Weapons English Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Weapons English. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Of course, now I had the problem of communicating what I needed. Marlen was still beating on the door, and Dimitri would be up in a couple of minutes. I glared at the human, hoping I looked terrifying. From his expression, I did. I attempted the caveman talk I had with Inna...only this time the message was a little harder. "Stick," I said in Russian. I had no clue what the word for stake was. I pointed at the silver ring I wore and made a slashing motion. "Stick. Where?" He stared at me in utter confusion and then asked, in perfect English, "Why are you talking like that?" "Oh for God's sake," I exclaimed. "Where is the vault?" "Vault?" "A place they keep weapons?" He continued staring. "Oh," he said. "That." Uneasily, he cast his eyes in the direction of the pounding.
Richelle Mead (Blood Promise (Vampire Academy, #4))
Dakkan, my spear. My grandmother had a huge problem with that name, because the closest translation of it to English would be “Stabby.” She claimed it wasn’t a proper name for a weapon, so after the first Dakkan broke, I offered to name the new one Sharpy McStabbison, the Son of Stabby, after which she groaned and left my quarters, followed by a throng of her advisors all giving me reproachful looks.
Ilona Andrews (Blood Heir (Aurelia Ryder, #1; World of Kate Daniels, #13))
Suddenly, she employed those very English weapons: devious good manners and a rapid change of subject.
Patricia Duncker (Miss Webster and Chérif)
My worry is that they will look down on our enemies. They have seen the Arabs in these mud towns and think the Dervishes are the same quality. That can’t be true. These are the people that wiped out Billy Hicks and his column. He had modern weapons and they had sticks and swords. That speaks to a rare sort of courage and determination.
Nigel Seed (No Road to Khartoum (Michael McGuire Trilogy 1))
The rigid rifle drill of the British infantryman had been their most potent weapon since the wars against Napoleon. Now it was the turn of the Dervishes to feel the impact of those heavy lead Martini Henry bullets. By now any European army would have staggered and might even have stopped. The Dervishes never paused, but ran forward screaming their war cries and trying to get within killing distance of the steady lines of men before them.
Nigel Seed (No Road to Khartoum (Michael McGuire Trilogy 1))
... as Eskimo language is to snow, so archaic English is to 'metal objects designed to cause harm'.
Austin Grossman (You)
The English language is an arsenal of weapons; if you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or no they are loaded you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time. "Poppycock" means "soft shit" - from the Dutch, I need scarcely remind you, pappe kak.
Stephen Fry (The Liar)
It was funny, I thought, eyeing the Chinese and English logos on the crates, the names of the companies that supplied both countries, funny because our weapons to kill each other were different. But our medicines to save lives were the same.
James Abel
The NRA was laying down its weapons. Yankee fans were rooting for the Boston Red Sox. The French were eating English food and loving it. Matthew was sure all those things were happening.... This was the proverbial cold day in hell, and Matthew was living it.
James Grippando (A King's Ransom)
It is beneficial to consider the origins of "riddle." The Old English rædelse means "opinion, conjure" which is related to the Old English raedon "to interpret" in turn belonging to the same etymological history of "read." "Riddling" is an offshoot of "reading" calling to mind the participatory nature of that act--to interpret--which is all the adult world has left when faced with the unsolvable. "To read" actually comes from the Latin reri "to calculate, to think" which is not only the progenitor of "read" but of "reason" as well, both of which hail from the Greek arariskein "to fit." Aside from giving us "reason," arariskein also gives us an unlikely sibling, Latin arma meaning "weapons." It seems that "to fit" the world or to make sense of it requires either reason or arms.
Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)
Casey recalled how Gail defended herself in the parking lot of the English & Philosophy Building from the unwanted attentions of a lecherous fellow student, who shall remain nameless. ‘Please leave me alone,’ Ms Godwin warned the offending student, ‘or I shall be forced to wound you with a weapon you can ill afford to be wounded by in a town this small.’ The threat was most mysterious, not to mention writerly, but the oafish lecher was not easily deterred. ‘And what might that weapon be, little lady?’ the lout allegedly asked. ‘Gossip,’ Gail Godwin replied.
John Irving (The Imaginary Girlfriend: A Memoir)
The more clearly we are able to express ourselves, the less room there is for ambiguity. The more elaborate and the more precise our vocabulary, the greater the scope for thought and expression. Language is about subtlety and nuance. It is power and it is potent. We can woo with words and we can wound. Despots fear the words of the articulate opponent. Successful revolutions are achieved with words as much as with weapons.
John Humphrys (Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English)
I had always pictured the Albanian peasants as a very fine picturesque race of men wearing spotless native costume, and slung about with fascinating looking daggers and curious weapons of all kinds, but the great majority of those I saw, more especially in the small towns, were a very degenerate looking race indeed.
Flora Sandes (An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army)
Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: 'Lady, we have come to write down the names of the immortals,’ and at his words a look of great joy came into her face. Presently she, began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though she knew she had but a little while to live, and, in English, with the accent of their own country; and she told them the secret names of the immortals of many lands, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft they held dearest; but most about the immortals of Ireland and of their love for the cauldron, and the whetstone, and the sword, and the spear, and the hills of the Shee, and the horns of the moon, and the Grey Wind, and the Yellow Wind, and the Black Wind, and the Red Wind. ("The Adoration of the Magi")
W.B. Yeats
They drew three lessons from the Pequot War: (1) that the Englishmen’s most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage; (2) that the English way of war had no limit of scruple or mercy; and (3) that weapons of Indian making were almost useless against weapons of European manufacture. These lessons the Indians took to heart.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
As much as he loved to fly, in the prewar years he regarded his RAF aircraft more as a tool for cracking open English high society than as a weapon for defeating Britain’s enemies.
Lynne Olson (A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II)
His mother used to swat at his shoulders in a way that looked playful but felt serious when he spoke too much English and not enough Chinese; his weapon of choice had been the language that made her dependent on him.
Lisa Ko (The Leavers)
Obviously, the Quran is not a weapon, but a book which gives us an introduction to the divine ideology of peaceful struggle. The method of such a struggle, according to the Quran, is ‘to speak to them a word to reach their very soul’ (4:63).
Anonymous (The Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword))
The word power typically signifies a capacity for action. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us power lies in an 'ability to do or effect something or anything, or to act upon a person or thing'. The person who has power may influence the material or social environment, generally on the basis of possessing high-tech weapons, money, oil, superior intelligence or large muscles. In war, I am powerful because I can blow up your city walls or drop bombs on your airfields. In the financial world, I am powerful because I can buy up your shares and invade your markets. In boxing, I am ,ore powerful because my punches outwit and exhaust yours. But in love, this issue appears to depend on a far more passive, negative definition; instead of looking at power as a capacity to do something, one may come to think of it as the capacity to do nothing.
Alain de Botton (The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping, and the Novel)
It was astonishing how loudly one laughed at tales of gruesome things, of war’s brutality-I with the rest of them. I think at the bottom of it was a sense of the ironical contrast between the normal ways of civilian life and this hark-back to the caveman code. It made all our old philosophy of life monstrously ridiculous. It played the “hat trick” with the gentility of modern manners. Men who had been brought up to Christian virtues, who had prattled their little prayers at mothers’ knees, who had grown up to a love of poetry, painting, music, the gentle arts, over-sensitized to the subtleties of half-tones, delicate scales of emotion, fastidious in their choice of words, in their sense of beauty, found themselves compelled to live and act like ape-men; and it was abominably funny. They laughed at the most frightful episodes, which revealed this contrast between civilized ethics and the old beast law. The more revolting it was the more, sometimes, they shouted with laughter, especially in reminiscence, when the tale was told in the gilded salon of a French chateau, or at a mess-table. It was, I think, the laughter of mortals at the trick which had been played on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe that the whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and that mankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival by tooth and claw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion had preached this gospel and this promise. Now that ideal had broken like a china vase dashed to hard ground. The contrast between That and This was devastating. It was, in an enormous world-shaking way, like a highly dignified man in a silk hat, morning coat, creased trousers, spats, and patent boots suddenly slipping on a piece of orange-peel and sitting, all of a heap, with silk hat flying, in a filthy gutter. The war-time humor of the soul roared with mirth at the sight of all that dignity and elegance despoiled. So we laughed merrily, I remember, when a military chaplain (Eton, Christ Church, and Christian service) described how an English sergeant stood round the traverse of a German trench, in a night raid, and as the Germans came his way, thinking to escape, he cleft one skull after another with a steel-studded bludgeon a weapon which he had made with loving craftsmanship on the model of Blunderbore’s club in the pictures of a fairy-tale. So we laughed at the adventures of a young barrister (a brilliant fellow in the Oxford “Union”) whose pleasure it was to creep out o’ nights into No Man’s Land and lie doggo in a shell-hole close to the enemy’s barbed wire, until presently, after an hour’s waiting or two, a German soldier would crawl out to fetch in a corpse. The English barrister lay with his rifle ready. Where there had been one corpse there were two. Each night he made a notch on his rifle three notches one night to check the number of his victims. Then he came back to breakfast in his dugout with a hearty appetite.
Phillip Gibbs
Everyone's here except for St. Clair." Meredith cranes her neck around the cafeteria. "He's usually running late." "Always," Josh corrects. "Always running late." I clear my throat. "I think I met him last night. In the hallway." "Good hair and an English accent?" Meredith asks. "Um.Yeah.I guess." I try to keep my voice casual. Josh smirks. "Everyone's in luuurve with St. Clair." "Oh,shut up," Meredith says. "I'm not." Rashmi looks at me for the first time, calculating whether or not I might fall in love with her own boyfriend. He lets go of her hand and gives an exaggerated sigh. "Well,I am. I'm asking him to prom. This is our year, I just know it." "This school has a prom?" I ask. "God no," Rashmi says. "Yeah,Josh. You and St. Clair would look really cute in matching tuxes." "Tails." The English accent makes Meredith and me jump in our seats. Hallway boy. Beautiful boy. His hair is damp from the rain. "I insist the tuxes have tails, or I'm giving your corsage to Steve Carver instead." "St. Clair!" Josh springs from his seat, and they give each other the classic two-thumps-on-the-back guy hug. "No kiss? I'm crushed,mate." "Thought it might miff the ol' ball and chain. She doesn't know about us yet." "Whatever," Rashi says,but she's smiling now. It's a good look for her. She should utilize the corners of her mouth more often. Beautiful Hallway Boy (Am I supposed to call him Etienne or St. Clair?) drops his bag and slides into the remaining seat between Rashmi and me. "Anna." He's surprised to see me,and I'm startled,too. He remembers me. "Nice umbrella.Could've used that this morning." He shakes a hand through his hair, and a drop lands on my bare arm. Words fail me. Unfortunately, my stomach speaks for itself. His eyes pop at the rumble,and I'm alarmed by how big and brown they are. As if he needed any further weapons against the female race. Josh must be right. Every girl in school must be in love with him. "Sounds terrible.You ought to feed that thing. Unless..." He pretends to examine me, then comes in close with a whisper. "Unless you're one of those girls who never eats. Can't tolerate that, I'm afraid. Have to give you a lifetime table ban." I'm determined to speak rationally in his presence. "I'm not sure how to order." "Easy," Josh says. "Stand in line. Tell them what you want.Accept delicious goodies. And then give them your meal card and two pints of blood." "I heard they raised it to three pints this year," Rashmi says. "Bone marrow," Beautiful Hallway Boy says. "Or your left earlobe." "I meant the menu,thank you very much." I gesture to the chalkboard above one of the chefs. An exquisite cursive hand has written out the morning's menu in pink and yellow and white.In French. "Not exactly my first language." "You don't speak French?" Meredith asks. "I've taken Spanish for three years. It's not like I ever thought I'd be moving to Paris." "It's okay," Meredith says quickly. "A lot of people here don't speak French." "But most of them do," Josh adds. "But most of them not very well." Rashmi looks pointedly at him. "You'll learn the lanaguage of food first. The language of love." Josh rubs his belly like a shiny Buddha. "Oeuf. Egg. Pomme. Apple. Lapin. Rabbit." "Not funny." Rashmi punches him in the arm. "No wonder Isis bites you. Jerk." I glance at the chalkboard again. It's still in French. "And, um, until then?" "Right." Beautiful Hallway Boy pushes back his chair. "Come along, then. I haven't eaten either." I can't help but notice several girls gaping at him as we wind our way through the crowd.
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
If language and child care issues posed problems for otherwise solid candidates, the solution was not to reject those candidates but instead to provide them with help—whether English classes or onsite day care—to pull them through. This is a point I’ll be returning to in future chapters: we’ve seen time and again that mathematical models can sift through data to locate people who are likely to face great challenges, whether from crime, poverty, or education.
Cathy O'Neil (Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy)
But every single day after work Tatiana brushed her hair and ran outside, thinking, please be there, and every single day after work Alexander was. Though he never asked her to go to the Summer Garden anymore or to sit on the bench under the trees with him, his hat was always in his hands. Exhausted and slow, they meandered from tram to canal to tram, reluctantly parting at Grechesky Prospekt, three blocks away from her apartment building. During their walks sometimes they talked about Alexander’s America or his life in Moscow, and sometimes they talked about Tatiana’s Lake Ilmen and her summers in Luga, and sometimes they chatted about the war, though less and less because of the anxiety over Pasha, and sometimes Alexander taught Tatiana a little English. Sometimes they told jokes, and sometimes they barely spoke at all. A few times Alexander let Tatiana carry his rifle as a balancing stick while she walked a high ledge on the side of Obvodnoy Canal. “Don’t fall into the water, Tania,” he once said, “because I can’t swim.” “Is that true?” she asked incredulously, nearly toppling over. Grabbing the end of his rifle to steady her, Alexander said with a grin, “Let’s not find out, shall we? I don’t want to lose my weapon.” “That’s all right,” Tatiana said, precariously teetering on the ledge and laughing. “I can swim perfectly well. I’ll save your weapon for you. Want to see?” “No, thank you.” And sometimes, when Alexander talked, Tatiana found her lower jaw drifting down and was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she had been staring at him so long that her mouth had dropped open. She didn’t know what to look at when he talked—his caramel eyes that blinked and smiled and shined and were grim or his vibrant mouth that moved and opened and breathed and spoke. Her eyes darted from his eyes to his lips and circled from his hair to his jaw as if they were afraid she would miss something if she didn’t stare at everything all at once. There were some pieces of his fascinating life that Alexander did not wish to talk about—and didn’t. Not about the last time he saw his father, not about how he became Alexander Belov, not about how he received his medal of valor. Tatiana didn’t care and never did more than gently press him. She would take from him what he needed to give her and wait impatiently for the rest.
Paullina Simons (The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman, #1))
9“Then those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out and  p make fires of the weapons and burn them, shields and bucklers, bow and arrows,  q clubs [2] and spears; and they will make fires of them for seven years, 10so that they will not need to take wood out of the field or cut down any out of the forests, for  p they will make their fires of the weapons.  r They will seize the spoil of those who despoiled them, and plunder those who plundered them, declares the Lord GOD.
Anonymous (The Holy Bible: English Standard Version)
I do not know you, little squirrel chaser,” he said, wariness in his jutting face, something else dancing in his eyes. “But if I give this back, you promise not to hit me with it?” Grasping the pistol by the barrel, he offered her the stock. Struck dumb by his flawless English, Tamsen moved to take the proffered weapon. The Indian didn’t loosen his grip. “Or hit me with any other thing?” he added in addendum to his terms. “We have peace between us, you and me?” He waited until she nodded, then released the weapon to her.
Lori Benton (The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn)
by purity, h knowledge, patience, kindness, i the Holy Spirit, j genuine love; 7by k truthful speech, and l the power of God; with m the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8through honor and dishonor, n through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9as unknown, and o yet well known; p as dying, and behold, we live; q as punished, and yet not killed; 10 r as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; s as poor, yet making many rich; t as having nothing, u yet possessing everything.
Anonymous (The Holy Bible: English Standard Version)
Together with verbal coffins like model and level in which writers entomb their actors and actions, the English language provides them with a dangerous weapon called nominalization: making something into a noun. The nominalization rule takes a perfectly spry verb and embalms it into a lifeless noun by adding a suffix like –ance, –ment, –ation, or –ing. Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement. The writing scholar Helen Sword calls them zombie nouns because they lumber across the scene without a conscious agent directing their motion.
Steven Pinker (The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century)
the Middle Ages meetings were armed encounters: local disputes were settled by means of a ‘moot’, at which proposals were approved with a banging together of weapons – or dismissed with groans. These attempts to negotiate arguments gradually became less military in temper. During the Renaissance, urbanization and political centralization gave rise to a more parliamentary style of meeting, over which courtiers presided. Urbane discussion became the mechanism for resolving or curtailing differences and achieving solidarity. Yet even in the nineteenth century the word meeting was a euphemism for a duel – a hangover from a less bureaucratic age. And today meeting is associated with other ways of taking lives or at least sapping vitality. The
Henry Hitchings (Sorry!: The English and Their Manners)
From the woods that surrounded the burgh came a mass of men. Some rode, others ran. All carried weapons, mainly axes or spears. A few wore mail shirts and cloaks, but most just leather aketons. Among them were a handful of men clad in the short tunics favoured by Highlanders. These men were bare from thigh to foot, an alarming sight to Ormesby, who had only heard rumour of these wild men of the north. As they came, they roared a multitude of battle cries. Ormesby caught one name in the din, issuing from a group of mailed riders who followed a burly man on a finely caparisoned horse. ‘For Douglas!’ they howled. ‘For Douglas!’ Below, the townsfolk were scattering. The English soldiers had formed a tight knot outside the hall, blades drawn, but even as Ormesby watched, the forlorn group of beggars he had seen threw off their ragged skins and furs, revealing thickly muscled warriors. They fell upon the soldiers with savage cries, daggers thrusting. Footsteps sounded on the hall stairs. The door burst open and two soldiers appeared. ‘We must go, sir!’ The clerks and officials were already hastening across the chamber. Donald was running with them. Ormesby remained rooted. ‘Who are they?’ he demanded, his voice high as he turned back to the window, seeing the horde rushing into the town. His eyes fixed on a giant of a man running, almost loping in the front lines. Taller than all those around him, agile in the stride, he wore a simple dark blue tunic and wide-brimmed kettle hat. The other men seemed to be running in unruly formation around him. But it was the blade in the man’s hands that Ormesby’s eyes were drawn to. He had never seen such a sword, so broad and long the giant had to grasp it in both hands as he came. Another name now became audible in the roar of the mob. ‘Wallace! Wallace!
Robyn Young (Insurrection (The Insurrection Trilogy, #1))
Next week is Beltane,” she reminded him. “Do you suppose we will make it through the wedding this time?” “Not if Gideon says you cannot get out of this bed,” he countered sternly. “Absolutely not!” she burst out, making him wince and cover the ear she’d been too close to. She immediately regretted her thoughtlessness, making a sad sound before reaching to kiss the ear she had offended with quiet gentleness. Jacob extricated himself from her hold enough to allow himself to turn and face her. “Okay, explain what you meant,” he said gently. “I refuse to wait another six months. We are getting married on Beltane, come hell or . . . necromancers . . . or . . . the creature from the Black Lagoon. There is no way Corrine is going to be allowed to get married without me getting married, too. I refuse to listen to her calling me the family hussy for the rest of the year.” “What does it matter what she says?” Jacob sighed as he reached to touch the soft contours of her face. “You and I are bonded in a way that transcends marriage already. Is that not what is important?” “No. What’s important is the fact that I am going to murder the sister I love if she doesn’t quit. And she will not quit until I shut her up either with a marriage or a murder weapon. Understand?” Clearly, by his expression, Jacob did not understand. “Thank Destiny all I have is a brother,” he said dryly. “I have been inundated with people tied into knots over one sister or another for the past weeks.” “You mean Legna. Listen, it’s not her fault if everyone has their shorts in a twist because of who her Imprinted mate is! Frankly, I think she and Gideon make a fabulous couple. Granted, a little too gorgeously ‘King and Queen of the Prom’ perfect for human eyes to bear looking at for long, but fabulous just the same.” Jacob blinked in confusion as he tried to decipher his fiancée’s statement. Even after all these months, she still came out with unique phraseologies that totally escaped his more classic comprehension of the English language. But he had gotten used to just shrugging his confusion off, blaming it on the fact that English wasn’t his first, second, or third language, so it was to be expected. “Anyway,” she went on, “Noah and Hannah need to chill. You saw Legna when she came to visit yesterday. If a woman could glow, she was as good as radioactive.” She smiled sweetly at him. “That means,” she explained, “that she looks as brilliantly happy as you make me feel.” “I see,” he chuckled. “Thank you for the translation.” He reached his arms around her, drawing her body up to his as close as he could considering the small matter of a fetal obstacle. He kissed her inviting mouth until she was breathless and glowing herself. “I thought I would be kind to you,” she explained with a laugh against his mouth. “You, my love, are all heart.” “And you are all pervert. Jacob!” She laughed as she swatted one of his hands away from intimate places, only to be shanghaied by another. “What would Gideon say?” “He better not say anything, because if he did that would mean he was in here while you are naked. And that, little flower, would probably cost him his vocal chords in any event.” “Oh. Well . . . when you put it that way . . .
Jacquelyn Frank (Gideon (Nightwalkers, #2))
He had worked damn hard and prospered. Now it was time to live. He even thought he might get it up tonight and surprise his gorgeous Maggie; then it was Israel and the Pharaohs. Stopping at his front door he took a deep intake of the free English air and smiled contentedly; England was home and so was he, this time for good. He went in the front door and called out for her as he had done so many times before, 'Maggie . . . I'm home sweetheart!' He closed the door and hesitated for a moment, she was usually in his arms by now, planting a sweet little kiss on his expectant, eager lips. She had not been her best lately, complaining of headaches and spending a lot of time down at the library; but today was different, it was retirement day. Aha! This could be a surprise, he thought hanging up his coat. Calling out again, he rubbed his hands together and started to climb the stairs to wash up before tea. This is definitely a surprise . . . no smell of any grub! His whistling stopped abruptly half way up when he saw a darkened figure appear on the landing, pointing a gun at him. A finger tightened and the weapon jolted, sending screeching Belarusian memories echoing across his subconscious. The blast lifted him off his feet sending him to the floor below. The last image of Cedric Boban's life on earth was the flash of a sawn-off shotgun; which fired from a few feet, took his life and most of his upper torso away. The slate was clean, the screeching culled. His assailant moved halfway down before jumping over the banister to avoid the bloody mess on the stairs. Maggie walked steadily into the hall from the living room. She gave a little smile and took the small sawn-off shotgun from the gloved hands of the assassin,
Anthony Vincent Bruno (SAS: Body Count (The Wicked Will Perish, #1))
He strode forward, heedless of the murmuring that began among the women when they saw him. Then Sara turned, and her gaze met his. Instantly a guilty blush spread over her cheeks that told him all he needed to know about her intent. “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said in steely tones. “Class is over for today. Why don’t you all go up on deck and get a little fresh air?” When the women looked at Sara, she folded her hands primly in front of her and stared at him. “You have no right to dismiss my class, Captain Horn. Besides, we aren’t finished yet. I was telling them a story—” “I know. You were recounting Lysistrata.” Surprise flickered briefly in her eyes, but then turned smug and looked down her aristocratic little nose at him. “Yes, Lysistrata,” she said in a sweet voice that didn’t fool him for one minute. “Surely you have no objection to my educating the women on the great works of literature, Captain Horn.” “None at all.” He set his hands on his hips. “But I question your choice of material. Don’t you think Aristophanes is a bit beyond the abilities of your pupils?” He took great pleasure in the shock that passed over Sara’s face before she caught herself. Ignoring the rustle of whispers among the women, she stood a little straighter. “As if you know anything at all about Aristophanes.” “I don’t have to be an English lordling to know literature, Sara. I know all the blasted writers you English make so much of. Any one of them would have been a better choice for your charges than Aristophanes.” As she continued to glower at him unconvinced, he scoured his memory, searching through the hundreds of verse passages his English father had literally pounded into him. “You might have chosen Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, for example—‘fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow. / And dart not scornful glances from those eyes / to wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.’” It had been a long time since he’d recited his father’s favorite passages of Shakespeare, but the words were as fresh as if he’d learned them only yesterday. And if anyone knew how to use literature as a weapon, he did. His father had delighted in tormenting him with quotes about unrepentant children. Sara gaped at him as the other women looked from him to her in confusion. “How . . . I mean . . . when could you possibly—” “Never mind that. The point us, you’re telling them the tale of Lysistrata when what you should be telling them is ‘thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper. /thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee / and for thy maintenance commits his body / to painful labour by both sea and land.’” Her surprise at this knowledge of Shakespeare seemed to vanish as she recognized the passage he was quoting—the scene where Katherine accepts Petruchio as her lord and master before all her father’s guests. Sara’s eyes glittered as she stepped from among the women and came nearer to him. “We are not your wives yet. And Shakespeare also said ‘sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more / men were deceivers ever / one foot on sea and one on shore / to one thing constant never.’” “Ah, yes. Much Ado About Nothing. But even Beatrice changes her tune in the end, doesn’t she? I believe it’s Beatrice who says, ‘contempt, farewell! And maiden pride, adieu! / no glory lives behind the back of such./ and Benedick, love on, I will requite thee, / taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.’” “She was tricked into saying that! She was forced to acknowledge him as surely as you are forcing us!” “Forcing you?” he shouted. “You don’t know the meaning of force! I swear, if you—” He broke off when he realized that the women were staring at him with eyes round and fearful. Sara was twisting his words to make him sound like a monster. And succeeding, too, confound her.
Sabrina Jeffries (The Pirate Lord)
The appeasers had been powerful; they had controlled The Times and The BBC; they had been largely drawn from the upper classes, and their betrayal of England's greatness would be neither forgotten nor forgiven by those who, gulled by the mystique of England's class system, had believed as Englishmen had believed for generations that public school boys governed best. The appeasers destroyed oligarchic rule which, though levelers may protest, had long governed well. If ever men betrayed their class, these were they. Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, Anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold all that had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-40)
When the center of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" in nothingness then one has taken away its center of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life. Why be public spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labor together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." " One thing only is necessary". That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off scouring of humanity to its side. The "salvation of the soul" in plain English: "the world revolves around me." The poisonous doctrine, " equal rights for all," has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us , against everything noble, joyous and high spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth. To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated. And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honorable pride in himself and his equals for the pathos of distance. Our politics is sick with this lack of courage! The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the "privileges of the majority" makes and will continue to make revolutions it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the "lowly" lowers.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ)
Bram stared into a pair of wide, dark eyes. Eyes that reflected a surprising glimmer of intelligence. This might be the rare female a man could reason with. “Now, then,” he said. “We can do this the easy way, or we can make things difficult.” With a soft snort, she turned her head. It was as if he’d ceased to exist. Bram shifted his weight to his good leg, feeling the stab to his pride. He was a lieutenant colonel in the British army, and at over six feet tall, he was said to cut an imposing figure. Typically, a pointed glance from his quarter would quell the slightest hint of disobedience. He was not accustomed to being ignored. “Listen sharp now.” He gave her ear a rough tweak and sank his voice to a low threat. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as I say.” Though she spoke not a word, her reply was clear: You can kiss my great woolly arse. Confounded sheep. “Ah, the English countryside. So charming. So…fragrant.” Colin approached, stripped of his London-best topcoat, wading hip-deep through the river of wool. Blotting the sheen of perspiration from his brow with his sleeve, he asked, “I don’t suppose this means we can simply turn back?” Ahead of them, a boy pushing a handcart had overturned his cargo, strewing corn all over the road. It was an open buffet, and every ram and ewe in Sussex appeared to have answered the invitation. A vast throng of sheep bustled and bleated around the unfortunate youth, gorging themselves on the spilled grain-and completely obstructing Bram’s wagons. “Can we walk the teams in reverse?” Colin asked. “Perhaps we can go around, find another road.” Bram gestured at the surrounding landscape. “There is no other road.” They stood in the middle of the rutted dirt lane, which occupied a kind of narrow, winding valley. A steep bank of gorse rose up on one side, and on the other, some dozen yards of heath separated the road from dramatic bluffs. And below those-far below those-lay the sparkling turquoise sea. If the air was seasonably dry and clear, and Bram squinted hard at that thin indigo line of the horizon, he might even glimpse the northern coast of France. So close. He’d get there. Not today, but soon. He had a task to accomplish here, and the sooner he completed it, the sooner he could rejoin his regiment. He wasn’t stopping for anything. Except sheep. Blast it. It would seem they were stopping for sheep. A rough voice said, “I’ll take care of them.” Thorne joined their group. Bram flicked his gaze to the side and spied his hulking mountain of a corporal shouldering a flintlock rifle. “We can’t simply shoot them, Thorne.” Obedient as ever, Thorne lowered his gun. “Then I’ve a cutlass. Just sharpened the blade last night.” “We can’t butcher them, either.” Thorne shrugged. “I’m hungry.” Yes, that was Thorne-straightforward, practical. Ruthless. “We’re all hungry.” Bram’s stomach rumbled in support of the statement. “But clearing the way is our aim at the moment, and a dead sheep’s harder to move than a live one. We’ll just have to nudge them along.” Thorne lowered the hammer of his rifle, disarming it, then flipped the weapon with an agile motion and rammed the butt end against a woolly flank. “Move on, you bleeding beast.
Tessa Dare (A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove, #1))
What brings you to house of God?” The church’s Orthodox priest approached them with his hands up, speaking calmly in Hungarian-accented English. “We seek refuge from evil men, father,” Aleks replied, flashing an Interpol identification card before hefting one of the heavy pews toward the door. Kurtz helped him wedge it against the wood. The priest disappeared through a side door into the vestibule and returned moments later with an ancient-looking double-barreled shotgun and bandolier of shells. As he moved to secure the other doors in the church, Kurtz gave the priest a quizzical look. “Someone must defend the church,” the priest said as he cracked open the weapon and dropped a pair of cartridges into the chambers. He stood protectively over Aurelia. “I spent a little time in the army when I was a younger man.
Jack Silkstone (PRIMAL Fury (PRIMAL #4))
and your body-parts will be weapons for the Just-One of God.
A. Frances Werner (Aramaic New Testament: English text (Ancient Roots Translinear Bible Book 2))
When you cannot use your sword you may take to the weapon of all-prayer. Your powder may be damp, your bow-string may be relaxed, but the weapon of all-prayer need never be out of order.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version)
discoveries: a burial pit in Wales that contained the remains of what most scholars agreed was the first-century English queen Boadicea. She had been found buried in an ancient war chariot, surrounded by weapons, golden armbands, and other trinkets.
Lincoln Child (The Third Gate (Jeremy Logan, #3))
Time is your weapon, If you lose it, you will lose the battle.
Khaled Ibrahim
I’m hale enough,” he said. “And with luck, may be so for a good many years yet—but not forever, Sassenach. I ha’ fought wi’ sword and dirk many times, but to every warrior comes the day when his strength will fail him.” He shook his head and stretched out a hand toward his coat, which lay on the floor. “I took these, that day wi’ Tom Gage, to remind me of it,” he said. He took my hand and put into it the things he had taken from his pocket. They were cool, and hard to the touch, small heavy oblongs of lead. I didn’t need to feel the incised ends to know what the letters on the type slugs were. “Q.E.D.,” I said. “The English took my sword and dirk away,” he said softly. His finger touched the slugs that lay in my palm. “But Tom Gage put a weapon into my hands again, and I think I shall not lay it down.
Diana Gabaldon (Voyager (Outlander, #3))
As far as retribution for your crimes is concerned, Even Dharmaraja with his mighty stature Cannot stop the effects of your negative actions, The greatest of which was burning down the temple, And the smallest of which was the killing of lice. This is why you have accumulated [all] these [black] pebbles. So it is best if you prepare yourself to move on. [Get ready to] go swiftly on this black path! [There], the sealed copper cauldron [that awaits you] is wide and deep, The waves of boiling bronze are fierce, The fiery mass of past actions is intensely hot, And the messengers of Yama have scant mercy. Dharmaraja’s attitude is extremely fierce, The weapons of past actions are sharply pointed, And the black winds of past actions are very powerful. Now is the time for you to go to such a place! Though I really do have compassion for you, I am nonetheless very, very satisfied! You must carry on your back the weight and measure, Which you used as a fraudulent weight and measure! You must wear at your side the weapons With which you killed many sentient beings! You cannot deny or misrepresent these things! Now the time has come for you to go To the citadels of the eighteen hells.
Graham Coleman (The Tibetan Book of the Dead. First Complete English Translation)
One of the benefits of the national police force was the inception of national crime statistics. Although these represent only crimes recorded by the police, they offer real figures to work with, if only to map trends. Despite all the usual caveats about their unreliability, most historians have endorsed the official picture. The homicide rate for England and Wales was as high as 2 per 100,000 only once during the century, in 1865; otherwise it was about 1.5 per 100,000 and occasionally as low as i per 100,000, a record low.81 Between 1857 and 189o there were rarely more than 400 homicides reported each year, and in the 189os the average was below 350.82 In 1835-1837 9 percent of all English crimes were violent crimes, and from 1837 through 1845 the share declined to 8 percent.83 Even that 8 percent is inflated by the fact that of the crimes against the person some 25-33 percent were cases of infanticide, which would not have involved firearms. Crimes committed with guns were rare. Between 1878 and 1886 the average number of burglaries in London in which firearms were used was two per year; from 1887 to 18g1 this rose to 3.6 cases a year.84 "It was a rough society," David Philips concluded after examining Victorian crime, "but it was not a notably homicidal society. The manslaughter cases do not show a free use of lethal weapons."85 On the other hand, ordinary citizens were free to use lethal weapons to defend themselves. And as the difficulties of imposing restrictions on private firearms indicate, members of Parliament and their constituents were vigorously opposed to such attempts.
Joyce Lee Malcolm (Guns and Violence: The English Experience)
The style of bathing suit we now know as the bikini existed before then, but got its name only when the designer Louis Réard chose to use it to draw attention to a collection he was showing a few days after the bomb test. Bikini, we might argue, should have become a word to sum up the devastation that a nuclear weapon can cause; instead it became a word for a skimpy piece of beach attire. One
Henry Hitchings (The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English)
Unless you acknowledge your vulnerability for sin, you won’t pray against it and you’ll end up experiencing defeat. The most effective weapon the enemy has against you - is you
Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
The great weapon of infantry - and of Mongol and Turkish cavalry - was the bow and arrow. The short bow is very ancient, the property of most primitive peoples the world over. As we see in the Bayeux tapestry, it was drawn to the breast, not the ear; at short range it could be lethal. The six-foot longbow, shooting a three-foot “clothyard” shaft, was apparently a Welsh invention of the twelfth century; it became the favorite weapon of the English.
Morris Bishop (The Middle Ages)
As the West takes a budget ax to its defenses, the Red Army is modernizing at a furious pace. Putin has spoken openly about the use of tactical nuclear weapons to preserve his gains.
Daniel Silva (The English Spy (Gabriel Allon, #15))
The Advent of Karna Now the feats of arm are ended, and the closing hour draws nigh, Music's voice is hushed in silence, and dispersing crowds pass by, Hark! Like welkin-shaking thunder wakes a deep and deadly sound, Clank and din of warlike weapons burst upon the tented ground! Are the solid mountains splitting, is it bursting of the earth, Is it tempest's pealing accent whence the lightning takes its birth? Thoughts like these alarm the people for the sound is dread and high, To the gate of the arena turns the crowd with anxious eye! Gathered round preceptor Drona, Pandu's sons in armour bright, Like the five-starred constellation round the radiant Queen of Night, Gathered round the proud Duryodhan, dreaded for his exploits done, All his brave and warlike brothers and preceptor Drona's son, So the gods encircled Indra, thunder-wielding, fierce and bold, When he scattered Danu's children in the misty days of old! Pale, before the unknown warrior, gathered nations part in twain, Conqueror of hostile cities, lofty Karna treads the plain! In his golden mail accoutred and his rings of yellow gold, Like a moving cliff in stature, arméd comes the chieftain bold! Pritha, yet unwedded, bore him, peerless archer on the earth, Portion of the solar radiance, for the Sun inspired his birth! Like a tusker in his fury, like a lion in his ire, Like the sun in noontide radiance, like the all-consuming fire! Lion-like in build and muscle, stately as a golden palm, Blessed with every very manly virtue, peerless warrior proud and calm! With his looks serene and lofty field of war the chief surveyed, Scarce to Kripa or to Drona honour and obeisance made! Still the panic-stricken people viewed him with unmoving gaze, Who may be this unknown warrior, questioned they in hushed amaze! Then in voice of pealing thunder spake fair Pritha's eldest son Unto Arjun, Pritha's youngest, each, alas! to each unknown! “All thy feats of weapons, Arjun, done with vain and needless boast, These and greater I accomplish—witness be this mighty host!” Thus spake proud and peerless Karna in his accents deep and loud, And as moved by sudden impulse leaped in joy the listening crowd! And a gleam of mighty transport glows in proud Duryodhan's heart, Flames of wrath and jealous anger from the eyes of Arjun start! Drona gave the word, and Karna, Pritha's war-beloving son, With his sword and with his arrows did the feats by Arjun done!
Romesh Chunder Dutt (Maha-bharata The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse)
develop the 100 word vocabulary taught to the Lao tribesman to make the rudiments of combat conversation. A few nouns, some basic single tense verbs, names of weapons and directions made up the pidgin English. Like spice, flavor was added by whichever additional words the Special Forces teacher felt appropriate. The basic word denoting the reproductive act, and its many wondrous and colorful variations, was by far the most popular and common.
Mark Berent (Eagle Station (Wings of War, #4))
As far as we are concerned we do not wish to stand in anyone’s way, nor do we wish to bring discredit on the ministry God has given us. Indeed we want to prove ourselves genuine ministers of God whatever we have to go through—patient endurance of troubles or even disasters, being flogged or imprisoned; being mobbed, having to work like slaves, having to go without food or sleep. All this we want to meet with sincerity, with insight and patience; by sheer kindness and the Holy Spirit; with genuine love, speaking the plain truth, and living by the power of God. Our sole defence, our only weapon, is a life of integrity, whether we meet honour or dishonour, praise or blame. Called “impostors” we must be true, called “nobodies” we must be in the public eye. Never far from death, yet here we are alive, always “going through it” yet never “going under”. We know sorrow, yet our joy is inextinguishable. We have “nothing to bless ourselves with” yet we bless many others with true riches. We are penniless, and yet in reality we have everything worth having.
J.B. Phillips (The New Testament in Modern English)
Only optimism and education will become our weapon and shield; and our children, the only hope for a better tomorrow, where the sun that we deserve to illuminate us starts rising. Μόνο η αισιοδοξία και η παιδεία μας θα γίνουν το όπλο και η ασπίδα μας, και τα παιδιά μας η μοναδική ελπίδα για ένα καλύτερο αύριο, εκεί όπου χαράζει ο ήλιος που αξίζουμε να μας φωτίζει Quote in English and Greek translation Irene Doura-Kavadia
Irene Doura-Kavadia
As a poet, I have always treated English as a weapon in a power struggle, wielding it against those who are more powerful than me. But I falter when using English as an expression of love. I’ve always been so protective of making sure that my family’s inside sounds didn’t leak outside that I don’t know how to allow the outside in. I was raised by a kind of love that was so inextricable from pain that I fear that once I air that love, it will oxidize to betrayal, as if I’m turning English against my family.
Cathy Park Hong (Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning)
Believers will also worship the Lord Jesus for His conquests in them, since the arrows of their natural hatred are snapped, and the weapons of their rebellion are broken. What victories grace has won in our evil hearts! How glorious is Jesus when the will is subdued and sin dethroned! As for our remaining corruptions, they will sustain an equally sure defeat, and every temptation and doubt and fear will be completely destroyed.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening: A New Edition of the Classic Devotional Based on The Holy Bible, English Standard Version)
With the false claim that the Germans murdered six million Jews, mostly in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland during WWII, since the end of WWII, the world has been saturated with films, documentaries and books on the Holocaust. Anyone worldwide who dares to investigate the Jewish Holocaust claims, is branded an Anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier. In our democratic world, a person who is accused of a crime is deemed innocent until irrefutable evidence proves them guilty. What has happened to democracy in Germany, Poland, France and Switzerland where people accused of Holocaust Denial are not allowed to provide any evidence that would prove that they are not guilty? In the Middle Ages, people accused of being witches, were also allowed no defence and were burned at the stake. As burning at the stake and crucifiction is not allowed in today's world, the best that the Jewish leaders and holocaust promoters can achieve is incarceration where no one can hear claims backed by years of very thorough research. The Jewish success in blocking my book "The Answer Justice", their failed attempts to stop the book "Chutzpah" written by Norman Finkelstein whose mother and father were held in German concentration camps, the incarceration of revisionists Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf in Germany and David Irving in Austria: these are all desperate attempts to end what they call Holocaust Denial. The English historian David Irving was refused entry to Australia in 2003 at the behest of the Jewish community (representing only 0.4% of the Australian population) thus denying the right of the other 99.6% to hear what David Irving has to say. Proof of Jewish power was the blocking of the public viewing of David Irving's film. The Jewish owners of the building locked the film presentation out which resulted in the headline in the "Australian" newspaper of: " Outrage at Jewish bid to stop the film by David Irving called "The Search For Truth in History" . Sir Zelman Cowan who was Governor General of Australia and a man much reverred in the Jewish community, has stated in the Jewish Chronicle (London) that "The way to deal with people who claim the holocaust never happened, is to produce irrefutable evidence that it did happen". I agree 100% with Sir Zelman Cowan. I am quite certain that he and other Zionist Jewish (Ashkenazim) world leaders are aware that a United Nations or International forensic examination of the alleged gas chamber at No. 2 Crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, would irrefutably prove the truth to the world that xyclon B cyanide has never been used as alleged by world Jewry to kill Jews. In 1979 Professor W.D. Rubenstein stated: "If the Holocaust can be shown to be a Zionist myth, the strongest of all weapons in Israels's propaganda armory collapses. The Falsification of history by Zionist Jews in claiming the murder of six million Jews by Germany, constitutes the GREATEST ORGANISED CRIME that the world has known.
Alexander McClelland
The Ancient Britons’ secret weapon? Woad could be mixed with yellow from the meadow plant weld, or from another native plant, dyer’s greenweed (genista tinctoria; despite its English name it dyed yellow), to give the green that Robin Hood and his merry men famously wore. Red, another favourite medieval colour, could be obtained from the roots of another native plant, madder. Mixed with woad it produced a soft purple. A deeper purple came from a lichen, orchil, imported from Norway, or ‘brasil’, a wood imported from the East Indies and correspondingly expensive. The deepest purple came from kermes, derived from insects from the Mediterranean basin called by the Italians ‘vermilium’ (‘little worms’, hence vermilion) and by the English ‘grains’. Its cost limited it to the most luxurious textiles. A good pink could be had from the resin of dragon’s blood trees, although some medieval authorities traced it to the product of a battle between elephants and dragons in which both protagonists died. Most of these dyestuffs needed a mordant to give some degree of light-fastness – usually alum, imported from Turkey and Greece.
Liza Picard (Chaucer's People: Everyday Lives in Medieval England)
The English took my sword and dirk away,” he said softly. His finger touched the slugs that lay in my palm. “But Tom Gage put a weapon into my hands again, and I think I shall not lay it down.
Diana Gabaldon (Voyager (Outlander, #3))
For example, early in 1642 in Norwich it was believed that local apprentices planned to attack the cathedral to remove the altar rails and the organ, in response to which the dean and chapter decided themselves to dismantle the rails but to save the organ. With rumours that the apprentices intended to attack on Shrove Tuesday, they took drastic measures to defend the cathedral, locking the doors and gathering prebendaries and choristers to defend the building, but also bringing in some musketeers, whose weapons were ‘ready charged with bullets and one of them had in his musket a bullet split in parts for to shoot the apprentices when they came’, some halberdiers, ‘expecting to run their halberds in any bodies that dare offer to come’, and some ‘pistol blades’, one of whom drunkenly boasted that he was ready to kill hundreds of apprentices. In fact, none appeared and, according to the mocking printed account of the event, the defenders ‘stood like so many Abraham Ninnies doing nothing but tell how many crows flew over the pinnacle’, the author concluding that ‘they would rather lose their lives than their organs, so fast are they glued to their pipes and popish trinkets’.12
Peter Gaunt (The English Civil War: A Military History)
The rifle said more than the man. It was a short-magazine Lee-Enfield, three-oh-three caliber, and its worn brass buttplate and the scars & scratches on its woodwork spoke volumes of the century gone by. They spoke of Mons, 1914, where cries of TEN ROUNDS RAPID! convinced the German soldiers they faced machine-gun fire, and English bowmen from the time of Agincourt-- so legend has it-- appeared in the clouds to cover the retreat. They spoke of Harry and Jack on their way up to Arras, of the morning on the Somme where men of Ulster, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, all the children of the empire fixed bayonets as long as swords and went to feed the earth. They spoke of Tommies on the beach at Dunkirk, taking hopeful potshots at the Stukas, and of stopping Rommel dead at Alam Halfa. They spoke of Normandy, the sneaking gang-fights in the hedgerows, where a platoon could bleed out faster than its predecessors on the Somme. Finally, they spoke of Afghanistan, the land that swallows armies. Of ancient rifles in the hands of men as hard as mountains, glimpsed on CNN & BBC, anachronisms next to things of tin and plastic. Of weapons taken by the locals from the empire that had fought them, an inheritance of iron and gun-oil out on the Northwest Frontier. They spoke of history. The man was Russian.
Garth Ennis (303)
Montreal November 1704 Temperature 34 degrees “Girl! English, eh? What is your name? Indians stole you, eh? I’ll send news to your people.” His excellent speech meant that he did a lot of trading with the English. It meant, Mercy prayed, that he liked the English. She found her tongue. “Will you take me to France, sir? Or anywhere at all? Wherever you are going--I can pay.” He raised his eyebrows. “You do not belong to an Indian?” She flushed and knew her red cheeks gave their own answer, but rather than speaking, she held out the cross. The sun was bright and the gemstones even brighter. The man sucked in his breath. He leaned very close to her to examine the cross. “Yes,” he said. “It is worth much.” He straightened up slowly, his eyes traveling from her waist to her breast to her throat to her hair. The other sailors also straightened, and they too left their work, drawn by the glittering cross. “So you want to sail with me, girl?” He stroked her cheek. His nails were yellow and thick like shingles, and filthy underneath. He twined her hair into a hank, circling it tighter and tighter, as if to scalp. “You are the jewel,” he said. “Come. I get a comb and fix this hair.” The other sailors slouched over. They pressed against her and she could not retreat. He continued to hold her by the hair, as if she were a rabbit to be skinned. She could see neither river nor sky, only the fierce grins of sailors leaning down. “Eh bien,” said the Frenchman, returning to his own tongue. “This little girl begs to sail with us,” he told his men. “What do you say, boys?” He began laughing. “Where should she sleep? What am I bid?” She did not have enough French to get every word, but it was the same in any language. The sailors laughed raucously. Indians had strong taboos about women. Men would not be with their women if they were going hunting or having important meetings, and certainly not when going off to war. She had never heard of an Indian man forcing himself on a woman. But these were not Indians. She let the cross fall on its chain and pushed the Frenchman away, but he caught both her wrists easily in his free hand and stretched her out by the wrists as well as by the hair. Tannhahorens pricked the white man’s hand with the tip of his scalping knife. White men loading barrels stood still. White sailors on deck ceased to move. White passersby froze where they walked. The bearded Frenchman drew back, holding his hands up in surrender. A little blood ran down his arm. “Of course,” he said, nodding. “She’s yours. I see.” The sailors edged away. Behind them now, Mercy could see two pirogues of Indians drifting by the floating dock. They looked like Sauk from the west. They were standing up in the deep wells of their sturdy boats, shifting their weapons to catch the sun. Tannhahorens did not look at Mercy. The tip of his knife advanced and the Frenchman backed away from it. He was a very strong man, possibly stronger than Tannhahorens. But behind Tannhahorens were twenty heavily armed braves. The Frenchman kept backing and Tannhahorens kept pressing. No sailor dared move a muscle, not outnumbered as they were. The Sauk let out a hideous wailing war cry. Mercy shuddered with the memory of other war cries. Even more terrified, all the French took another step back--and three of them fell into the St. Lawrence River. The Sauk burst into wild laughter. The voyageurs hooted and booed. The sailors threw ropes to their floundering comrades, because only Indians knew how to swim.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
Deerfield, Massachusetts February 29, 1704 Temperature 0 degrees It was an hour before the Indians paused again, and then they stopped so abruptly that prisoners were tripping over each other. It frightened Eben. What was going to happen? What dread plan might the Indians have for their white prisoners now? No Indian lifted a weapon. They stood motionless, looking west. Eben watched for several moments before he was able to pick out distant figures coming toward them. It was not rescue. If those were English, the Indians would long ago have surrounded and attacked them. Slowly, the shapes turned into men; men carrying burdens; men bent double under the weight, yet not staggering as Eben had. They looked as if they had killed and were carrying entire cows. They were very close before Eben realized he was seeing warriors carrying their wounded. Each hurt man was rolled up into a package, swaddled like a baby in blankets and strapped to a warrior’s back. These men were carrying, by their foreheads and on their spines, a weight equal to their own. Eben was awestruck. Dropping his own pack on the snow, Eben’s Indian knelt beside one of the wounded men, unwrapping bandages to examine the wound. His profile against the snow was beautiful as an eagle or a hawk is beautiful.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
{10:4} For the weapons of our battles are not carnal, yet still they are powerful with God, unto the destruction of fortifications: tearing down every counsel   {10:5} and
The Biblescript (Catholic Bible: Douay-Rheims English Translation)
Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees They marched until the captives could not take another step. Eben dragged Eliza half the way and Sarah dragged her the rest. Mercy and Joseph took turns hauling Ruth. That night they slept like rocks, and in the morning Mercy understood why bears spent the whole winter sleeping. It sounded good to Mercy. Perhaps it sounded good to the Indians too, because they did not leave camp. Instead, they built two fires, gathering an enormous woodpile. Joseph was stripped of his English clothes. Too torn and filthy to bother with, they were tossed into the woods. He was given a long deerskin shirt and leggings that hung from thigh to ankle, held up by cords strung to a belt. Then came coat, hat and mittens, all Indian. How dark Joseph’s hair was. How tan his skin. Joseph looked like a young brave. In a moment, the Indians did the same with Eben, whose coloring was very English, ruddy cheeks and straw-yellow hair. He did not look at all Indian, but in deerskin, he looked tough and strong and much older. The girls were nervous. They did not want their clothes stripped off their bodies, no matter how torn and filthy. But Eben’s Indian, Thorakwaneken, hoisted a flintlock musket and looked questioningly at each girl. Mercy could not imagine what he was asking of her. Eliza did not notice him or the gun. And Ruth was the last person to whom a sensible Indian would hand a weapon. Sarah, however, nodded. “I’m a good shot.” She took the musket from Thorakwaneken. Food was such a problem that even Joseph and Eben would be armed and sent forth to hunt. The girls would stay by the fire with enough wood to last for days, and Sarah to fend off wolves.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees By the time Mercy had sorted this out, her three brothers were gone. She panicked. “Sam!” she screamed. “John! Benny!” She ran from group to group, darting behind sledges, racing among the dogs, circling the fires. “Sam! John!” What was the matter with her? How could she have stayed separate from them? Why had she not kicked Tannhahorens in the shins, as Ruth would have, and marched with her brothers no matter what he said? Ruth was right, he was nothing but an Indian! O Father! she thought. O Mother! I let you down again. I didn’t protect Tommy. I didn’t save Marah or Stepmama or the baby. And now the boys are gone. On her second screaming circle of the camp, Tannhahorens caught her. “Boys go,” he said. “But are they all right? I didn’t say good-bye! You never let me talk to them at all! I don’t even know their masters’ names!” A new and even more horrifying thought struck Mercy. It tore the wind from her lungs and her voice broke. “Will my brothers and I go to the same place? Will I see them again?” Poor Father, come home to find his entire family ripped away in a night. Father would comfort himself that Mercy was taking care of the boys--and he would be wrong. Tannhahorens had fewer English words than Mercy had Mohawk. He could not understand this outpouring. He steered her back to his possessions. “Raquette,” he said. Mercy jumped in front of him, blocking his path. He was hung with weapons in preparation for departure: knives, tomahawk, hatchet, gun, two bows, quiver of arrows. But something new hanging from Tannhahorens’ chest gave her pause. A Catholic cross. Although in her whole life, Mercy had seen only one spoon and a belt buckle made of silver, she knew this cross to be silver. She wrenched her eyes from its beauty. It would be a sin to find a cross beautiful. Religion must be heart and soul, not scraps of metal. Tannhahorens pushed her along in front of him. “Raquette,” he said irritably. “Raquette?” she begged. “Is that your town? Is that Sam’s master’s name? Are the boys together? Is Same going to be able to watch out for John and Benny?” This time, ragged trousers and a torn stained coat blocked Tannhahorens’s way The Indian looked harshly at the Englishman in front of him, and Mercy wished she had learned words like please. But Tannhahorens walked on and left them together. “Oh, Uncle Nathaniel!” she said, and they wrapped their arms around each other. He held her tightly. He had to clear his throat several times to find his voice. “Your brothers are not together,” he said, “but they seemed all right. They were not afraid. Benny’s Indian has a sled and he will ride as he did yesterday. John’s with five other English, all adults. They will watch for him. And Sam is with the Kellogg girls. He’ll be busy taking care of Joanna and Rebecca.” Her three brothers, going in three directions in the hands of strangers. “They took my Will and my Mary in the last band,” said her uncle. “I have some hope. The Indians treat my children tenderly. When nobody else had a morsel to eat, their masters fed them.” Sam. John. Benny. Will. Little Mary. Gone.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
news arrived several days later of the appalling defeat of Elizabeth’s army by the Irish rebels at Blackwater Fort—a defeat now infamously known as the Battle of the Yellow Ford. The Earl of Tyrone—indeed he had taken the title of The O’Neill—was being hailed as the King of Ireland, and he had quickly and with frightening ease begun bringing all of that blighted country under his control. His armies—unbelievable that they could be called armies at all—had streamed south into Leinster and Munster, overrunning the Pale and the plantations till there was hardly an English settler left in Ireland who was not dead or running for his life. All over the country the Crown’s armies, foolishly packed with Irish recruits, soon found those soldiers turning coat and defecting to the other side, most of them carrying with them their English weapons. The shock and horror of The Yellow Ford had, in one afternoon, seen Henry Bagenal and two thousand of his men slaughtered, and brought England to its knees. ’Twas unthinkable, but Ireland was on the brink of being lost to a pack of ragged rebels! Elizabeth, humiliated and furious, had raged at her council to do something.
Robin Maxwell (The Wild Irish: A Novel of Elizabeth I and the Pirate O'Malley)
APORRHOEA  (APORRHO'EA)   n.s.[   emanation; something emitted by another. The reason of this he endeavours to make out by atomical aporrhœas, which passing from the cruentate weapon to the wound, and being incorporated with the particles of the salve, carry them to the affected part.Glanville’sScepsis,c. 24.
Samuel Johnson (A Dictionary of the English Language (Complete and Unabridged in Two Volumes), Volume One)
And then. Astonishing. Again. As she was skipping up the back stairs on her way to the attic bedroom to fetch something, something innocent - a book, a handkerchief, afterwards she would never remember what - she was almost sent flying by Howie on his way down. 'I was looking for a bathroom,' he said. 'Well, we only have one,' Ursula said, 'and it's not up these-' but before the sentence was finished she found herself pinned awkwardly against the neglected floral wallpaper of the backstairs, a pattern that had been up since the house was built. 'Pretty girl,' he said. His breath smelt of mint. And then again she was again subjected to pushing and shoving from the outsized Howie. But this time it was not his tongue trying to jam its way into her mouth but something inexpressibly more intimate. She tried to say something but before a sound came out his hand clamped over her mouth, over half her face in fact, and he grinned and said 'Ssh,' as if they were conspirators in a game. With his other hand he was fiddling with her clothes and she squealed in protest. Then he was butting up against her, the way the bullocks in the Lower Field did against the gate. She tried to struggle but he was twice, three times her size even and she might as well have been a mouse in Hattie's jaws. She tried to see what he was doing but he was pressed so tightly against her that all she could see was his big square jaw and the slight brush of stubble, unnoticeable from a distance. Ursula had seen her brothers naked, knew what they had between their legs - wrinkled cockles, a little spout - and it seemed to have little to do with this painful piston-driven thing that was now ramming inside her like a weapon of war. Her own body breached. The arch that led to womanhood did not seem so triumphal any more, merely brutal and completely uncaring. And then Howie gave a great bellow, more ox than Oxford man, and was hitching himself back together and grinning at her. 'English girls,' he said, shaking his head and laughing. He wagged his finger at her, almost disapproving, as if she had engineered the disgusting thing that had just happened and said, 'You really are something!' He laughed again and bounded down the stairs, taking them three at a time, as though his descent had been barely interrupted by their strange tryst. Ursula was left to stare at the floral wallpaper. She had never noticed before that the flowers were wisteria, the same flower that grew on the arch over the back porch. This must be what in literature was referred to as 'deflowering', she thought. It had always sounded like a rather pretty word. When she came back downstairs a half-hour later, a half-hour of thoughts and emotions considerably more intense than was usual for a Saturday morning, Sylvie and Hugh were on the doorstep waving a dutiful goodbye to the disappearing rear end of Howie's car. 'Thank goodness they weren't staying,' Sylvie said. 'I don't think I could have been bothered with Maurice's bluster.' 'Imbeciles,' Hugh said cheerfully. 'All right?' he said, catching sight of Ursula in the hallway. 'Yes,' she said. Any other answer would have been too awful.
Kate Atkinson (Life After Life (Todd Family, #1))
love.Taylor.11. To bear proportion to. He desired, that proper officers might search me; for probably I might carry several weapons, which must needs be dangerous things, if they answered the bulk of so prodigious a person.Swift’sGulliver’s Travels.12. To perform what is endeavoured or intended by
Samuel Johnson (A Dictionary of the English Language (Complete and Unabridged in Two Volumes), Volume One)
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
The crossbow would develop into a highly formidable weapon over the course of the Hundred Years War, but at this stage of its evolution it proved no match for the English longbow.
David Green (The Hundred Years War: A People's History)
In the rein of ignorance, the constant state of war which lasted for twenty years did not stop a certain amount of rationality that allowed this writings. pg200 And young men are accustomed from the first to idleness, effeminacy and frivolity, coming eventually to the business of life with empty heads and hearts crammed with false ideals…less credit and wealth, less dignity and prestige. They display vanity, but legitimate pride never. The men of pleasure are well received in society because they are light-hearted, gay, witty, dissipated, easy-going, amateurs of every pleasure. Pg224 The fair dames of the period resorted to every means to stimulate their sensibilities. They seek excitement in dissecting dead bodies. “The young Contesse de Coigny was so passionately fond of this dreadful study (Anatomy), that she would never start on a journey without taking in the boot of her traveling carriage a corpse to dissect, just as one takes with one a book to read.” – Mme. de Gengis, Mémoires, vol I. This mania for dissection was for some time extremely fashionable with ladies of quality. Pg226 On these ridiculous types was built up the whole school of impotent and despairing lovers, who under a nauseous pretence of being so romantic and interesting, prolonged for half a century longer the silly affectation of sentimental melancholy, in other words, a green-sickness of skepticism complicated with pulmonary consumption! Pg227 A familiar axiom of economic science declares that “every vicious act is followed by diminution of force.” Pg229 The Mousquetaires had began by displaying a most laudable zeal, but it was soon discovered that these gentlemen were better at noise than real work. Pg230 “The deterioration of type among noble families,” says Moreau de Tours, “is noted in numerous writers; Pope remarks to Spencer on the sorry looks of members of the English aristocracy in his day; and in the same way physiologists had even earlier noted the short stature of the Spanish grandees at the court of Philip V.” As for Frenchmen, long before 1789, they were amongst the poorest specimens of humanity, according to the testimony of many witnesses. Pg237 The practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in. Thus ends the Sword. A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in.
Edouard de Beaumont (The Sword And Womankind: Being A Study Of The Influence Of The Queen Of Weapons, Upon The Moral And Social Status Of Women (1900))
Despite having the largest budget in the league, Guardiola had failed to mount a serious challenge of any sort. And the media seized on his continued failure to reach a Champions League final without Messi, his on-field nuclear weapon. All of it was proof that his tippy-tappy tiki-taka might have worked in Spain or Germany, but Guardiola couldn’t expect to try that stuff in Manchester and succeed. The phrase “Welcome to the Premier League, Pep” was uttered and printed sarcastically more times that season than anyone could count. The tabloids even had a new name for this delicate Catalan genius. Fraudiola.
Joshua Robinson (The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports)
APRIL 16 MORNING . . . THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF CHRIST. — 1 PETER 1:19 Standing at the foot of the cross, we see hands and feet and side all distilling crimson streams of “precious blood.” It is “precious” because of its redeeming and atoning efficacy. By it the sins of Christ’s people are atoned for; they are redeemed from under the law; they are reconciled to God, made one with Him. Christ’s blood is also “precious” in its cleansing power; it cleanses from all sin. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”1 Through Jesus’ blood there is not a spot left upon any believer; no wrinkle nor any such thing remains. O precious blood that makes us clean, removing the stains of our iniquity and permitting us to stand accepted in the Beloved despite the many ways in which we have rebelled against our God. The blood of Christ is also “precious” in its preserving power. We are safe from the destroying angel under the sprinkled blood. Remember, it is God’s seeing the blood that is the true reason for our being spared. Here is comfort for us when the eye of faith is dim, for God’s eye is still the same. The blood of Christ is “precious” also in its sanctifying influence. The same blood that justifies by taking away sin also quickens the new nature and leads it onward to subdue sin and to obey the commands of God. There is no greater motive for holiness than that which streams from the veins of Jesus. And “precious,” unspeakably precious, is this blood because it has an overcoming power. It is written, “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb.”2 How could they do otherwise? He who fights with the precious blood of Jesus fights with a weapon that cannot know defeat. The blood of Jesus! Sin dies at its presence; death ceases to be death: Heaven’s gates are opened. The blood of Jesus! We shall march on, conquering and to conquer, so long as we can trust its power!
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening: A New Edition of the Classic Devotional Based on The Holy Bible, English Standard Version)
ST-12 Chinese Point name: Que Pen;7 English translation: “Empty Basin;” Special Attributes: It is an intersection point of the Stomach Meridian and the Yin Heel Vessel. It is bilateral and is one of the 36 Vital Points listed in the Bubishi; Location: At the midpoint of the collarbone, which is about four inches lateral from the centerline of the body; and bilateral. Western Anatomy: The transverse cervical artery, intermediate supraclavicular nerve and the supraclavicular portion of the brachial plexus are present; Comments: This point is an excellent target when your opponent is at close range. By gripping the collarbone you can dig your fingers down behind the natural curve of the bone and towards the centerline of the body. It is most active when your opponent has their arms raised, given the structural weakness of the body at this location, will drop the majority of attackers. A sharp thrust down into this point will cause your opponents knees to bend. ST-9 Chinese Point name: Ren Ying;8 English translation: “Man’s Prognosis;” Special Attributes: ST-9 is an intersection point for the Stomach Meridian, Gall Bladder Meridian and the Yin Heel Vessel. It is a bilateral point that sets over the carotid artery. It is one of the 36 Vital Points listed in the Bubishi; Location: About 1.5 inches to the outside of the Adam’s apple on the throat; Western Anatomy: The superior thyroid artery, the anterior jugular vein, the internal jugular vein, the carotid artery, the cutaneous cervical nerve, the cervical branch of the facial nerve, the sympathetic trunk, and the ascending branch of the hypoglossal and vagus nerves are all present; Comments: This is one of the weakest points on the human body and regardless of the size and muscular strength of an opponent it is extremely sensitive. Strikes to this point can kill due to the structural weakness of the area. Strikes should be aimed toward the center of the spine on a 90-degree angle. A variety of empty hand weapons can be employed in striking this point. Forearms, edge of hand strikes, punches, kicks, and elbow strikes are all effective. BL-1 Chinese Point name: Jing Ming;9 English translation: “Bright Eyes;” Special Attributes: It is an intersection point of the Small Intestine Meridian, Bladder Meridian, Stomach Meridian, Yin Heel Vessel and the Yang Heel Vessel. It is also bilateral; Location: About .25 of an inch from the inner corner of the eye; Western Anatomy: The angular artery and vein and branches of the oculomotor and ophthalmic nerve are present; Comments: Strike this point slightly upward and towards the centerline of the head. This point is fairly difficult to strike in a combative situation due to the location. Forceful strikes to the eye socket area can activate this point, as well as traumatize the eye and possible breaking the bone structure in the general area.
Rand Cardwell (36 Deadly Bubishi Points: The Science and Technique of Pressure Point Fighting - Defend Yourself Against Pressure Point Attacks!)
The beings we meet in the Puranas are godlike, grandly demonical and incomprehensible when we compare them to ourselves. They live for thousands of years, fly in sky chariots – vimanas fleet as thought – command great astras: weapons that consume whole cities in a wink. This book is the Siva Parana condensed, rearranged and retold, I hope in more contemporary and imaginative style than is generally available in English. Much of it deals with characters and events that are incredible by our humdrum perspective. But is it possible that beginningless Siva, of the eight cosmic bodies, the fire from whose third eye ends the universe, Brahma, the four-headed Creator and four-armed Vishnu, who sleeps on an infinite sea, are not imaginary beings, but inconceivable Masters of the stars?
Ramesh Menon (Shiva: The Siva Purana Retold)
Take your sins to Christ’s cross, for the flesh can only be crucified there: We are crucified with Him. The only weapon to fight sin with is the spear that pierced the side of Jesus
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening: A New Edition of the Classic Devotional Based on The Holy Bible, English Standard Version)
Philosophies turned away from the world were not to Hahn’s taste. According to him, however, they could still be found in the systems of German idealism—and how could it be otherwise? The Germans are known, after all, as the nation of thinkers and poets. But a new day is slowly breaking, and the liberation is coming from the same land that gave birth to political liberation—namely, England: the English, after all, are known as the nation of shopkeepers. And it is surely no accident that one and the same nation gave the world both democracy, on the one hand, and the rebirth of a philosophy turned toward the world, on the other; nor is it an accident that the same land that saw the beheading of a king also witnessed the execution of metaphysics. Yet the weapons of a philosophy that is turned toward the world are not the executioner’s sword and axe—it is not as bloodthirsty a beast as that—though its weapons are sharp enough. And today I want to talk about one of these weapons—namely, Occam’s razor.
Karl Sigmund (Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science)
I think you might know, maybe you didn’t, but I had a weapons-grade crush on you, before we were put together on that English homework.’ He smiles at me, this adult version of Lucas, and I can’t believe I was ever so lucky. ‘I worshipped you.
Mhairi McFarlane (Don't You Forget About Me)
After that we had Math Class. Pencils ready! she yelled. If you’ve got a two thousand-piece puzzle of an Amish farm and you manage to add three pieces to the puzzle per day, how many more days will you need to stay alive to get it done? Math Class was interrupted by the doorbell. Ball Game! yelled Grandma. Who could it be? The doorbell ringer is set to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which Grandma forces me to sing with her during the seventh-inning stretch even if we’re just watching the game in our living room. She makes me stand up for the anthem at the beginning, too. Mom doesn’t stand up for the anthem because Canada is a lie and a crime scene. It was Jay Gatsby. He wants to tear our house down. I went to the door and opened it and told him, It’s yours for twenty million dollars. He said, Listen, can I speak with your mother. You said the last time— Twenty-five million dollars, I said. Sorry, said Jay Gatsby, I’d like to speak with— Thirty million dollars, capitalist, do you understand English? I slammed the door shut. Grandma said that was a bit overkill. He’s afraid of death, said Grandma. She said it like an insult. He’s lost his way! Jay Gatsby wants to tear down our house and build an underground doomsday-proof luxury vault. Jay Gatsby bought a house on a tropical island once and then forced every other person living on the island to sell their house to him so that he had the whole island to himself to do ecstasy and yoga with ex-models. He forced all the models to take pills that made their shit gold and sparkly. Mom said he’s had fake muscles put into his calves. She knows this because one day she saw him on the sidewalk outside the bookstore and his calves were super skinny and three days later they were bulging and had seams on them. Mom said he went to a place in Cleveland, Ohio to get it done where you can also have your vag tightened up if you feel like it. Then you can just sit around with your S.O. vaping all day with your giant fake calves and stitched-up wazoo and be spied on by your modern thermostat which is a weapon of the state they just call “green” because of sales and Alexa and shit and practicing mindfulness hahahaha and just be really, really, really happy that you don’t have half a fucking brain between the two of you.
Miriam Toews (Fight Night)
Beorc is the root of the Modern English word ‘birch’, but it’s usually thought that the tree described here is actually a poplar.8 What’s notable about this verse is its emphasis on the tree’s beauty, which distinguishes it from the other trees included in the Rune Poem. In their respective verses, the oak, ash and yew are all characterized by their important functions in human society: the ash provides wood for weapons, the oak timber for ships and the yew firewood, a ‘joy in the home’.
Eleanor Parker (Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year)
O’Connell had much greater respect for the people who had risen up, and he accepted that many had been provoked by ‘the cruelty of the administrators, great and small, of English power in Ireland!’55 He insisted that the examples of 1798 and 1803 had convinced him that ‘physical force could never be made an available weapon to regenerate’ Ireland: instead, ‘the best, the only effective combination must be that of moral force’.
Patrick M. Geoghegan (King Dan Daniel O'Connell 1775-1829: The Rise of King Dan)
a marked change occurred between 2019 and 2020. The dual crises of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests ran slam into the twin dangers of Q-Anon and the consolidation of the Trump paramilitary. In 2019, there were sixty-five incidents of domestic terrorism or attempted violence, but in the run-up to the election in 2020, that number nearly doubled, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Twenty-one plots were disrupted by law enforcement.5 Violent extremists in the United States and terrorists in the Middle East have remarkably similar pathways to radicalization. Both are motivated by devotion to a charismatic leader, are successful at smashing political norms, and are promised a future racially homogeneous paradise. Modern American terrorists are much more akin to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) than they are to the old Ku Klux Klan. Though they take offense at that comparison, the similarities are quite remarkable. Most American extremists are not professional terrorists on par with their international counterparts. They lack operational proficiency and weapons. But they do not lack in ruthlessness, targets, or ideology. However, the overwhelming number of white nationalist extremists operate as lone wolves. Like McVeigh in the 1990s and others from the 1980s, they hope their acts will motivate the masses to follow in their footsteps. ISIS radicals who abandon their homes and immigrate to the Syria-Iraq border “caliphate” almost exclusively self-radicalize by watching terrorist videos. The Trump insurgents are radicalizing in the exact same way. Hundreds of tactical training videos easily accessible on social media show how to shoot, patrol, and fight like special forces soldiers. These video interviews and lessons explaining how to assemble body armor or make IEDs and extolling the virtues of being part of the armed resistance supporting Donald Trump fill Facebook and Instagram feeds. Some even call themselves the “Boojahideen,” an English take on the Arabic “mujahideen,” or holy warrior. U.S. insurgents in the making often watch YouTube and Facebook videos of tactical military operations, gear reviews, and shooting how-tos. They then go out to buy rifles, magazines, ammunition, combat helmets, and camouflage clothing and seek out other “patriots” to prepare for armed action. This is pure ISIS-like self-radicalization. One could call them Vanilla ISIS.
Malcolm W. Nance (They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency)
I’ve lied to my family and friends for years,’ said Miss Adelia. ‘My mother lives in Derbyshire. She thinks I teach English at a girls’ school. Which I do, but she doesn’t know I also teach breaking and entering, weapon handling and codebreaking.
Weng Wai Chan (Lizard's Tale)
Perhaps the most conspicuous one [pattern] he [Jonathon Green] found was how consistent, and how unsettling, the themes of our genitalia words have remained over time. As green told reporters shortly after his study was published, “The penis is often going to be some kid of weapon, the vagina some kind of narrow passage, intercourse some way of saying ‘man hits woman.
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
The authorship question is a massive game of Clue played out over the centuries. The weapon is a pen. The crime is the composition of the greatest works of literature in the English language. The suspects are numerous. The game is played in back rooms and basements, beyond the purview of the authorities.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
Last night they stole the watchman’s rattle, and knocked the watchman down. Now they go rattling through the streets, proclaiming the ballad of Worse-was-it-Never. There was a former age, it seems, when wives were chaste and pedlars honest, when roses bloomed at Christmas and every pot bubbled with fat self-renewing capons. If these times are not those times, who is to blame? Londoners, probably. Members of Parliament. Reforming bishops. People who use English to talk to God. Word spreads. On the farms around, labourers see the chance of a holiday. Faces blackened, some wearing women’s attire, they set off to town, picking up any edged tool that could act as a weapon. From the marketplace you can see them coming, kicking up a cloud of dust. Old men anywhere in England will tell you about the drunken exploits of harvests past. Rebel ballads sung by our grandfathers need small adaptation now. We are taxed till we cry, we must live till we die, we be looted and swindled and cheated and dwindled … O, Worse was it Never! Farmers bolt their grain stores. The magistrates are alert. Burgers withdraw indoors, securing their warehouses. In the square some rascal sways on top of a husting, viewing the rural troops as they roll in. ‘Pledge yourselves to me—Captain Poverty is my name.’ The bell-ringers, elbowed and threatened, tumble into the parish church and ring the bells backward. At this signal, the world turns upside down.
Hilary Mantel (The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3))
ballistic missile.” Eventually, the Nazis’ research efforts would culminate in the creation of the Vergeltungswaffe (in English, “Vengeance weapon”) or “V-2 Rocket.” The V-2 was a liquid alcohol and oxygen-fueled, long-range ballistic rocket equipped with a guidance system. It was also the first rocket to enter space, as evidenced by a Nazi test in 1944.[414] At 47 feet long and a weight of 28,000-29,000 pounds (12,701 kg-13,154 kg), the V-2 carried 1,600 pounds (725 kg) of high explosives and could travel 200 miles (320 km) at a peak altitude of 50 miles (80 km).[415]
Paul McCarthy (The Hand of God: From Oppenheimer to Hypersonics - A Crash Course on Nuclear Weapons and Humankind's Most Dangerous Game)
In the wrong hands, speech can be used as a weapon. But in the right ones, it can change the world.
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
Overall it’s really clear that the way we talk about genitals is a super concentrated representation of how we thing about sex and gender,” he [Lal Zimman] tells me. “The research that people have done on heteronormative gender naming really shows that our worst cultural values are reflected in the ways we talk about genitals. Like penises are always weapons that exist for penetrating, sex is always violence, and women and vaginas are passive and absence, just a place to put a penis.
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
Kanafani's obituary in the Daily Star, a Beirut English-language newspaper, described him as the "commando who never fired a gun" and went on to say that "his weapon was a ballpoint pen and his arena newspaper pages. And he hurt the enemy more than a column of commandos.
Barbara Harlow (Resistance Literature)
He who knows how to live can walk abroad Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger. He will not be wounded in battle. For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn, Tigers no place to use their claws, And weapons no place to pierce. Why is this so? Because he has no place for death to enter.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (ch. 50 Jane English)
Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 221-228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:32 Those who are introduced to the Quran only through the media, generally have the impression that the Quran is a book of jihad, and jihad to them is an attempt to achieve one’s goal by means of violence. But this idea is based on a misunderstanding. Anyone who reads the Quran for himself will easily appreciate that its message has nothing to do with violence. The Quran is, from beginning to end, a book which promulgates peace and in no way countenances violence. It is true that jihad is one of the teachings of the Quran. But jihad, taken in its correct sense, is the name of peaceful struggle rather than of any kind of violent action. The Quranic concept of jihad is expressed in the following verse, ‘Do greater jihad (i.e strive more strenuously) with the help of this [Quran]’ (25:52). Obviously, the Quran is not a weapon, but a book which gives us an introduction to the divine ideology of peaceful struggle. The method of such a struggle, according to the Quran, is ‘to speak to them a word to reach their very soul’ (4:63). ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Note at location 228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:45 jihad ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 232-235 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:43:12 It is true that there are certain verses in the Quran, which convey injunctions similar to the following, ‘Slay them wherever you find them’ (2:191). Referring to such verses, there are some who attempt to give the impression that Islam is a religion of war and violence. This is totally untrue. Such verses relate, in a restricted sense, to those who have unilaterally attacked the Muslims. The above verse does not convey the general command of Islam. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 239-244 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:16 This division of commands into different categories is a natural one and is found in all religious books. For instance, the Gita, the holy book of the Hindus, pertains to wisdom and moral values. Yet along with this is the exhortation of Krishna to Arjuna, encouraging him to fight (Bhagavad Gita, 3:30). This does not mean that believers in the Gita should wage wars all the time. Mahatma Gandhi, after all, derived his philosophy of non-violence from the same Gita. The exhortation to wage war in the Gita applies only to exceptional cases where circumstances leave no choice. But for general day-to-day existence it gives the same peaceful commands as derived from it by Mahatma Gandhi. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 244-245 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:39 Similarly, Jesus Christ said, ‘Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew, 10:34). ==========
Anonymous
carried the Makarov outside to watch the fireworks. Thirty yards beyond the spot where Brendan Magill lay dead was a rock wall running on a north-south axis. Gabriel took cover behind it after a 7.62x39mm round shredded the air a few inches from his right ear. Keller hit the ground next to him as rounds exploded against the stones of the wall, sending sparks and fragments flying. The source of the fire was silenced, so Gabriel had only a vague idea of the direction from which it was coming. He poked his head above the wall to search for a muzzle flash, but another burst of rounds drove him downward. Keller was now crawling northward along the base of the wall. Gabriel followed after him, but stopped when Keller suddenly opened up with the dead man’s AK-47. A distant scream indicated that Keller’s rounds had found their mark, but in an instant they were taking fire from several directions. Gabriel flattened himself on the ground at Keller’s side, the Glock in one hand, the dead man’s phone in the other. After a few seconds he realized it was pulsing with an incoming text. The text was apparently from Eamon Quinn. It read KILL THE GIRL . . . 79 CROSSMAGLEN, SOUTH ARMAGH A MID THE HEAP OF BROKEN and dismembered farm implements in Jimmy Fagan’s shed, Katerina had found a scythe, rusted and caked in mud, a museum piece, perhaps the last scythe in the whole of Ireland, north or south. She held it tightly in her hands and listened to the sound of men pounding up the track at a sprint. Two men, she thought, perhaps three. She positioned herself against the shed’s sliding door. Madeline was at the opposite end of the space, hooded, hands bound, her back to the bales of hay. She was the first and only thing the men would see upon entry. The latch gave way, the door slid open, a gun intruded. Katerina recognized its silhouette: an AK-47 with a suppressor attached to the barrel. She knew it well. It was the first weapon she had ever fired at the camp. The great AK-47! Liberator of the oppressed! The gun was pointed upward at a forty-five-degree angle. Katerina had no choice but to wait until the barrel sank toward Madeline. Then she raised the scythe and swung it with every ounce of strength she had left in her body. Two hundred yards away, crouched behind a stone wall at the western edge of Jimmy Fagan’s property, Gabriel showed the text message to Christopher Keller. Keller immediately poked his head above the wall and saw muzzle flashes in the doorway of the shed. Four flashes, four shots, more than enough to obliterate two lives. A burst of AK-47 fire drove him downward again. Eyes wild, he grabbed Gabriel savagely by the front of his coat and shouted, “Stay here!” Keller hauled himself over the wall and vanished from sight. Gabriel lay there for a few seconds as the rounds rained down on his position. Then suddenly he was on his feet and running across the darkened pasture. Running toward a car in a snowy square in Vienna. Running toward death. The blow that Katerina delivered to the neck of the man holding the AK-47 resulted in a partial decapitation. Even so, he had managed to squeeze off a shot before she wrenched the gun from his grasp—a shot that struck the hay bales a few inches from Madeline’s head. Katerina shoved the dying man aside and quickly fired two shots into the chest of the second man. The fourth shot she fired into the partially decapitated creature twitching at her feet. In the lexicon of the SVR, it was a control shot. It was also a shot of
Daniel Silva (The English Spy (Gabriel Allon, #15))
The first surviving manuals of European swordsmanship date from the early fourteenth century, so it is impossible to know precisely how William trained and fought with this weapon, but it is clear that he honed his ability to wield his sword both while mounted and on foot. This must have required the daily repetition of practice sword strokes through his teenage years and beyond – so as to develop strength and acquire muscle memory – and regular sparring to refine coordination and agility. By the time he became a knight, Marshal was an effective swordsman, but so far as the History was concerned, his primary gift was not flashy technique, but the brutish physicality that enabled him to deliver crushing blows. With sword in hand, William was, in the words of his biographer, a man who ‘hammered like a blacksmith on iron’. Marshal probably also trained with a number of other mêlée weapons popular with twelfth-century knights, including the dagger, axe, mace and war-hammer, but much of his time would have been devoted to mastering the lance. By construction this was a fairly rudimentary weapon – often simply a ten- to twelve-foot-long straight spar of hewn wood, usually of ash – but it was fiendishly difficult to use from horseback. The lance would be held under the arm (or couched) during a charge, and directing its point towards a target with any accuracy required immense skill. Lances often broke after one or two uses, but a successful strike could cause devastating damage to an opponent. In the course of his career, William would witness the lethal potential of this weapon with his own eyes and he would also be called upon to charge down one of the greatest warriors of the age, Richard the Lionheart, with lance in hand.
Thomas Asbridge (The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones)
Poison is for weaklings, they say. The English poet Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650) may have been the first to coin the term “coward's weapon,” but the opinion has not dissipated in the centuries since; even a character in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones recently sniped that poison was a gutless way to kill. Poison is sneaky, it’s slow, and you can poison someone without spilling a drop of their blood or awkwardly making eye contact with them midimpalement. As such, it doesn’t get a lot of cred for being scary. Poisoners simply don’t terrify people the way, say, disembowlers do. But that’s unfair, because poisoning requires advance planning and the stomach for a drawn-out death scene. You need to look into your victim’s trusting eyes day after day as you slowly snuff out their life. You have to play the role of nurse or parent or lover while you sustain your murderous intent at a pitch that would be unbearable for many of those who’ve shot a gun or swung a sword. You’ve got to mop up your victim’s vomit and act sympathetic when they beg for water. While they scream that their insides are on fire, you must steel yourself against the dreadful sight of encroaching death and give them another sip of the fatal drink. A coward’s weapon? Not so much. Poison is the weapon of the emotionless, the sociopathic, and the truly cruel.
Tori Telfer (Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History)
Clara gathered up her courage and climbed out of bed. Moonlight illuminated her room, scattered with cardboard boxes, the lids peeled open. From one she hefted out her Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which she figured suitable weapon for doing battle with ghosts trying to take up residence under the stairwell. She held the substantial bulk of the alphabet in her hands, a word for every reality. Madness was for when words failed.
Thomas Maltman (Little Wolves)
His features were Middle Eastern, his eyes haunted but also defiant. They were all defiant, Gray had found. When he looked at someone like al-Omari, Gray couldn’t help but think of a Dostoyevsky creation, the displaced outsider, brooding, plotting and methodically stroking a weapon of anarchy. It was the face of a fanatic, of one possessed by a deranged evil. It was the same type of person who’d taken away forever the two people Gray had loved most in the world. Though al-Omari was thousands of miles away in a facility only a very few people even knew existed, the picture and sound were crystal clear thanks to the satellite downlink. Through his headset he asked al-Omari a question in English. The man promptly answered in Arabic and then smiled triumphantly. In flawless Arabic Gray said, “Mr. al-Omari, I am fluent in Arabic and can actually speak it better than you. I know that you lived in England for years and that you speak English better than you do Arabic. I strongly suggest that we communicate in that language so there is absolutely no misunderstanding between us.” Al-Omari’s smile faded, and he sat straighter in his chair. Gray explained his proposal. Al-Omari was to become a spy for the United States, infiltrating one of the deadliest terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East. The man promptly refused. Gray persisted and al-Omari refused yet again, adding that “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “There are currently ninety-three terrorist organizations in the world as recognized by the U.S. State Department, most of them originating in the Middle East,” Gray responded. “You have confirmed membership in at least three of them. In addition, you were found with forged passports, structural plans to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and bomb-making material. Now you’re going to work for us, or it will become distinctly unpleasant.” Al-Omari smiled and leaned toward the camera. “I was interrogated years ago in Jordan by your CIA and your military and your FBI, your so-called Tiger Teams. They sent females in wearing only their underwear. They wiped their menstrual blood on me, or at least what they called their menstrual blood, so I was unclean and could not perform my prayers. They rubbed their bodies against me, offered me sex if I talk. I say no to them and I am beaten afterward.” He sat back. “I have been threatened with rape, and they say I will get AIDS from it and die. I do not care. True followers of Muhammad do not fear death as you Christians do. It is your greatest weakness and will lead to your total destruction. Islam will triumph. It is written in the Qur’an. Islam will rule the world.
David Baldacci (The Camel Club (Camel Club, #1))
Thus, when the banker John Pierpont Morgan left a fortune of $68 million in 1914, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie is supposed to have remarked pityingly that he had by no means been “a rich man.”203 Carnegie’s own fortune and those of industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Andrew W. Mellon were over half a billion dollars. The rapidity of the concentration of wealth may be gauged from the fact that the largest American private fortunes grew from about $25 million in 1860 to $100 million twenty years later and $1 billion two decades after that. By 1900 the richest man in the United States had assets worth twelve times more than those of the richest European (who was a member of the English aristocracy); not even the Rothschilds (finance), the Krupps (steel, machinery, weapons), or the Beits (British/South African gold and diamond capital) were in the same league.
Jürgen Osterhammel (The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (America in the World Book 20))
Europeans won military victories in New England, historians say, partly because they were divided among themselves. Indians were unwilling, too, to match the English tactic of massacring whole villages. But another, bigger part of the reason for the foreigners’ triumph was that by the 1670s the newcomers outnumbered the natives. Groups like the Narragansett, which had been spared by the epidemic of 1616, were crushed by a smallpox epidemic in 1633. A third to half of the remaining Indians in New England died. The People of the First Light could avoid or adapt to European technology but not European disease. Their societies were destroyed by weapons their opponents could not control and did not even know they had.
Charles C. Mann (1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus)
Therefore the Former Kings concentrated on five military affairs: When the food supply is not substantial, the soldiers do not set out. When rewards and salaries are not generous, the people are not stimulated. When military warriors are not selected based on capabilities, the masses will not be strong. When the weapons and implements are not prepared, their fighting strength will not be great. When punishments and rewards are not appropriate, the masses will not respect them.
Shawn Conners (Military Strategy Classics of Ancient China - English & Chinese: The Art of War, Methods of War, 36 Stratagems & Selected Teachings)
Here was an inescapable irony of the Civil War, not known in any conflict between men before or since: the fact that this was a war fought with new and highly effective weapons, machines for the mowing down of men—and yet at a time when an era of poor and primitive medicine was just coming to an end. It was fought with the mortar and the musket and the minié ball, but not yet quite with anesthesia or with sulphonamides and penicillin. The common soldier was thus in a poorer position than at any time before: He could be monstrously ill treated by all the new weaponry, and yet only moderately well treated with all the old medicine.
Simon Winchester (The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary)