’s counsel with the eager assistance of various young men, one of the simple lovelies suffered a nervous breakdown; the other attempted unsuccessfully to slash her wrists with a broken Coca-Cola bottle. Myrna’s explanation was that the girls had been too reactionary to begin with, and with renewed vigor, she preached sex in every classroom and pizza parlor, almost getting herself raped by a janitor in the Social Studies building.

etc." I have been searching for my self everywhere, but I can’t find it! I can’t even remember when exactly I lost it… I search for it in everything I love and hate in foreign and familiar cities in all the kind, exhausted, and mean faces… I search for my self near water springs and along river shores On mountaintops and in the scent of wildflowers… Between the branches of olive and fig trees, but without any trace or hope… I search in teacups, in the corners of old cafés In songs and interludes… In books In the memories of everyone who ever knew me Everyone I betrayed or was betrayed by… I search in lines and sentences, But all in vain… I even search unsuccessfully in the sentences that list options, including the examples and each “etc.” after each list of options… I keep wondering how did I so quietly lose it? And each time I ask the loved ones about my strong desire to reunite with my lost self, I realize they have no leads other than long and wide lists of places, things, activities, individuals, and hobbies where I may possibly “find” my self… In each list they suggest, I find countless options and countless lines ending with “etc.” They don’t understand that I have turned every rock and searched behind every “etc.” And today I finally realized That my self wasn’t from here, and thus, it was never here… That, all along, I have been searching for an illusion that never existed… [Original poem published in Arabic on March 11, 2024 at ahewar.org]

By the way, there is nothing more unsuccessful than thinking about someone you love. Such trains of thought are like certain folk and soldier songs, in which a thousand different things occur, but the refrain recurs stubbornly, even where it does not fit at all.

pressures and intense learning curve It takes time to get up to speed on the content of your new position, and yet business and markets cannot slow down and wait for you to catch up. Decisions still need to be taken and, consequently, the pressure can build up and will need to be managed in order to stay operating effectively. Being overwhelmed with immediate fire-fighting and task-driven priorities It would be tempting to get busy and dive into the immediate business tasks and issues. But you need to have the strength of character to step back and take time out to look at the big picture: what tasks should you continue, what should you stop, and what should you start? Need to invest energy in building new networks and forging new stakeholder relationships There is no point in having the right vision and strategy in isolation of bringing people with you. The culture may be dense and slow-moving – people may be resistant to the changes you bring. Invest early in the influencer and stakeholder network. Dealing with legacy issues from the predecessor Depending on the quality of your predecessor, your unit may or may not have a good reputation, and your team may have developed poor habits, behaviours and disciplines that will take time to address. Or you may have to endure the scenario of filling the shoes of a much-loved predecessor, and being initially resented as the new guy whose mandate is to change how things have always been done before. Challenges on inheriting or building a team and having to make tough personnel decisions Don’t expect underperformers to have been weeded out prior to your arrival. A key task in your first 100 days will be to assess the quality of your team: who stays, who goes and what fresh talent is needed on board. Unfortunately, your best talent is possibly now de-motivated and resentful – and consequently underperforming – because they applied unsuccessfully for your job. For external appointments, a lack of experience of the new company culture may lead to inadvertent gaffes and early political blunders – all of which can take time to recover From the innocuous to the significant, everything you do is being judged as indicative of your character. Checking your smart device during a meeting may deeply offend your new role stakeholders who may judge that action as an indication that you are brash, uninterested and arrogant. You will need to be on ‘hyper alert’ to consciously pick up clues on the acceptable norms and behaviours in your new culture. Getting the balance right between moving too fast and moving too slowly Newly appointed people sometimes panic and this can result in either doing too much (scattergun approach, but not tackling the core issues) or doing too little (‘I’ll just listen and learn for the first three months, and then decide what to do’). Neither extreme cuts it. Find the right balance.

Neither reputation, nor any comforts in dividends I get, his is the real world my beloved, and you deserve the actual wealth.

When composition is good, you don’t really notice it, but you definitely notice when compositional elements are ignored. An artwork will seem unsuccessful or ‘wrong’ to you, even if you don’t know why.

The difference between successful couples and unsuccessful couples is that the successful ones keep getting up and keep dealing with the issues. Unsuccessful couples want it easy. They want it now. They want their needs to be met. They don’t want conflict; they just want everything to be “happy.” This approach is the epitome of immaturity.

Amanda is wrong. I do have an instinct about people, and it tells me David is just fine. I wonder if he doesn't cook because his wife did all the cooking until she died. I wonder what she was like. Like Ma, maybe, capable and in charge, always repeating rules and being protective. I felt smothered sometimes but I know Ma always tried to do what was right for me. One of her unsuccessful lessons in how to make and keep friends was 'Be a little mysterious.' Of course I could never find the right level of mystery. If I asserted myself, she said, 'Don't be too insistent,' and if I hung back too much, it was 'Don't be such a little wallflower.' I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense. Maybe that's part of why I love Midnight. Maybe she reminds me of me.

Try and remember what you said you'd do and why you said you'd do it. Forget what you think other people want the thing you said you'd do to be. The thing you said you'd do should only be what you want the thing you said you'd do to be. If the thing you said you'd do makes other people happy, that's great but don't say things or do things just to make them happy. Find new ways to do the thing you said you'd do that don't change the meaning of what you said you'd do. Have the purest of intentions for what you said you'd do and do it bravely. If the thing you said you'd do becomes successful, continue to act and think like it is unsuccessful, otherwise you'll spend your time worrying that it might become unsuccessful. If you said you'd involve people in the thing you said you'd do, listen to them when they say what they think you should do. If you said you'd do the thing you said you'd do alone, then go boldly into the wilderness and make your own soul be company enough, while you do the thing you said you'd do. Do right by the thing you said you'd do. Tend to it and love it. By trying to remember what you said you'd do and the reason why you said you'd do it.

Why Samuel left the stone house and the green acres of his ancestors I do not know. He was never a political man, so it is not likely a charge of rebellion drove him out, and he was scrupulously honest, which eliminates the police as prime movers. There was a whisper—not even a rumor but rather an unsaid feeling—in my family that it was love drove him out, and not love of the wife he married. But whether it was too successful love or whether he left in pique at unsuccessful love, I do not know.

The subconscious mind is where you hold deep-seeded beliefs about yourself, including whether you see yourself as talented or untalented, intelligent or unintelligent, successful or unsuccessful, deserving of love or undeserving of love, just to name a few. These deep-seeded beliefs about yourself are the result of all of your life’s experiences, including your childhood experiences.

The cynics are people who haven’t accomplished much themselves and stand on the sidelines while criticizing the heroes who are on their fields of battle. They arrogantly pontificate about how those on the field aren’t following the cynics’ untested and impractical approaches. Cynics also love to point to the mistakes the heroes make, ignoring the reality that all successful people make plenty of mistakes. In the process, they conjure up unrealistic images that heroes must be perfect rather than imperfect but great and much more successful than unsuccessful.