Words That Contain Letters Quotes

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The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'.
Alfred Brendel
It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word ‘she.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
I believe . . . that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that, very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world.
Hermann Hesse (Narcissus and Goldmund)
By now you've probably noticed that except when safely contained by quotes, Zampanò always steers clear of such questionable four-letter language. This instance in particular proves that beneath all that cool psuedo-academic hogwash lurked a very passionate man who knew how important it was to say "fuck" now and then, and say it loud too, relish its syllabic sweetness, its immigrant pride, a great American epic word really, starting at the lower lip, often the very front of the lower lip, before racing all the way to the back of the throat, where it finishes with a great blast, the concussive force of the K catching up then with the hush of the F already on its way, thus loading it with plenty of offense and edge and certainly ambiguity. FUCK. A great by-the-bootstrap prayer or curse if you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world, or sometimes, if said just right, for uttering with enough love and fire, the woman beside you melts inside herself, immersed in all that word-heat.
Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)
Not only does every Hebrew word have its own definition, but every Hebrew letter, within the word, has its own meaning. God placed before you a great banquet of universal truths. All this in 22 Hebrew letters. Every letter contains a progressive curriculum designed to teach you about this marvelous world that God gave us. These letters will flavor each word’s definition claiming its place in God’s well organized universe.
Michael Ben Zehabe (The Meaning of Hebrew Letters: A Hebrew Language Program For Christians (The Jonah Project))
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
It is only by examining a book that we can ascertain what words it contains.
Blaise Pascal (The Provincial Letters)
At Ge 1:1 God used a matrix of sevens: (1) Seven words. (2) 28 letters (28 ÷ 4 = 7). (3) First three words contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (4) Last four words contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (5) Fourth and fifth words have seven letters. (6) Sixth and seventh words have seven letters. (7) Key words (God, heaven, earth) contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (8) Remaining words contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (9) Numeric value of first, middle and last letters equal, 133 (133 ÷ 19 = 7). (10) Numeric value of the first and last letters of all seven words equal 1,393 (1,393 ÷ 199 = 7). (11) The book of Genesis has 78,064 letters (78,064 ÷ 11,152 = 7). So, what is the big deal about seven? Jesus is our Shiva (7), our Shabbat (7th day). (Lu 6:5) You couldn’t see this messianic reference, however, unless you are reading in Hebrew. This book is the beginning of an amazing pilgrimage.
Michael Ben Zehabe (The Meaning of Hebrew Letters: A Hebrew Language Program For Christians (The Jonah Project))
Imagine that the genome is a book. There are twenty-three chapters, called CHROMOSOMES. Each chapter contains several thousand stories, called GENES. Each story is made up of paragraphs, called EXTONS, which are interrupted by advertisements called INTRONS. Each paragraph is made up of words, called CODONS. Each word is written in letters called BASES.
Matt Ridley (Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters)
The word “listen” contains the same letters as the word “silent.” The biggest communication problem is that we do not listen to understand; we listen to reply.
Heather Morris (Listening Well: Bringing Stories of Hope to Life)
The longer i live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed into magnificent sense.
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters on Life)
There is a charm to letters and cards that emails and smses can’t ever replicate, you cannot inhale them, drawing the fragrance of the place they have been mailed from, the feel of paper in your hand bearing the weight of the words contained within. You cannot rub your fingers over the paper and visualise the sender, seated at a table, writing, perhaps with a smile on their lips or a frown splitting the brow. You can’t see the pressure of the pen on the reverse of the page and imagine the mood the person might have been in when he or she was writing it. Smiley face icons cannot hope to replace words thought out carefully in order to put a smile on the other person’s face, the pressure of the pen, the sharpness or the laxity of the handwriting telling stories about the frame of mind of the writer, the smudges on the sheets of paper telling their own stories, blotches where tears might have fallen, hastily scratched out words where another would have been more appropriate, stories that the writer of the letter might not have intended to communicate. I have letters wrapped up in a soft muslin cloth, letters that are unsigned, tied up with a ribbon which I had once used to hold my soft, brown hair in place, and which had been gently untied by the writer of those letters. Occasionally, I unwrap them and breathe them in, knowing that the molecules from the hand that wrote them might still be scattered on the surface of the paper, a hand that is long dead.
Kiran Manral (The Face at the Window)
New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked on CNN if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. Well, the station was flooded with emails, and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad, because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which (a) proves my point, and (b) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him. Now, before I go about demonstration how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness that's dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life-and-death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, seventy percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, thirty-four percent still do. Or look at the health-care debate: At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways. This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas: We can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls. Listen to some of these stats: A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. Twenty-four percent could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket. Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators, and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only three got their wife's name right on the first try. People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes more twenty-four percent of our budget. It's actually less than one percent. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen ad a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence, because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge." Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll say eighteen percent of us think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. And I haven't even brought up religion. But here's one fun fact I'll leave you with: Did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which came first. I rest my case.
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write? The poems they never let anyone else read? Perhaps they are Too private and personal Perhaps they are just not good enough. Perhaps the prospect of such a heartfelt expression being seen as clumsy shallow silly pretentious saccharine unoriginal sentimental trite boring overwrought obscure stupid pointless or simply embarrassing is enough to give any aspiring poet good reason to hide their work from public view. forever. Naturally many poems are IMMEDIATELY DESTROYED. Burnt shredded flushed away Occasionally they are folded Into little squares And wedged under the corner of An unstable piece of furniture (So actually quite useful) Others are hidden behind a loose brick or drainpipe or sealed into the back of an old alarm clock or put between the pages of AN OBSCURE BOOK that is unlikely to ever be opened. someone might find them one day, BUT PROBABLY NOT The truth is that unread poetry Will almost always be just that. DOOMED to join a vast invisible river of waste that flows out of suburbia. well Almost always. On rare occasions, Some especially insistent pieces of writing will escape into a backyard or a laneway be blown along a roadside embankment and finally come to rest in a shopping center parking lot as so many things do It is here that something quite Remarkable takes place two or more pieces of poetry drift toward each other through a strange force of attraction unknown to science and ever so slowly cling together to form a tiny, shapeless ball. Left undisturbed, this ball gradually becomes larger and rounder as other free verses confessions secrets stray musings wishes and unsent love letters attach themselves one by one. Such a ball creeps through the streets Like a tumbleweed for months even years If it comes out only at night it has a good Chance of surviving traffic and children and through a slow rolling motion AVOIDS SNAILS (its number one predator) At a certain size, it instinctively shelters from bad weather, unnoticed but otherwise roams the streets searching for scraps of forgotten thought and feeling. Given time and luck the poetry ball becomes large HUGE ENORMOUS: A vast accumulation of papery bits That ultimately takes to the air, levitating by The sheer force of so much unspoken emotion. It floats gently above suburban rooftops when everybody is asleep inspiring lonely dogs to bark in the middle of the night. Sadly a big ball of paper no matter how large and buoyant, is still a fragile thing. Sooner or LATER it will be surprised by a sudden gust of wind Beaten by driving rain and REDUCED in a matter of minutes to a billion soggy shreds. One morning everyone will wake up to find a pulpy mess covering front lawns clogging up gutters and plastering car windscreens. Traffic will be delayed children delighted adults baffled unable to figure out where it all came from Stranger still Will be the Discovery that Every lump of Wet paper Contains various faded words pressed into accidental verse. Barely visible but undeniably present To each reader they will whisper something different something joyful something sad truthful absurd hilarious profound and perfect No one will be able to explain the Strange feeling of weightlessness or the private smile that remains Long after the street sweepers have come and gone.
Shaun Tan (Tales from Outer Suburbia)
According to the biographical notes, Monsieur Julian Carax was twenty-seven, born with the century in Barcelona, and currently living in Paris; he wrote in French and worked at night as a professional pianist in a hostess bar. The blurb, written in the pompous, moldy style of the age, proclaimed that this was a first work of dazzling courage, the mark of a protean and trailblazing talent, and a sign of hope for the future of all of European letters. In spite of such solemn claims, the synopsis that followed suggested that the story contained some vaguely sinister elements slowly marinated in saucy melodrama, which, to the eyes of Monsieur Roquefort, was always a plus: after the classics what he most enjoyed were tales of crime, boudoir intrigue, and questionable conduct. One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep. She laughed nervously. She had around her a burning aura of loneliness. "You remind me a bit of Julian," she said suddenly. "The way you look and your gestures. He used to do what you are doing now. He would stare at you without saying a word, and you wouldn't know what he was thinking, and so, like an idiot, you'd tell him things it would have been better to keep to yourself." "Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever." I gulped down the last of my coffee and looked at her for a few moments without saying anything. I thought about how much I wanted to lose myself in those evasive eyes. I thought about the loneliness that would take hold of me that night when I said good-bye to her, once I had run out of tricks or stories to make her stay with me any longer. I thought about how little I had to offer her and how much I wanted from her. "You women listen more to your heart and less to all the nonsense," the hatter concluded sadly. "That's why you live longer." But the years went by in peace. Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
You are a word doctor. Repair the breaches of the soul. Rebuild the broken walls of the personality. Comfort those who have lost their hearts. Speak words that contain life, power, and health. Use your tongue as a weapon to destroy the mental strongholds in people’s lives.
Ivan Tait (Letters from God)
I enjoyed watching you work. I love that word, enjoyed. It sounds small and polite, but it contains something big, passionate. In my head I see it as it should be, I think. The en- and the -ed should be small, but sturdy. Like bookends, or like hands, supporting something that’s lean and tall, but fragile and new. A fawn’s legs. J-O-Y.
Kate Clayborn (Love Lettering)
Unhappiness cannot but draw tighter the bonds which hold us fast to one another,” General Dumas had written to Marie-Louise as he made his way home. His son has Edmond Dantès express the same sentiment in a letter to his friend at the close of The Count of Monte Cristo: “He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.… Live then and never forget that until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words—‘Wait and hope.’ 
Tom Reiss (The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo)
You can remember the value of pi (3.1415926) by counting each word’s letters in “May I have a large container of coffee 53.
Ravi Jain (New Life Hacks: 1200+ Collection of Amazing Life Hacks)
The word LISTEN contains the same letters as the word SILENT.
Alfred Brendel
All languages that derive fromLatin form the word 'compassion' by combining the prefix meaning 'with' (com-) and the root meaning 'suffering' (Late Latin, passio). In other languages- Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish, for instance- this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefixcombined with the word that means 'feeling' (Czech, sou-cit; Polish, wsspół-czucie; German, Mit-gefühl; Swedish, medkänsla). In languages that derive from Latin, 'compassion' means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. Another word with approximately the same meaning, 'pity' (French, pitié; Italian, pietà; etc.), connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer. 'To take pity on a woman' means that we are better off than she, that we stoop to her level, lower ourselves. That is why the word 'compassion' generally inspires suspicion; it designates what is considered an inferior, second-rate sentiment that has little to do with love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love. In languages that form the word 'compassion' not from the root 'suffering' but from the root 'feeling', the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult. The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other's misfortune but also to feel with him any emotion- joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. This kind of compassion (in the sense of soucit, współczucie, Mitgefühl, medkänsla) therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme. By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to her again. Aware of that, Tereza said to him, 'Throw me out!' But instead of throwing her out, he seized her and kissed the tips of her fingers, because at that moment he himself felt the pain under her fingernails as surely as if the nerves of her fingers led straight to his own brain. Anyone who has failed to benefit from the the Devil's gift of compassion (co-feeling) will condemn Tereza coldly for her deed, because privacy is sacred and drawers containing intimate correspondence are not to be opened. But because compassion was Tomas's fate (or curse), he felt that he himself had knelt before the open desk drawer, unable to tear his eyes from Sabina's letter. He understood Tereza, and not only was he incapable of being angry with her, he loved her all the more.
Milan Kundera
Other sources of puzzling words were the science fiction magazines of the times. It was still the bug-eyed space-alien monster era, so these stories featured many languages containing high-value Scrabble letters such as Q, X, and Y.
Margaret Atwood (Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2022)
The one truth she had, a truth she was now proud of and pleased with, a truth she had not only come to terms with but welcomed openly, with every fiery molecule of her being. A truth that she scribbles hastily but firmly, pressing deep into the paper with the nib, in capital letters, in the first-person tense. A truth that was the beginning and seed of everything possible. A former curse and a present blessing. Three simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse. I AM ALIVE.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it, make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me, write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days — three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
John Keats
God's creation was linguistic, & the letters of the first potent word that (S)He uttered contained all the forms of creation, each form presided over by the name of a letter of the alphabet, which is in turn composed of letters, each of which has a name, & so on to infinity... Creation, on other words, is eternal & ongoing: "the multitude of letters swells out into the infinitude," & "letters are continually generating other letters." The alphabet speaks a divine language, ... each letter calling up, but never pinning down, the enigmatic nature of reality, the word of God. (S.177)
Guy L. Beck (Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound)
Psychologist J.P. Guilford, who carried out a long series of systematic psychological studies into the nature of creativity, found that several factors were involved in creative thinking; many of these, as we shall see, relate directly to the cognitive changes that take place during mild manias as well. Fluency of thinking, as defined by Guilford, is made up of several related and empirically derived concepts, measured by specific tasks: word fluency, the ability to produce words each, for example, containing a specific letter or combination of letters; associational fluency, the production of as many synonyms as possible for a given word in a limited amount of time; expressional fluency, the production and rapid juxtaposition of phrases or sentences; and ideational fluency, the ability to produce ideas to fulfill certain requirements in a limited amount of time. In addition to fluency of thinking, Guilford developed two other important concepts for the study of creative thought: spontaneous flexibility, the ability and disposition to produce a great variety of ideas, with freedom to switch from category to category; and adaptive flexibility, the ability to come up with unusual types of solutions to set problems.
Kay Redfield Jamison (Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament)
The famous extensions of this famous section were as follows: The scope of “agitation containing an appeal” was enlarged to include a face-to-face conversation between friends or even between husband and wife, or a private letter. The word “appeal” could mean personal advice. And we say “could mean” because, in fact, it did. “Subverting and weakening” the government could include any idea which did not coincide with or rise to the level of intensity of the ideas expressed in the newspaper on any particular day. After all, anything which does not strengthen must weaken: Indeed, anything which does not completely fit in, coincide, subverts!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation)
1. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Nazi." 2. Mein Kampf does not contain the term “Third Reich.” 3. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Fascist" ever as a self reference by Hitler. 4. Mein Kampf does not contain a single use of the word "swastika." 5. Nazis did not call their symbol a "swastika." 6. Swastikas represented crossed "S" letters for "SOCIALISTS" under Adolf Hitler. 7. Nazi salutes and Nazi behavior originated from the USA's Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. 8. The Nazi salute came from the military salute (as used in the original Pledge of Allegiance in the USA). I learned the above revelations and more from the the historian Dr. Rex Curry's scholarly discoveries.
Micky Barnetti (MEIN KAMPF Adolf Hitler: Dead Writers Club & Pointer Institute)
The air was steeped with the heady fragrance of roses, as if the entire hall had been rinsed with expensive perfume. "Good Lord!" she exclaimed, stopping short at the sight of massive bunches of flowers being brought in from a cart outside. Mountains of white roses, some of them tightly furled buds, some in glorious full bloom. Two footmen had been recruited to assist the driver of the cart, and the three of them kept going outside to fetch bouquet after bouquet wrapped in stiff white lace paper. "Fifteen dozen of them," Marcus said brusquely. "I doubt there's a single white rose left in London." Aline could not believe how fast her heart was beating. Slowly she moved forward and drew a single rose from one of the bouquets. Cupping the delicate bowl of the blossom with her fingers, she bent her head to inhale its lavish perfume. Its petals were a cool brush of silk against her cheek. "There's something else," Marcus said. Following his gaze, Aline saw the butler directing yet another footman to pry open a huge crate filled with brick-sized parcels wrapped in brown paper. "What are they, Salter?" "With your permission, my lady, I will find out." The elderly butler unwrapped one of the parcels with great care. He spread the waxed brown paper open to reveal a damply fragrant loaf of gingerbread, its spice adding a pungent note to the smell of the roses. Aline put her hand over her mouth to contain a bubbling laugh, while some undefinable emotion caused her entire body to tremble. The offering worried her terribly, and at the same time, she was insanely pleased by the extravagance of it. "Gingerbread?" Marcus asked incredulously. "Why the hell would McKenna send you an entire crate of gingerbread?" "Because I like it," came Aline's breathless reply. "How do you know this is from McKenna?" Marcus gave her a speaking look, as if only an imbecile would suppose otherwise. Fumbling a little with the envelope, Aline extracted a folded sheet of paper. It was covered in a bold scrawl, the penmanship serviceable and without flourishes. No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears will keep me from coming back to you. There was no signature... none was necessary. Aline closed her eyes, while her nose stung and hot tears squeezed from beneath her lashes. She pressed her lips briefly to the letter, not caring what Marcus thought. "It's a poem," she said unsteadily. "A terrible one." It was the loveliest thing she had ever read. She held it to her cheek, then used her sleeve to blot her eyes. "Let me see it." Immediately Aline tucked the poem into her bodice. "No, it's private." She swallowed against the tightness of her throat, willing the surge of unruly emotion to recede. "McKenna," she whispered, "how you devastate me.
Lisa Kleypas (Again the Magic (Wallflowers, #0))
So she stopped trying to think about what to write and, in sheer exasperation, just put down the first thing that came to her, the thing that she felt inside her like a defiant silent roar that could overpower any external destruction. The one truth she had, a truth she was now proud of and pleased with, a truth she had not only come to terms with but welcomed openly, with every fiery molecule of her being. A truth that she scribbled hastily but firmly, pressing deep into the paper with the nib, in capital letters, in the first-person present tense. A truth that was the beginning and seed of everything possible. A former curse and a present blessing. Three simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse. I AM ALIVE.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
This book is fiction and all the characters are my own, but it was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. I first heard of the place in the summer of 2014 and discovered Ben Montgomery’s exhaustive reporting in the Tampa Bay Times. Check out the newspaper’s archive for a firsthand look. Mr. Montgomery’s articles led me to Dr. Erin Kimmerle and her archaeology students at the University of South Florida. Their forensic studies of the grave sites were invaluable and are collected in their Report on the Investigation into the Deaths and Burials at the Former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. It is available at the university’s website. When Elwood reads the school pamphlet in the infirmary, I quote from their report on the school’s day-to-day functions. Officialwhitehouseboys.org is the website of Dozier survivors, and you can go there for the stories of former students in their own words. I quote White House Boy Jack Townsley in chapter four, when Spencer is describing his attitude toward discipline. Roger Dean Kiser’s memoir, The White House Boys: An American Tragedy, and Robin Gaby Fisher’s The Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption in the Deep South (written with Michael O’McCarthy and Robert W. Straley) are excellent accounts. Nathaniel Penn’s GQ article “Buried Alive: Stories From Inside Solitary Confinement” contains an interview with an inmate named Danny Johnson in which he says, “The worst thing that’s ever happened to me in solitary confinement happens to me every day. It’s when I wake up.” Mr. Johnson spent twenty-seven years in solitary confinement; I have recast that quote in chapter sixteen. Former prison warden Tom Murton wrote about the Arkansas prison system in his book with Joe Hyams called Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal. It provides a ground’s-eye view of prison corruption and was the basis of the movie Brubaker, which you should see if you haven’t. Julianne Hare’s Historic Frenchtown: Heart and Heritage in Tallahassee is a wonderful history of that African-American community over the years. I quote the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. a bunch; it was energizing to hear his voice in my head. Elwood cites his “Speech Before the Youth March for Integrated Schools” (1959); the 1962 LP Martin Luther King at Zion Hill, specifically the “Fun Town” section; his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; and his 1962 speech at Cornell College. The “Negroes are Americans” James Baldwin quote is from “Many Thousands Gone” in Notes of a Native Son. I was trying to see what was on TV on July 3, 1975. The New York Times archive has the TV listings for that night, and I found a good nugget.
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
You have to have approached a place from all four cardinal points if you want to take it in, and what’s more, you also have to have left it from all these points. Otherwise it will quite unexpectedly cross your path three or four times before you are prepared to discover it. One stage further, and you seek it out, you orient your-self by it. The same thing with houses. It is only after having crept along a series of them in search of a very specific one that you come to learn what they contain. From the arches of gates, on the frames of house doors, in letters of varying size, black, blue, yellow, red, in the shape of arrows or in the image of boots or freshly-ironed laundry or a word stoop or a stairway’s solid landing, the life leaps out at you, combative, determined, mute. You have to have traveled the streets by streetcar to realize how this running battle con-tinues up along the various stories and finally reaches its decisive pitch on the roofs.
Walter Benjamin (Moscow Diary)
As far as Serge can tell, Sophie only takes breakfast, and doesn’t even seem to eat that: each time he visits her lab over the next few days he sees sandwiches piled up virtually untouched beside glasses of lemonade that, no more than sipped at, are growing viscid bubbles on their surface like Aphrophora spumaria. Above these, on the wall, the texts, charts and diagrams are growing, spreading. Serge reads, for example, a report on the branchiae of Cercopidida, which are, apparently, “extremely tenuous, appearing like clusters of filaments forming lamellate appendages,” and scrutinises the architecture of Vespa germanica nests: their subterranean shafts and alleyways, their space-filled envelopes and alveolae … Bizarrely, Sophie’s started interspersing among these texts and images the headlines she’s torn from each day’s newspapers. These clippings seem to be caught up in her strange associative web: they, too, have certain words and letters highlighted and joined to ones among the scientific notes that, Serge presumes, must correspond to them in some way or another. One of these reads “Serbia Unsatisfied by London Treaty”; another, “Riot at Paris Ballet.” Serge can see no logical connection between these events and Sophie’s studies; yet colours and lines connect them. Arching over all of these in giant letters, each one occupying a whole sheet of paper, crayon-shaded and conjoined by lines that run over the wall itself to other terms and letter-sequences among the sprawling mesh, is the word Hymenoptera. “Hymenoptera?” Serge reads. “What’s that? It sounds quite rude.” “Sting in the tail,” she answers somewhat cryptically. “The groups contain the common ancestor, but not all the descendants. Paraphyletic: it’s all connected.” She stares at her expanded chart for a long while, lost in its vectors and relays—then, registering his continued presence with a slight twitch of her head, tells him to leave once more.
Tom McCarthy (C)
As leaves fall, I remember the times when love was happier and a lot easier. The countless letters I wrote and kept. The middle bench that may still contain our names carved. The compass that I lost afterwards. As leaves fall, I stand still smiling. Soon enough, a perpetual sadness fills here and there. Like dust that piles up thickly once left unnoticed. That happiness is a memory now. As leaves fall, I realise that not everything stays and sometimes, it's better that way. The words that kept ringing in your head had always said, "Autumn leaves must fall." As leaves fall, I decide to move a step further away. Knowing full well there's no going back anymore. It's time to bid the promised farewell. Until we meet again. A hope. As leaves fall, the revelation dawns on me. The leaves are falling. As it says. The leaves are not dancing with the wind. As it says. The leaves are falling. As distant as you, from me. Me, from you. As leaves fall, I am choosing myself. I may never unlove this person. But I'll soon crystallize everything that belonged to that time and leave. I'm choosing to do that. As leaves fall. - Athira Krishnakumar
Athira Krishnakumar
In January 2016, KPMG issued a public statement after the ‘considerable exposure’ its report had received, which, according to KPMG, should not have happened ‘as the work was being conducted under strict rules of confidentiality which were clearly articulated in our letter of engagement as well as in our findings’.23 According to the statement, KPMG submitted a number of drafts to SARS on which they received feedback and their last report was submitted to SARS on 4 December 2015.24 ‘Our mandate was to undertake a documentary review and did not include interviewing individuals named in the report, nor were they given sight of our findings by us.’25 The KPMG report, which had cost the state R23 million, was therefore not a comprehensive forensic investigation but merely a ‘documentary review’. I also wonder how they could claim they didn’t interview anyone named in the report, when I met with the KPMG team on two occasions, at their request. The report contains sweeping statements, is factually incorrect and there is little or no substantiating evidence in too many instances to mention here. The following examples should give the reader an idea, though, of how taxpayers’ money was spent on a KPMG ‘investigation’. Take, for instance, the following finding: ‘We found no evidence indicating that the Minister of Finance, at the time, new about the existence of the Unit in SARS.’26 Firstly, the word ‘new’ means something entirely different from the word ‘knew’. Secondly, since that ‘unit’ was established there have been three ministers of finance and three deputy ministers and two SARS commissioners and deputy commissioners. Which particular minister was being referred to here, and why leave out the deputy ministers and commissioners?
Johann van Loggerenberg (Rogue: The Inside Story of SARS's Elite Crime-busting Unit)
I consider myself a student of colours and shades and hues and tints. Crimson lake, burnt umber, ultramarine … I was too clumsy as a child to paint with my moistened brush the scenery that I would have liked to bring into being. I preferred to leave untouched in their white metallic surroundings my rows of powdery rectangles of water-colours, to read aloud one after another of the tiny printed names of the coloured rectangles, and to let each colour seem to soak into each word of its name or even into each syllable of each word of each name so that I could afterwards call to mind an exact shade or hue from an image of no more than black letters on a white ground. Deep cadmium, geranium lake, imperial purple, parchment … after the last of our children had found employment and had moved out of our home, my wife and I were able to buy for ourselves things that had previously been beyond our means. I bought my first such luxury, as I called it, in a shop selling artists’ supplies. I bought there a complete set of coloured pencils made by a famous maker of pencils in England: a hundred and twenty pencils, each stamped with gold lettering along its side and having at its end a perfectly tapered wick. The collection of pencils is behind me as I write these words. It rests near the jars of glass marbles and the kaleidoscope mentioned earlier. None of the pencils has ever been used in the way that most pencils are used, but I have sometimes used the many-striped collection in order to confirm my suspicion as a child that each of what I called my long-lost moods might be recollected and, perhaps, preserved if only I could look again at the precise shade or hue that had become connected with the mood – that had absorbed, as it were, or had been permeated with, one or more of the indefinable qualities that constitute what is called a mood or a state of feeling. During the weeks since I first wrote in the earlier pages of this report about the windows in the church of white stone, I have spent every day an increasing amount of time in moving my pencils to and fro among the hollow spaces allotted to them in their container. I seem to recall that I tried sometimes, many years ago, to move my glass marbles from place to place on the carpet near my desk with the vague hope that some or another chance arrangement of them would restore to me some previously irretrievable mood. The marbles, however, were too variously coloured, and each differed too markedly from the other. Their colours seemed to vie, to compete. Or, a single marble might suggest more than I was in search of: a whole afternoon in my childhood or a row of trees in a backyard when I had wanted back only a certain few moments when my face was brushed by a certain few leaves. Among the pencils are many differing only subtly from their neighbours. Six at least I might have called simply red if I had not learned long ago their true names. With these six, and with still others from each side of them, I often arrange one after another of many possible sequences, hoping to see in the conjectured space between some or another unlikely pair a certain tint that I have wanted for long to see.
Gerald Murnane (Border Districts)
[comrades] are ashes, entrails, dung, stove smoke, clay, and they’ll all return to clay. They’re full of dirt, candle oil, droppings, dust. You, O Book, my pure, shining precious, my golden singing promise, my dream, a distant call— O tender specter, happy chance, Again I heed the ancient lore, Again with beauty rare in stance, You beckon from the distant shore!” You, Book! You are the only one who won't deceive, won't attack, won't insult, won't abandon! You're quiet--but you laugh, shout, and sing; you're obedient--but you amaze, tease and entice; you're small but you contain countless peoples. Nothing but a handful of letters, that's all, but if you feel like it, you can turn heads, confuse, spin, cloud, make tears spring to the eye, take away the breath, the entire soul will stir in the wind like a canvas, will rise in the waves and flap its wings! Sometimes a kind of wordless feeling tosses and turns in the chest, pounds its fists on the door, the walls: I'm suffocating! Let me out! How can you let that feeling out, all fuzzy and naked? What words ca you dress it in? We don't have any words, we don't know! Just like wild animals, or a blindlie bird, or a mermaid--no words, just a bellowing. But you open a book--and there they are, fabulous, flying words: O city! O wind! O snowstorms and blizzards! O azure abyss all raveled and tattered! Here am I! I'm blameless! I'm with you forever... ...Or there's bile and sadness and bitterness. The emptiness dries your eyes out and you search for the words, and here they are: But is the world not all alike? From the Cabbala of Chaldaic signs Throughout the ages, now and ever more, To the sky where the even star shines. The same old wisdom--born of ashes, And in that wisdom, like our twin, The face of longing, frailty, fear, and sin, Stares straight across the ages at us.
Tatyana Tolstaya (The Slynx)
Democracy even in its ideal form is a Utopian political system, because some experiments from psychology support us with compelling evidence that subliminal messages and manipulation within political systems can deprive the ordinary men of their free choice, making them bio-social robots, who perceive and make judgment automatically with no or less cognition. In one relevant experiment had Dutch college students view a series of computer trials in which a string of letters such as BBBBBBB or BBbBBBB was presented on the screen. To be sure they paid attention to the display, the students were asked to note whether the strings contained a small b. However, immediately before each of the letter strings, the researchers presented either the name of a drink that is popular in Holland (Lipton Ice) or a control string containing the same letters as Lipton Ice (Npeic Tol). These words were presented so quickly (for only about one fiftieth of a second) that the participants could not see them. Then the students were asked to indicate their intention to drink Lipton Ice by answering questions such as “If you would sit on a terrace now, how likely is it that you would order Lipton Ice,” and also to indicate how thirsty they were at the time. The researchers found that the students who had been exposed to the ‘Lipton Ice” words (and particularly those who indicated that they were already thirsty) were significantly more likely to say that they would drink Lipton Ice than were those who had been exposed to the control words.
Elmar Hussein
One sidelight for the fundamentalists in our group: B.P.L. owns 71.7% of Dempster acquired at a cost of $1,262,577.27. On June 30, 1963 Dempster had a small safe deposit box at the Omaha National Bank containing securities worth $2,028,415.25. Our 71.7% share of $2,028,415.25 amounts to $1,454,373.70. Thus, everything above ground (and part of it underground) is profit. My security analyst friends may find this a rather primitive method of accounting, but I must confess that I find a bit more substance in this fingers and toes method than in any prayerful reliance that someone will pay me 35 times next year’s earnings.
Jeremy C. Miller (Warren Buffett's Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World's Greatest Investor)
It’s making me suspicious of everyone. Everywhere I go I’m looking at people and wondering if it’s them. I hate it. I don’t want to be suspicious of people. I just want the whole thing to go away. To stop. At first I thought it was a few people ganging up on me, jumping on my feminism, as though being a feminist was the worst thing a woman could be. But after a while I realised that it wasn’t really about feminism at all. It was just one person with some sort of grudge against me. That person just kept on and on … and is still sending me letters now.” “We’ll find out who it is. I can look at the whole thing with fresh eyes.” “With a detective’s eyes, you mean?” “Is that so bad? We have to treat it like a police matter and look at all the possibilities. You’d be surprised at how many clues might be contained in as many letters as these. Physical clues, such as the paper and envelopes, the way the stamps are stuck on the envelopes, finger-prints and so on … and clues in the wording.” “There are some spelling and grammatical errors,” she sighed, almost in a gesture of defeat. “Exactly. Those errors can be clues.” “Just in this last letter, the writer has used dont without the apostrophe and your and you’re the wrong way round. They are mistakes that have been repeated again and again over the months. There are quite a lot of spelling mistakes in the earlier, longer letters. I’m not sure how much that will narrow it down, though. Loads of people don’t know when they’re supposed to use apostrophes, so they just guess. And loads of people can’t spell.” “It might help,” he nodded positively. “We should also look at who might have a motive for writing these letters. Is there anyone in your past you think could be responsible?” She shivered. “Like I told you, I’ve had months to think about it. I’ve wondered about practically everyone I’ve ever met and I hate thinking about people that way, especially people I know.” “I can be more objective and maybe I can come up
Alison Greaves (The Curse Of The Ayton Witches (Inspector McClennan, #3))
She knew she would never really recover. It was as though her pen ran out of ink while writing a letter. She had picked up another containing ink of a different color and continued; but even if the words and the lines of thought remained the same, something had altered.
Nadeem Aslam (The Golden Legend)
In the words of Jaurès, ‘there was in the history of the red flag an ambiguous period in which its meaning oscillated between the past and the future.’ It seems that it takes its current significance from a sort of semiotic reversal: deployed by the royal authorities during the executions of sans-culottes, the latter appropriated it and began to make of it their emblem (this occurred with the insurrection of 10 August 1792, when the revolutionary crowds stormed the Tuileries Palace, put an end to the monarchy and established the National Convention, which proclaimed the Republic in September). It reappeared in 1830 and, like the barricade, became the symbol of the insurgents in all the revolutions of 1848. After the violent repression of June 1848 and the ‘bloody week’ that crushed the Paris Commune in May 1871, counterrevolution made the red colour an object of fetishistic demonization; nothing red could be tolerated, and burning red fabrics became a ritual of purification and a practice of public safety. In 1849, Léon Faucher, the state secretary of the first conservative republican government, issued a circular letter directed to the prefects that contained very precise instructions: ‘The red flag is a plea for insurrection; the red cap recalls blood and mourning; bearing these sad marks means provoking disobedience.’ Therefore the government ordered the immediate banishment of those ‘seditious emblems’. After the Paris Commune, a witness wrote in his memoirs that the city was seized by ‘a crazy rage against all that was red: clothes, flags, ideas, and language itself …’ The colour red, he explained, had become ‘a mortal disease’ whose return should be avoided absolutely, as we do ‘the plague and the cholera’.
Enzo Traverso (Revolution: An Intellectual History)
Although its meaning is disputed and scholars have offered diverse interpretations, it generally appears in the form of a square of five words arranged in an acrostic: ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR. One of the most vexing problems is the translation of the word arepo, which could mean “plough,” according to some scholars. Rotas probably means “wheels,” sator means “sower,” tenet is a verb meaning “holds,” while opera is taken as a form of the adverb operosus, so “carefully.” Put together, the five words arguably construct the sentence, “The sower with his eyes on the plough holds the wheels with care.” Of course, this legend contains nothing specifically Christian or even religiously significant; quite possibly it was a simple word puzzle or game. However, if one rearranges the letters, they can be plotted on the form of a Greek (equal-armed) cross to form the words Pater Noster twice, intersecting at the central N. The remaining four letters, two alphas and two omegas (note the inclusion of Greek letters), are then set into the four corners and thus make a Christian symbol.
Robin M. Jensen (The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy)
Rising up he put the box containing all of Mack’s words down on the table, pushed it forward with the very tips of his fingers. The letters, right here between them, where they, perhaps, always had been.
Mandy Baggot (Christmas by the Coast)
I do not know what the letter contains, but—from this standpoint—it cannot contain anything that would bring harm to us. The one would be at too great a variance with the other. Yes, of course, it is possible to choke even on bread. This is the way I see it: if we, with our political systems and our history, represent a cosmic average, then nothing threatens us from the ‘letter.’ That is what you asked about, I believe? Because they must be well aware of this ‘psychozoic constant’ of the Universe. If we constitute a slight aberration, a minority, then that, too, they will take—must have taken, that is—into account. But if we are an extraordinary exception to the rule, a deviant fornva monstrous abnormality that occurs in one galaxy per thousand, once in ten billion years—such a possibility they would be right, in their calculations and in their intentions, not to take into account. In other words, one way or the other they will not be to blame.
Stanisław Lem (His Master's Voice)
The little flickering part of his brain that was still sparking coherent thought through the fog of mind-numbing terror that filled Colon’s head was telling him that he was so far out of his depth that the fish had lights on their noses. Yes, he did have a clean desk. But that was because he was throwing all the paperwork away. It wasn’t that he was illiterate, but Fred Colon did need a bit of a think and a run-up to tackle anything much longer than a list and he tended to get lost in any word that had more than three syllables. He was, in fact, functionally literate. That is, he thought of reading and writing like he thought about boots— you needed them, but they weren’t supposed to be fun, and you got suspicious about people who got a kick out of them. Of course, Mr. Vimes had kept his desk piled high with paperwork, but it occurred to Colon that maybe Vimes and Carrot between them had developed a way of keeping just ahead of the piles, by knowing what was important and what wasn’t. To Colon, it was all gut-wrenchingly mysterious. There were complaints, and memos, and invitations, and letters requesting “a few minutes of your time” and forms to fill in, and reports to read, and sentences containing words like “iniquitous” and “immediate action” and they tottered in his mind like a great big wave, poised to fall on him.
Terry Pratchett (The Fifth Elephant (Discworld, #24))
the Party attempts to create terms that unite all contradictions, and thereby do away with them. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is one of these. Or the “socialist market economy.” These formulations contain left and right, up and down, Maoist and neo-liberal all at once. Language has overruled logic and in doing so believes itself untouchable. Of course, in reality it is becoming ever more empty and absurd, but in a country where what matters is power and not letters, that doesn’t really make a difference. Here, more often than not, the function of words is to convey an order rather than a meaning: Nod! Swallow! Forget! Kneel! And so the propaganda machine feels perfectly free to compare the Dalai Lama with Adolf Hitler, and at the same time to warn the country’s newspaper editors never to confuse “truth and lies, good and evil, beauty and ugliness.” The true, the good, and the beautiful are always the Party and its Word.
Kai Strittmatter (We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State)
The word 'Dream' grips the core of my heart, it contains five powerful letters which are full of boundless meanings that can take you to another level of life: .D-'Drive' (to your future, to your purpose and to your destiny). .R-'Rejuvenate' ( your innerability to dream endlessly). .E-'Elevate' (you before great men). .A-'Accumulate' (strength to grow stronger in the midst of setbacks and hurdles). .M-'Make' (a room for you and makes you the person you were born to be). This is what your dream can do for you, keep dreaming and never cease to dream no matter what.
Euginia Herlihy
Some acronyms have become such accepted words that they are written with lowercase letters, and many people don’t even realize that they are acronyms: scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), radar (radio detecting and ranging), and laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).
Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl Presents the Ultimate Writing Guide for Students (Quick & Dirty Tips))
The Bible Code, a 1998 bestseller, claimed that the bible contains predictions on the future events that you can find by skipping letters at regular intervals an assembling words from the letter you land on. Unfortunately, there are so many ways to do this that you're guaranteed to find "predictions" in any sufficiently long text.
Pedro Domingos (The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World)
Hooker argued that while the Scriptures are to be our primary source of authority, they are not to be isolated from reason and tradition. Why? Because God communicated his revelation as contained in the Scriptures in a manner sensitive to the specific needs of a specific group in a specific time in history and, therefore, intended that they be interpreted to make sense to a different people in a different time. God’s revelation was, therefore, to be both inside and outside of the Scriptures, guarded and guided by the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures are intended, Hooker asserted, to be a living word and not a collection of dead letters. That is, the Scriptures (and tradition) are not self-explanatory but require the use of reason to determine their meaning. Reason, of course, is not autonomous or individualistic. Nor are there three different authorities. Rather, there is a single authority composed of three intersecting sources: the Scriptures being the normative authoritative source; reason and tradition being necessary interpretive authoritative sources.
John H. Westerhoff III (A People Called Episcopalians: A Brief Introduction to Our Way of Life (Revised Edition))
Christopher walked back home with Albert padding calmly beside him. For some reason the dog seemed improved after meeting Beatrix Hathaway. As Christopher gave him a damning glance, Albert looked up at him with a toothy grin, his tongue lolling. “Idiot,” Christopher muttered, although he wasn’t certain if the word was directed at his dog or himself. He felt troubled and guilty. He knew he’d behaved like an ass to Beatrix Hathaway. She had tried to be friendly, and he had been cold and condescending. He hadn’t meant to be offensive. It was just that he was nearly mad with longing for Prudence, for the sweet, artless voice that had saved his sanity. Every word of every letter she’d sent him still resonated through his soul. “I’ve done a great deal of walking lately. I seem to think better outdoors…” And when Christopher had set out to find Albert, and found himself walking through the forest, a mad idea had taken hold of him…that she was nearby, and fate would bring them together that quickly, that simply. But instead of finding the woman he had dreamed of, craved, needed for so long, he had found Beatrix Hathaway. It wasn’t that he disliked her. Beatrix was an odd creature, but fairly engaging, and far more attractive than he had remembered. In fact, she had become a beauty in his absence, her gangly coltish shape now curved and graceful… Christopher shook his head impatiently, trying to redirect his thoughts. But the image of Beatrix Hathaway remained. A lovely oval face, a gently erotic mouth, and haunting blue eyes, a blue so rich and deep it seemed to contain hints of purple. And that silky dark hair, pinned up haphazardly, with teasing locks slipping free. Christ, it had been too long since he’d had a woman. He was randy as the devil, and lonely, and filled with equal measures of grief and anger. He had so many unfulfilled needs, and he didn’t begin to know how to address any of them. But finding Prudence seemed like a good start.
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
So you’ve run off from him, have you?” Beatrix asked, smoothing the wiry ruff on his head. “Naughty boy. I suppose you’ve had a fine old time chasing rabbits and squirrels. And there’s a damaging rumor about a missing chicken. You had better stay out of poultry yards, or it won’t go well for you in Stony Cross. Shall I take you home, boy? He’s probably looking for you. He--” She stopped at the sound of something…someone…moving through the thicket. Albert turned his head and let out a happy bark, bounding toward the approaching figure. Beatrix was slow to lift her head. She struggled to moderate her breathing, and tried to calm the frantic stutters of her heart. She was aware of the dog bounding joyfully back to her, tongue dangling. He glanced back at his master as if to convey Look what I found! Letting out a slow breath, Beatrix looked up at the man who had stopped approximately three yards away. Christopher. It seemed the entire world stopped. Beatrix tried to compare the man standing before her with the cavalier rake he had once been. But it seemed impossible that he could be the same person. No longer a god descending from Olympus…now a warrior hardened by bitter experience. His complexion was a deep mixture of gold and copper, as if he had been slowly steeped in sun. The dark wheaten locks of his hair had been cut in efficiently short layers. His face was impassive, but something volatile was contained in the stillness. How bleak he looked. How alone. She wanted to run to him. She wanted to touch him. The effort of standing motionless caused her muscles to tremble in protest. She heard herself speak in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “Welcome home, Captain Phelan.” He was silent, staring at her without apparent recognition. Dear Lord, those eyes…frost and fire, his gaze burning through her awareness. “I’m Beatrix Hathaway,” she managed to say. “My family--” “I remember you.” The rough velvet of his voice was a pleasure-stroke against her ears. Fascinated, bewildered, Beatrix stared at his guarded face. To Christopher Phelan, she was a stranger. But the memories of his letters were between them, even if he wasn’t aware of it. Her hand moved gently over Albert’s rough fur. “You were absent in London,” she said. “There was a great deal of hullabaloo on your behalf.” “I wasn’t ready for it.” So much was expressed in that spare handful of words. Of course he wasn’t ready. The contrast would be too jarring, the blood-soaked brutality of war followed by a fanfare of parades and trumpets and flower petals. “I can’t imagine any sane man would be,” she said. “It’s quite an uproar. Your picture is in all the shop windows. And they’re naming things after you.” “Things,” he repeated cautiously. “There’s a Phelan hat.” His brows lowered. “No there isn’t.” “Oh, yes there is. Rounded at the top. Narrow-brimmed. Sold in shades of gray or black. They have one featured at the milliner’s in Stony Cross.” Scowling, Christopher muttered something beneath his breath.
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
Books contain a special magic. Letters and words - side by side - able to speak and sing to us. This allows the reader to enter the story.
Jason Ellis
The first Testimony of faith (Shahādah) contains two parts, each of which is composed of two words: lā ilāha and illā ʾLlāh, “no divinity—except the (sole) Divinity”. The first part, the “negation” (nafy), corresponds to universal Manifestation, which is illusory in relation to the Principle, whereas the second part, the “confirmation” (ithbāt), corresponds to the Principle, which is Reality and which in relation to Manifestation is alone real. Nevertheless Manifestation possesses a relative reality without which it would be pure nothingness; in a complementary way there must be within the principial order an element of relativity without which this order could not be the cause of Manifestation, hence of what is relative by definition; this is visually expressed by the Taoist symbol of the Yin-Yang, which is an image of compensatory reciprocity. This means that at a level below its Essence the Principle contains a prefiguration of Manifestation, which makes Manifestation possible; and Manifestation for its part contains in its center a reflection of the Principle, without which it would be independent of the Principle, which is inconceivable, relativity having no substantiality of its own. The prefiguration of Manifestation in the Principle—the principial Logos—is represented in the Shahādah by the word illā (“except” or “if not”), whereas the name Allāh expresses the Principle in itself; and the reflection of the Principle—the manifested Logos—is represented in turn by the word ilāha (“divinity”), whereas the word lā (“there is no” or “no”) refers to Manifestation as such, which is illusory in relation to the Principle and therefore cannot be envisaged outside it or separately from it. This is the metaphysical and cosmological doctrine of the first Testimony, that of God (lā ilāha illā ʾLlāh). The doctrine of the second Testimony, that of the Prophet (Muhammadun Rasūlu ʾLlāh), refers to a Unity not exclusive this time but inclusive; it expresses not distinction but identity, not discernment but union, not transcendence but immanence, not the objective and macrocosmic discontinuity of the degrees of Reality but the subjective and microcosmic continuity of the one Consciousness. The second Testimony is not static and separative like the first, but dynamic and unitive.
Frithjof Schuon (Sufism: Veil and Quintessence A New Translation with Selected Letters: Veil and Quintessence - A New Transformation with Selected Letters (The Writings of Frithjof Schuon))
The stuff of life, in other words, arose in places and times somewhat more accessible to our telescopic investigations. Since most of us spend our lives confined to a narrow strip near Earth’s surface, we tend to think of the cosmos as a lofty, empyrean realm far beyond our reach and relevance. We forget that only a thin sliver of atmosphere separates us from the rest of the universe. But science continues to show just how intimately connected life on Earth is to extraterrestrial processes. In particular, several recent findings have further illuminated the cosmic origins of life’s key ingredients. Take the element phosphorus, for example. It is a critical constituent of DNA, as well as of our cells, teeth and bones. Astronomers have long struggled to trace its buildup through cosmic history, because the imprint of phosphorus is difficult to discern in old, cool stars in the outskirts of our galaxy. (Some of these stellar “time capsules” contain the ashes of their forebears, the very first generation of stars that formed near the dawn of time.) But in a paper published in December in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a research team reported that it had measured the abundance of phosphorus in 13 such stars, using data taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Their findings highlight the dominant role of so-called hypernovae, explosions even more energetic than supernovae that spell the demise of massive stars, in making the elements
Anonymous
It is interesting to note that the words silent and listen contain all of the same letters, just rearranged.
Suzanne Marsh
Mr. Tibble bowed his head, and Amanda was immediately sorry she’d spoken with such cool disdain. She did not like to see timid Mr. Tibble quake, but she was having a hard time controlling her displeasure. The envelope she’d let fall to her lap, standing out so glaringly white against the skirt of her black bombazine gown, might contain a letter from her deceased parents using just the sort of tender words she’d longed to hear from them
Danice Allen (Remember Me (Darlington and Montgomery Families, #1))
envelope she’d let fall to her lap, standing out so glaringly white against the skirt of her black bombazine gown, might contain a letter from her deceased parents using just the sort of tender words she’d longed to hear from them
Danice Allen (Remember Me (Darlington and Montgomery Families, #1))
Stanley reads The Mirror Thief. It’s a book of poems, but it tells a story: an alchemist and spy called Crivano steals an enchanted mirror, and is pursued by his enemies through the streets of a haunted city. Stanley long ago stopped paying the story any mind. He’s come to regard it as a fillip at best, at worst as a device meant to conceal the book’s true purpose, the powerful secret it contains. Nothing, he’s quite certain, could be so obscure by accident. As he reads, his eyes graze each poem’s lines like a needle over an LP’s grooves, atomizing them into letters, reassembling them into uniform arcades. What he’s looking for is a key: a gap in the book’s mask, a loose thread to unravel its veil. He tries tricks to find new openings—reading sideways, reading upsidedown, reading whitespace instead of text—but the words always close ranks like tiles in a mosaic, like crooks in a lineup, and mock him with their blithe expressions. The usual suspects.
Martin Seay (The Mirror Thief)
Preface This piece of shit (book?) was written during a 7 day alcohol binge and as such contains many errors in booth smelling and, grandma. They’ve been left in largely out of laziness but I’ll justify it and say ‘comedic effect’. If you take umbrage (hmm big word) with this please email me at: getalife_tosspot@fakeemails.co.uk  Or alternatively wright a letter to the following address: 123 Fake street, London, Brazil Me and the team (just me then) will definitely read what you send, we (I) promise.
Joseph Hendon (Musings of a Madman and Drunkard)
The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah, and the Sacred books of India and Egypt; and thus introduced into the bosom of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations, which had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined to those of the Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doctrines, which the Neo-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occident. Emanation from the Deity of all spiritual beings, progressive degeneration of these beings from emanation to emanation, redemption and return of all to the purity of the Creator; and, after the re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a fortunate and truly divine condition of all, in the bosom of God; such were the fundamental teachings of Gnosticism. The genius of the Orient, with its contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions, dictated its doctrines. Its language corresponded to its origin. Full of imagery, it had all the magnificence, the inconsistencies, and the mobility of the figurative style. Behold, it said, the light, which emanates from an immense centre of Light, that spreads everywhere its benevolent rays; so do the spirits of Light emanate from the Divine Light. Behold, all the springs which nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the Earth; they emanate from one and the same ocean; so from the bosom of the Divinity emanate so many streams, which form and fill the universe of intelligences. Behold numbers, which all emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it, all are composed of its essence, and still vary infinitely; and utterances, decomposable into so many syllables and elements, all contained in the primitive Word, and still infinitely various; so the world of Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they all resemble it, and yet display an infinite variety of existences. It revived and combined the old doctrines of the Orient and the Occident; and it found in many passages of the Gospels and the Pastoral letters, a warrant for doing so. Christ himself spoke in parables and allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language of the Platonists, and Paul often indulged in incomprehensible rhapsodies, the meaning of which could have been clear to the Initiates alone.
Albert Pike (Morals And Dogma Of The Ancient And Accepted Scottish Rite (Illustrated): Chapter of Rose Croix (XV-XVIII))
CROSSWORD INSTRUCTIONS 1.Read the Clues: Start by carefully reading through all the clues, both across and down. Each clue corresponds to a word or phrase you must fill in the grid. 2.Scan for Easy Answers: Look for clues that seem easy to solve based on your initial understanding of the clue or if you immediately know the answer. Fill in these answers first. 3.Work from Known Letters: As you fill in words, use the letters you've already entered to help solve other clues that intersect with them. 4.Think of Synonyms: Clues often contain synonyms or indirect references to the answer. If you're stuck, think of alternative words to fit the clue. 5.Consider Word Length: Pay attention to the number of letters in each answer. This can help you eliminate possibilities and narrow down potential answers. 6.Don't Get Stuck: If you're completely stuck on a clue, don't dwell on it for too long. Move on to other clues and come back to it later with fresh eyes. 7.Check for Mistakes: Once you've completed the puzzle or filled in as much as you can, go back and double-check your answers. Look for any mistakes or inconsistencies, especially where intersecting words meet. 8.Enjoy the Process: Solving a crossword puzzle is meant to be fun and challenging. Don't get discouraged if you find it difficult at times. Take
Bill Haze (Variety Puzzle Book For Adults Vol. 1 (Kindle Scribe Only): 8-in-1 Mixed Puzzles Activity Book: Crossword, Word Search, Sudoku, Maze, Wordoku, Number Fill-In and More, with Solutions)
The word seem so tiny. Four letters couldn't contain what I felt for Warwick. What we had together. Time and space couldn't even hold us. Only to each other were we bound. We bled in bed. We loved in battle. We defied nature and eluded death. Love was insignificant compared to what I felt - what I would sacrifice for him.
Stacey Marie Brown (Blood Lands (Savage Lands, #5))
CHAPTER ONE The Entrance into Jerusalem and the Cleansing of the Temple 1. The Entrance into Jerusalem Saint John’s Gospel speaks of three Passover feasts celebrated by Jesus in the course of his public ministry: the first, which is linked to the cleansing of the Temple (2:13-25), the Passover of the multiplication of the loaves (6:4), and finally the Passover of his death and Resurrection (for example, 12:1, 13:1), which became “his” great Passover, the basis for the Christian celebration of Easter, the Christian Passover. The Synoptics contain just one Passover feast—that of the Cross and Resurrection; indeed, in Saint Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ path is presented as a single pilgrim ascent from Galilee to Jerusalem. To begin with, it is an “ascent” in a geographical sense: the Sea of Galilee is situated about 690 feet below sea level, whereas Jerusalem is on average 2500 feet above. The Synoptics each contain three prophecies of Jesus’ Passion as steps in this ascent, steps that at the same time point to the inner ascent that is accomplished in the outward climb: going up to the Temple as the place where God wished “his name [to] dwell”, in the words of the Book of Deuteronomy (12:11, 14:23). The ultimate goal of Jesus’ “ascent” is his self-offering on the Cross, which supplants the old sacrifices; it is the ascent that the Letter to the Hebrews describes as going up, not to a sanctuary made by human hands, but to heaven itself, into the presence of God (9:24). This ascent into God’s presence leads via the Cross—it is the ascent toward “loving to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1), which is the real mountain of God. The immediate goal of Jesus’ pilgrim journey is, of course, Jerusalem, the Holy City with its Temple, and the “Passover of the Jews”, as John calls it (2:13).
Pope Benedict XVI (Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection)
Will Spelling Keep You Out Of Interviews? Whether we like it or not, hiring managers judge job seekers based on how our resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles are written. That’s why it is essential that you turn on Microsoft Word’s spell-check so it catches every error in your resume and cover letter. But don’t stop there, after turning on Microsoft Word’s spell check, copy all of the verbiage in your LinkedIn profile and paste it into a Word document. Here are some of the reasons I say this… • 5,908 LinkedIn Profiles contained “Universiry” where they meant to write “University”. • 34,254 profiles contain “Graduat” where they meant to write “Graduate”. • 25 English teacher’s profiles contain “Colege” where they meant to write “College”. If you’re not getting interviews, take a second look at your resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profiles. Hiring managers get to choose who they want to hire. Don’t let your spelling be the reason they don’t hire you.
Clark Finnical (Job Hunting Secrets: (from someone who's been there))
I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
Eloise and Abelard (Greatest Love Letters Ever Written)
You can remember the value of pi (3.1415926) by counting each word’s letters in “May I have a large container of coffee.
Keith Bradford (Life Hacks: Any Procedure or Action That Solves a Problem, Simplifies a Task, Reduces Frustration, Etc. in One's Everyday Life (Life Hacks Series))
Walter was next heard from in September, when he leafleted the neighborhood under cover of night. The Dent and Dolberg houses were standing empty now, their windows darkened like the call-holding lights of emergency-hotline callers who’d finally quietly hung up, but the remaining residents of Canterbridge Estates all awoke one morning to find on their doorsteps a politely worded “Dear Neighbors” letter, rehashing the anticat arguments that Walter had presented twice already, and four attached pages of photographs that were the opposite of polite. Walter had apparently spent the entire summer documenting bird deaths on his property. Each picture (there were more than forty of them) was labeled with a date and a species. The Canterbridge families who didn’t own cats were offended to have been included in the leafleting, and the families who did own them were offended by Walter’s seeming certainty that every bird death on his property was the fault of their pets. Linda Hoffbauer was additionally incensed that a leaflet had been left where one of her children could easily have been exposed to traumatizing images of headless sparrows and bloody entrails. She called the county sheriff, with whom she and her husband were social, to see whether perhaps Walter was guilty of illegal harassment. The sheriff said that Walter wasn’t, but he agreed to stop by his house and have a word of warning with him—a visit that yielded the unexpected news that Walter had a law degree and was versed not only in his First Amendment rights but also in the Canterbridge Estates homeowners covenant, which contained a clause requiring pets to be under the control of their owners at all times; the sheriff advised Linda to shred the leaflet and move on.
Jonathan Franzen (Freedom)
I enlisted a couple of sherpas to guide me through the world of word combinations. One was OneLook, a combination reverse dictionary and thesaurus site. When I typed a string of letters, OneLook found words that began with, contained, or ended with that string. I could also give OneLook gap-toothed strings, that is, combinations of letters and blanks, and OneLook would find possible combinations: all seven-letter words, say, that have A as their second letter and end with C. But my primary helper was XWord Info, which mines data from the entire New York Times crossword archives. XWord Info provides helpful options like bite-sized fragments of common speech that wouldn’t necessarily appear in a dictionary list (ARE TOO, AM SO, OR NOT). XWord Info also knows every clue that has been used for every answer to every past Times puzzle ever published, save a handful that were lost to posterity after newspaper strikes in the 1940s.
Adrienne Raphel (Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them)
But my Friend there is something very serious in this Business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a Baptism, not a Marriage not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishops on the heads of Candidates for the Ministry. In the same manner as the holy Ghost is transmitted from Monarch to Monarch by the holy Oil in the vial at Rheims which was brought down from Heaven by a Dove and by that other Phyal which I have seen in the Tower of London. There is no Authority civil or religious: there can be no legitimate Government but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All, without it is Rebellion and Perdition, or in more orthodox words Damnation. Although this is all Artifice and Cunning in the secret original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lay down their Lives under the Ax or the fiery Fagot for it. Alas the poor weak ignorant Dupe human Nature.
John Adams (Old Family Letters: Contains Letters Of John Adams, All But The First Two Addressed To Dr. Benjamin Rush)
In a locked drawer of Søren’s writing desk, Peter found not one will and testament, but two. Both letters came with firm instructions that they were to be opened only after Søren’s death. Both letters were addressed to Peter, yet neither had Peter as their subject. One letter was dated four years previous. It did not contain a single word of rapprochement, but instead read simply: “ ‘The unnamed person, whose name will one day be named’ to whom the entirety of my authorial activity is dedicated, is my former fiancée, Mrs Regine Schlegel.” The other undated letter, doubtlessly opened with fear and trembling, was similarly terse. It was a will, of sorts, which left all of Søren’s possessions to his former fiancée. If Regine refused to accept it for herself, then everything was to go to her so she could distribute it to the poor as she saw fit. “What I wish to express,” wrote Søren, “is that for me the engagement was and is just as binding as a marriage.
Stephen Backhouse (Kierkegaard: A Single Life)
Any letter containing anything of importance would have to include words to tell him that she lies awake at night thinking about him. That even when she’s absorbed in crafting and repairing instruments, there’s an emptiness in her chest that sometimes makes it hard to breathe.
Kerry Anne King (Everything You Are)
she was now proud of and pleased with, a truth she had not only come to terms with but welcomed openly, with every fiery molecule of her being. A truth that she scribbled hastily but firmly, pressing deep into the paper with the nib, in capital letters, in the first-person present tense. A truth that was the beginning and seed of everything possible. A former curse and a present blessing. Three simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse. I AM ALIVE.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
I have found that an easy-to-remember picture of the successful personality is contained in the letters of the word “success” itself. The success-type personality is composed of: Sense of direction Understanding Courage Compassion Esteem Self-Confidence Self-Acceptance
Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series))
The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent. — Alfred Brendel, classical musician54 —
Will Wise (Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations That Matter)
old. Letter eight contains his famous vision of the Beauty and the Beast myth: Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. Words often quoted, or paraphrased,
Sigrid Nunez (The Friend)
The very title of the episode, The Magicks of Megas-Tu, shows the writers had clear knowledge of Satanist Aleister Crowley’s spelling of the word ‘magic’ by adding the letter “k” on the end to signify it was of a satanic kind. In fact, IMDB—the Internet Movie Database, the most popular online resource for film information, contains some interesting revelations about the man who created the Star Trek franchise. Gene Roddenberry (August 19, 1921–October 24, 1991) was raised as a Southern Baptist, but as an adult considered himself to be a humanist and agnostic. He actually viewed religion as a primary cause of many wars and rejected organized religion.528
Mark Dice (The Illuminati in Hollywood: Celebrities, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies in Pop Culture and the Entertainment Industry)
The nonliteral uses of literally are quite traditional, of all things. Literally had gone past meaning “by the letter” in any sense as early as the eighteenth century, when, for example, Francis Brooke wrote The History of Emily Montague (1769), which contains this sentence: “He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.” One cannot feed among anything “by the letter.” Or, in 1806, when the philosopher David Hume wrote, “He had the singular fate of dying literally of hunger,” in his signature history of England, despite the fact that there are no letters via which to starve. Yet this was an authoritative and highly popular volume, more widely read at the time than Hume’s philosophical treatises, equivalent to modern histories by Simon Schama and Peter Ackroyd. The purely figurative usage is hardly novel, either: the sentence I literally coined money was written by Fanny Kemble in 1863. Kemble, a British stage actress, hardly considered herself a slangy sort of person.
John McWhorter (Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally))
she ever woke up—was becoming a spear of horror stabbing my heart every time I said it, thought it, heard it. Six syllables. Five words. Fifteen letters. My future, contained, imprisoned. My heart, shredded.
Jasinda Wilder (After Forever (The Ever Trilogy, #2))
So she stopped trying to think about what to write and, in sheer exasperation, just put down the first thing that came to her, the thing that she felt inside her like a defiant silent roar that could overpower any external destruction. The one truth she had, a truth she was now proud of and please with, a truth she had not only come to terms with but welcomed openly, with every fiery molecule of her being. A truth that she scribbled hastily but firmly, pressing deep into the paper with the nib, in capital letters, in the first-person present tense. A truth that was the beginning and seed of everything possible. A former curse and a present blessing. Three simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse. I AM ALIVE. And with that, the ground shook like fury and every last remnant of the Midnight Library dissolved into dust.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
Yet. Funny how one three-letter word contained a world of possibilities.
Ana Huang (The Striker (Gods of the Game, #1))