TOPICS

SEE ALSO

AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

1.065_-_Divorce

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT

1.065_-_Divorce

PRIMARY CLASS

chapter

SIMILAR TITLES

TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE

KEYS (10k)

   1 Minokhired
   1 Elayne Boosler
   1 Sri Aurobindo

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   21 Anonymous
   13 Warren Farrell
   10 Nora Ephron
   10 Liane Moriarty
   10 Jojo Moyes
   8 Stephen King
   8 Gordon B Hinckley
   8 Elizabeth Gilbert
   7 Amy Poehler
   6 Woody Allen
   6 Suzanne Finnamore
   6 Rush Limbaugh
   6 John Green
   6 Haruki Murakami
   6 Christopher Titus
   5 P J O Rourke
   5 Mokokoma Mokhonoana
   5 Mitch Albom
   5 Gary Paulsen
   5 Bertrand Russell

1:I wish I had never been born," she said. "What are we born for?" "For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. "you can step out into it at any moment..." ~ C S Lewis, The Great Divorce,

2:Hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom. ~ C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce,

3:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Marriage is the chief cause of divorce. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove

2:I guess the only way to stop divorce is to stop marriage. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove

3:The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove

4:Sin and Hell are married unless repentance proclaims the divorce. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove

5:There are three sides to every question-where a divorce is involved. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove

6:Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove

7:Divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove

8:I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove

9:As soon as I get through with you, you'll have a clear case for divorce and so will my wife. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove

10:Ah, yes, divorce . . . from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove

11:There must be a divorce between you and sin, or there can be no marriage between you and Christ. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove

12:Remember there is no way you can give the father custody of the children without getting a divorce. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove

13:Divorce becomes a holy moment when you choose to use it as a catalyst for having an extraordinary life. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove

14:She says what holds their marriage together is that she feels too damn sorry for him to ask for a divorce. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove

15:I have such hatred of divorce that I prefer bigamy to divorce. Anyway, I think we should see other people. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove

16:You know the difference between a tornado and divorce in the south? Nothing! Someone is losing a trailer. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove

17:Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove

18:Said of her husband on the day their divorce became final: Oh, don't worry about Alan. . . . Alan will always land on somebody's feet. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove

19:For a couple with young children, divorce seldom comes as a "solution" to stress, only as a way to end one form of pain and accept another. ~ fred-rogers, @wisdomtrove

20:I maintain that it should cost as much to get married as to get divorced. Make it look like marriage is worth as much as divorce, even if it ain't. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove

21:My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove

22:George: Divorce is very difficult. Especially on a kid. Of course, I'm the result of my parents having stayed together, so you never know. Seinfeld TV show ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove

23:Tonight I will make a tun of wine, Set myself up with two bowls of it; First I will divorce absolutely reason and religion, Then take to wife the daughter of the vine ~ omar-khayyam, @wisdomtrove

24:The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

25:To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities . . . than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove

26:Divorce is expensive. I used to joke they were going to call it &

27:On the British Royal Divorce (Charles and Dianna). She is such a sad soul. It is good that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow. I know I should preach family love and unity, but in their case. . . . ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove

28:Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England "American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove

29:Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That's an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can't cheat real connection. It's built up slowly. It's about trust and time. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove

30:God loves you simply because He has chosen to do so. He loves you when you don't feel lovely. He loves you when no one else loves you. Others may abandon you, divorce you, and ignore you, but God will love you always. No matter what! ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove

31:A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove

32:The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove

33:Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove

34:No, I don’t wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove

35:I'm against divorce. I think the Bible teaches that divorce is wrong, but at the same time, I also believe that the Bible has a leave way; Jesus said that a person should not be divorced and should not be separated. But in the Old Testament, men could have more than one wife under certain circumstances. And there must be reasons for that. And I think that some of them are valid reasons. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove

36:There are many things children accept as "grown-up things" over when they have no control and for which they have no responsibility&

37:Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That's how you move away from him. That's how the marriage ends. You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something, he should be something other than what he is. That's how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage. ~ byron-katie, @wisdomtrove

38:The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are those people. The truth is…we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being those people–the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove

39:Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Divorce-by-numbers. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,

2:her divorce petition, Jillian ~ Anonymous,

3:Divorce casts so many shadows. ~ Joan Bauer,

4:We just say: the divorce didn't work out. ~ Joe,

5:There's nothing good about divorce. ~ Val Kilmer,

6:Divorce is a game played by lawyers. ~ Cary Grant,

7:Divorce is just as contagious as Marriage. ~ MG Hardie,

8:I'd like to give divorce a good name. ~ Geraldo Rivera,

9:I swear if you existed I'd divorce you. ~ Edward Albee,

10:Marriage is the chief cause of divorce. ~ Groucho Marx,

11:Divorce has been very, very good to me. ~ Rush Limbaugh,

12:I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you. ~ Edward Albee,

13:My parents had a difficult divorce. ~ Christian Camargo,

14:The biggest cause of divorce is marriage. ~ Travis Tritt,

15:There’s no such thing as an amicable divorce. ~ J D Robb,

16:The biggest reason for divorce is marriage. ~ Gene Simmons,

17:Don't get mad. Get everything. - (on divorce). ~ Ivana Trump,

18:I decided to write about the myths of divorce. ~ Mary Garden,

19:Marriage is grand. Divorce is about twenty grand. ~ Jay Leno,

20:Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever. ~ Nora Ephron,

21:Real divorce takes place without a decree. ~ Margaret Deland,

22:Sex role training becomes divorce training. ~ Warren Farrell,

23:Each divorce is the death of a small civilization. ~ Pat Conroy,

24:How is a redneck divorce similar to a tornado? ~ Jeff Foxworthy,

25:The only grounds for divorce in California are marriage. ~ Cher,

26:Divorce is just the most awful thing in the world. ~ John Denver,

27:Marriage is probably the chief cause of divorce. ~ Larry Gelbart,

28:Divorce can leave children feeling like defectors. ~ Diane Greene,

29:I have the best divorce of anyone I've heard of. ~ Jennifer Weiner,

30:I don't think there's ever been a friendly divorce. ~ Merle Haggard,

31:A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue. ~ Edith Wharton,

32:In our family we don't divorce our men - we bury them. ~ Ruth Gordon,

33:Building your dream home is a fast-track to divorce, ~ Liane Moriarty,

34:Now, after divorce with Tom Cruise, I can wear heels. ~ Nicole Kidman,

35:Edwards would never divorce the mind and the heart. ~ Warren W Wiersbe,

36:how many times had I begged Mom to divorce him already? ~ Justina Chen,

37:I'm for gay marriage, because I'm for gay divorce. ~ Melissa Etheridge,

38:My parents' divorce settlement involved a bar tab. ~ Christopher Titus,

39:Why is divorce so expensive? Because it's worth it! ~ Garrison Keillor,

40:Divorce is the sign of knowledge in our time. ~ William Carlos Williams,

41:Q: Why does a divorce cost so much? A: Because it's worth it. ~ Various,

42:A divorce party - that's really better than a wedding party ~ Nujood Ali,

43:Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid,

44:There was no such thing as a good divorce for children. ~ Liane Moriarty,

45:You can't go through a divorce and then get back together. ~ Peter Andre,

46:Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. ~ Mary Karr,

47:You can't divorce yourself from your own life experiences. ~ Brett Morgen,

48:Divorce and extramarital affairs are illegal for a reason. ~ David Simpson,

49:When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family. ~ Liane Moriarty,

50:Divorce isn't caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness. ~ Jon Stewart,

51:I got a divorce because my ex-wife left me for another woman. ~ Woody Allen,

52:In the divorce my ex got everything. Even kept her composure ~ Tom Franklin,

53:People are reluctant to cite boredom as grounds for divorce. ~ Mason Cooley,

54:The divorce between church and state should be absolute. ~ James A Garfield,

55:The snag about marriage is, it isn´t worth the divorce. ~ Suzanne Finnamore,

56:Divorce is a bitch and marriage is the mother of that bitch. ~ Nilesh Rathod,

57:I didn't want a divorce but had to because of circumstance. ~ Sarah Ferguson,

58:In the divorce my ex got everything. Even kept her composure. ~ Tom Franklin,

59:It’s not stand by your man anymore, it’s divorce the fucker. ~ Gillian Flynn,

60:I don't see any reason for marriage when there is divorce. ~ Catherine Deneuve,

61:Mommy would never divorce Daddy. He's just like one of the family. ~ Bil Keane,

62:We just consummated our marriage on our divorce papers. ~ Aurora Rose Reynolds,

63:My mother always said don't marry for money, divorce for money. ~ Wendy Liebman,

64:The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce. ~ Miguel de Cervantes,

65:When there are kids involved, there's no such thing as divorce. ~ Carl Whitaker,

66:Divorce is born of perverted morals and leads to vicious habits. ~ Pope Leo XIII,

67:If it isn't a success, that still wouldn't be grounds for divorce. ~ Geena Davis,

68:Obviously, you go through a lot of emotional turmoil in a divorce. ~ David Byrne,

69:People don't just stop playing Facebook games. They divorce them. ~ Jesse Schell,

70:Well, after the divorce, I went home and turned all the lights on! ~ Larry David,

71:You can't underestimate how traumatic divorce is for the children. ~ Isla Fisher,

72:Divorce was very sad, obviously, but now I've gotten over it. ~ Natalie Imbruglia,

73:God hates divorce-always, forever, regardless, without exception. ~ Michael Pearl,

74:Misery or divorce don’t ever have to be your only two options. ~ Stormie Omartian,

75:Either we fix [the marriage] today, or I will divorce you tomorrow. ~ Ashlee Vance,

76:You can't divorce civilization from nature - we totally depend on it. ~ James Balog,

77:Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. ~ Ha Jin,

78:I'm not upset about my divorce. I'm only upset that I'm not a widow. ~ Roseanne Barr,

79:Sin and Hell are married unless repentance proclaims the divorce. ~ Charles Spurgeon,

80:Sometimes you divorce a part of yourself to save yourself emotionally. ~ Kalup Linzy,

81:A hundred percent of marriages end in divorce, disappearance or death. ~ Steve Aylett,

82:Divorce is a by-product of the fact that maybe the nuclear unit is gone. ~ Bob Geldof,

83:Even with my divorce and with everything, I don't need money. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger,

84:I want a return to the divorce system based on the fault of one spouse. ~ George Pell,

85:I was so devastated by my second divorce that I had a nervous breakdown. ~ Jane Fonda,

86:The divorce rate would be lower if instead of marrying for better or worse ~ Ruby Dee,

87:There are three sides to every question-where a divorce is involved. ~ Elbert Hubbard,

88:An open marriage is nature's way of telling you that you need a divorce. ~ Ann Landers,

89:My wife wants something foreign for Christmas - like a Mexican divorce. ~ Milton Berle,

90:for divorce. You don’t kill to prevent things you don’t know about. His ~ Steve Martini,

91:If you really want to get to know someone, you have to divorce him. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

92:I was the marriage counselor. Chris was the divorce attorney. Dad’s ~ Carine McCandless,

93:I lost 28 pounds in my divorce... because that's what a soul weighs. ~ Christopher Titus,

94:I come from divorce. I'm only doing marriage once. It's not a game for me. ~ Shia LaBeouf,

95:The divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it's over. ~ Nora Ephron,

96:When a man takes a mistress, he doesn't turn around and divorce his wife. ~ Arthur Golden,

97:A divorce is like a controlled explosion. Everyone on the outside is OK. ~ Sophie Kinsella,

98:Because if marriage is a kind of womb, divorce is the being born again. ~ Tony Hoagland,

99:'E.T.' began with me trying to write a story about my parents' divorce. ~ Steven Spielberg,

100:Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. ~ Voltaire,

101:If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves. ~ Daniel Webster,

102:A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you. ~ Margaret Atwood,

103:Divorce these days is a religious vow, as if the proper offspring of marriage. ~ Tertullian,

104:In stocks as in romance, ease of divorce is not a sound basis for commitment. ~ Peter Lynch,

105:Lovers' quarrels are not generally about money. Divorce cases generally are. ~ Mason Cooley,

106:Now it's going to turn into the biggest media blitz since the Pope's divorce. ~ Dani Kollin,

107:The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith,

108:Breakup is hard enough to live with, why do we need the paperwork of divorce. ~ Nilesh Rathod,

109:Criticism is the seed of divorce, and it develops rebellion in our young. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

110:divorce is always good news because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. ~ Amy Poehler,

111:Normally, I don't recommend me for wedding dresses – they all get a divorce. ~ Karl Lagerfeld,

112:She asked me, “Was your divorce nasty?” “Not at all. The marriage was nasty. ~ Nelson DeMille,

113:Why does every flight attendant seem like they are going through a divorce? ~ Natasha Leggero,

114:You can't really divorce yourself and your life from the world you live in. ~ Viggo Mortensen,

115:You should be prepared for anything during divorce proceedings - even the truth. ~ Dave Barry,

116:I would like to believe that most people don't get married anticipating divorce. ~ Regina King,

117:So I divorce my mind from the wrongness of it all and let myself simply feel. ~ Pepper Winters,

118:Divorce is healthier than the stock exchange, and way more predictable. ~ Gregory David Roberts,

119:Half of all marriages end in divorce- and then there are the really unhappy ones. ~ Joan Rivers,

120:If you feel like getting a divorce, you are no exception to the general rule. ~ Elizabeth Hawes,

121:Marriage is the hardest thing you will ever do. The secret is removing divorce as ~ Will Smith,

122:Take this marriage thing seriously - it has to last all the way to the divorce. ~ Roseanne Barr,

123:not admit this. For him and his Chancery Court, a major trial was a nasty divorce ~ John Grisham,

124:The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

125:The mere thought of divorce terrified me. To me, divorce symbolized failure. ~ Annette Funicello,

126:I had a really kind of yucky divorce and it was really challenging to get over that. ~ Ricki Lake,

127:It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows. ~ Joan Didion,

128:Some people rushed into divorce even faster than they rushed into marriage. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,

129:We liked each other so much we skipped marriage, and went straight to the divorce. ~ Dean J Baker,

130:divorce is always good news because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce.” Any ~ Amy Poehler,

131:Do you dance?” “I did a dance when I signed my divorce papers…does that count? ~ Toye Lawson Brown,

132:Divorce is hard and painful and complicated, and something you have to grow through. ~ Sharon Stone,

133:If these two couldn't divorce why on earth would we expect them to get married? ~ Jonathan Freedland,

134:Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce. ~ Scarlett Thomas,

135:This iswhat divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love ~ Zadie Smith,

136:To get over my divorce, I got a prescription to live at the Playboy Mansion for a while. ~ James Caan,

137:What can you tell me about his divorce?” “Just that it’s been acrimonious as all hell. ~ Harlan Coben,

138:As for the kids, once the damage is done with a divorce, you can’t ever make it right. ~ Ozzy Osbourne,

139:I could not bounce back from my divorce - emotionally - I just could not bounce back. ~ Terry Bradshaw,

140:If you are not going to divorce the status quo, you will give birth to mediocrity. ~ Israelmore Ayivor,

141:When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family, Madeline had told her once. ~ Liane Moriarty,

142:Divorce is not merely separating; it is the tearing apart of what was once joined together. ~ T D Jakes,

143:Divorce shreds the muscles of our hearts so that they will hardly beat without a struggle. ~ E Lockhart,

144:In Hollywood, after you get a little success, the next thing you usually get is a divorce. ~ Dan Dailey,

145:No matter how free divorce, how frequently marriages break up, in most societies there ~ Margaret Mead,

146:This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love. ~ Zadie Smith,

147:Very few people can truly divorce themselves from what they feel emotionally and sexually. ~ Boy George,

148:You can't do sweatpants... ladies, number one cause of divorce in America, sweatpants, no! ~ Eva Mendes,

149:Divorce is not always a doorway to happiness. The same can be said about marriage. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,

150:Henry, if you set yourself on fire deliberately, I will institute divorce proceedings. ~ Cassandra Clare,

151:Nobody wants to go through divorce, especially when there's young children involved. ~ Lindsay Davenport,

152:People lie all the time in their divorce proceedings, especially when custody is an issue. ~ Megyn Kelly,

153:Arlene and I have to get a divorce. She thinks I'm a pervert because I drank our water bed. ~ Woody Allen,

154:I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

155:There’s life after divorce, Sarah,’ my father proclaimed, not that he’d ever been divorced. ~ Claire Cook,

156:unlike a disappointing marriage, disappointing motherhood cannot be terminated by divorce. ~ Betty Rollin,

157:Watching news showing all the same sex marriages. How long before first same sex divorce? ~ Alonzo Bodden,

158:When I talk about divorce, I am not blaming the women I've married. It's not their fault. ~ Rush Limbaugh,

159:I had a romantic, 'Aren't I a good girl?' take on divorce, but the truth is that was stupid. ~ Ali MacGraw,

160:I'll tell you what divorce hasn't taught me. It didn't teach me not to get married again. ~ Salman Rushdie,

161:This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love. ~ Zadie Smith,

162:You know, that's the only good thing about divorce; you get to sleep with your mother. ~ Clare Boothe Luce,

163:A battered wife is a married woman until she gets a divorce. Or until she kills the bastard. ~ John Grisham,

164:A spiritual process is not a divorce from life. It is an irrevocable love affair with life. ~ Jaggi Vasudev,

165:As soon as I get through with you, you'll have a clear case for divorce and so will my wife. ~ Groucho Marx,

166:If his mother hadn’t begun to see him and forced the divorce, Brian wouldn’t be here now. He ~ Gary Paulsen,

167:It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image. ~ Ryan McGinley,

168:This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from the people you no longer love. ~ Zadie Smith,

169:Love after divorce is all about showing and sharing with my son what is good and right in life! ~ David Gray,

170:Only a marriage with partners strong enough to risk divorce is strong enough to avoid it. ~ Carolyn Heilbrun,

171:Lawyers know how to take isolated complaints in a divorce case and build them into one big one. ~ Hedy Lamarr,

172:Once divorce carried all the stigma. Now, choosing to stay when you can leave is the new shame. ~ Esther Perel,

173:The words marriage and divorce were always used together, like they went hand in hand together. ~ Jess C Scott,

174:After a divorce, men's biggest fear is, typically, losing their children (women's is poverty). ~ Warren Farrell,

175:After my divorce, I was struggling to find my own voice. Through reading, I gained my power back. ~ Halle Berry,

176:Divorce is one of the key predictors of poverty for a child growing up in a home that's broken. ~ Mike Huckabee,

177:Men and women were declared equal one morning and everybody could divorce each other by postcard ~ Kate Millett,

178:The divorce of our so-called spiritual life from our daily activities is a fatal dualism. ~ Mary Parker Follett,

179:Ah, yes, divorce... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet. ~ Robin Williams,

180:At a certain point in my personal life, I went through a divorce and lost some people close to me. ~ Tim Meadows,

181:Dear God. When did language and meaning divorce each other and decide to go their separate ways? ~ Kate Atkinson,

182:Divorce is brutal and horrible and... you have to actively work to get your life back on track. ~ Jane Kaczmarek,

183:The biggest financial pitfall in life is divorce. And the biggest reason for divorce is marriage. ~ Gene Simmons,

184:Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. ~ Sebastian Junger,

185:I actually think the subject of young divorce is pretty funny; I'd like to write a movie about it. ~ Olivia Wilde,

186:One study found that people who smile in childhood photographs are less likely to get a divorce. ~ Jenna McCarthy,

187:point. Married people . . . you’ve always got that divorce thing looming on the horizon, haven’t you? ~ Matt Dunn,

188:She gives your son a lobotomy, and that’s okay. Then she’s mean to your dog and you get a divorce? ~ Howard Dully,

189:I got a divorce eleven years later on the grounds of cruelty, which is still not easy in England. ~ Dinah Sheridan,

190:In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of publicity. ~ Lauren Bacall,

191:Catholics don't believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There's always Confession, after all. ~ Diana Gabaldon,

192:I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me. ~ Kurt Cobain,

193:I would like marriage to disappear completely from the world, and with marriage, divorce will disappear. ~ Rajneesh,

194:There must be a divorce between you and sin, or there can be no marriage between you and Christ. ~ Charles Spurgeon,

195:Divorce is divorce and it's a really tough thing to go through, (But) I'd love to get married again. ~ Nicole Kidman,

196:I had a pretty public divorce. They're not easy - divorces - and it took me a long time to really get through. ~ Nas,

197:It was tough being a single mom. It was tough being in a divorce with children. Very, very hard. ~ Melissa Etheridge,

198:Remember there is no way you can give the father custody of the children without getting a divorce. ~ Phyllis Diller,

199:Divorce becomes a holy moment when you choose to use it as a catalyst for having an extraordinary life. ~ Debbie Ford,

200:I have long believed that what most affects a child is not the divorce, per se, but how it is handled ~ Dennis Prager,

201:The divorce revolution has done far more damage to marriage than same-sex marriage will ever do. ~ R Albert Mohler Jr,

202:When I was born my mother was terribly disappointed. Not that she wanted a girl - she wanted a divorce. ~ Woody Allen,

203:I'm a modern girl, but you should put your husband first. I like to think divorce is not an option. ~ Khloe Kardashian,

204:I once read a survey that explained how moving is as traumatic as divorce, or as the death of a parent. ~ S K Tremayne,

205:The only time that my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers. ~ Woody Allen,

206:The results of the divorce between truth and human beings can be most graphically observed in politics. ~ Tom Stoppard,

207:This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. ~ Albert Camus,

208:America is a country where the Olympics and the divorce lawyers both have the same slogan - Go for the Gold. ~ Bob Hope,

209:Asking the legal system to resolve divorce is like asking a boxing coach to be our marriage counselor. ~ Warren Farrell,

210:Divorce isn't just the person, it's everything that goes with it - your kids, the adjustment, everything. ~ Peter Andre,

211:Going through my divorce has changed who I am in my understanding of what's good and bad in relationships. ~ Kevin Hart,

212:She is afraid of divorce, which will free her, as she was not enough afraid of marriage, which trapped her. ~ A S Byatt,

213:[When asked if she had ever considered divorcing Sir Lewis Casson:] Divorce? Never. But murder often! ~ Sybil Thorndike,

214:Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity. ~ Jojo Moyes,

215:She says what holds their marriage together is that she feels too damn sorry for him to ask for a divorce. ~ Dean Koontz,

216:There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life. ~ Michael Douglas,

217:Anger is the mother of a whole brood of evil actions. Divorce too often is the bitter fruit of anger. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

218:Divorce is a 50-50 thing, and it can be a number of petty things that finally drive you out of your mind. ~ Lee Radziwill,

219:Wayan laughed and kissed her daughter, all the sadness about the divorce suddenly gone from her face. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

220:I have such hatred of divorce that I prefer bigamy to divorce. Anyway, I think we should see other people. ~ Martin Luther,

221:Some one said the other day that there was a divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family one knows. ~ Edith Wharton,

222:The day you wind up single through divorce or separation is the day you get to test who you really are. ~ Ernie J Zelinski,

223:You know the difference between a tornado and divorce in the south? Nothing! Someone is losing a trailer. ~ Robin Williams,

224:Your course taught me to see what I really need and what I don’t. So I got a divorce. Now I feel much happier. ~ Marie Kond,

225:Divorce is a snakebite. One´s next thought should not be, Where am I going to find another snake? ~ Suzanne Finnamore,

226:I'll say this: The media wasn't invited to my marriage, and they're definitely not invited into the divorce. ~ Ryan Reynolds,

227:Since I got a divorce, I have been dating younger guys. But it's just because they're the ones that ask me out. ~ Jerry Hall,

228:The burning eyes did not come back, but memories did, came flooding in. The words. Always the words. Divorce. ~ Gary Paulsen,

229:Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity.” She ~ Jojo Moyes,

230:The thoughts of DIVORCE hung over the kitchen table like a cloud full of black rain, pregnant, ready to burst. ~ Stephen King,

231:I feel scalded inside. Like, third-degree burns. But no one can see them. (Fliss talking about her divorce.) ~ Sophie Kinsella,

232:Up to me. Great. I could hurt my mom and my sisters, or I could hurt my dad. Perfect. Isn't divorce fun? ~ Katherine Applegate,

233:Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count? ~ Donald Barthelme,

234:Fifty per cent of all marriages end in divorce. But look at the bright side: the other 50 per cent end in death. ~ Richard Jeni,

235:I've become a pretty tough cookie after having a divorce. I think that I've persevered through a lot of talk. ~ Jessica Simpson,

236:Peace, of course, is different from divorce; indeed, in essential respects, divorce is the opposite of peace. ~ Douglas J Feith,

237:Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors. ~ Jim Morrison,

238:Gett is the story of a divorce. In Israel, marriage is not a civil affair and it is governed by the religious courts. ~ Anonymous,

239:It's a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird. ~ Val Kilmer,

240:The whole thing was like a divorce. When we divided everything up, Courtney got my dignity, and I got the heartache. ~ Alex Flinn,

241:You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever. ~ Ellen Goodman,

242:After my divorce, painting took me out of panic mode and into a serene, calm place. I could absolutely lose myself. ~ Jane Seymour,

243:And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up—through distance, differences, divorce, or death. ~ Mitch Albom,

244:Criticism is the forerunner of divorce, the cultivator of rebellion, sometimes an agent that leads to failure. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

245:I thought about my family. It was small by any standard, shrunken to a handful by Hitler, Stalin, and divorce. ~ Stuart Rojstaczer,

246:My husband and I have never considered divorce. Murder sometimes, but never divorce.” ~ J J McAvoy Joyce Brothers ~ J J McAvoy,

247:This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love. ~ Zadie Smith Archie Jones ~ Zadie Smith,

248:When people divorce, it's always such a tragedy. At the same time, if people stay together it can be even worse. ~ Monica Bellucci,

249:(Here, I pause to offer a prayer for my gentle reader: May you never, ever, have to get a divorce in New York.) ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

250:The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. ~ Albert Camus,

251:Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd. ~ Bertrand Russell,

252:Divorce can be crazy. Man, if you're happy... Love is a beast, man. Hold on. Be prepared for any way it may go, and be honest. ~ Nas,

253:The difference between divorce and legal separation is that legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money. ~ Johnny Carson,

254:Couples with children who do win a divorce, cause such social havoc that they should have to pay a special divorce tax. ~ George Pell,

255:Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient. ~ Voltaire,

256:He read a book a week and said he would rather help a friend through a divorce than go to the wedding “because everyone ~ Scott Jurek,

257:I don't see divorce as a failure. I see it as the end to a story. In a story, everything has an end and a beginning. ~ Olga Kurylenko,

258:Margot was too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and Macomber had too much money for Margot ever to leave him. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

259:Hollywood is the only place in the world where an amicable divorce means each one gets fifty percent of the publicity. ~ Lauren Bacall,

260:In a small Southern town during the 1950s, elopement and divorce were serious moral transgressions deserving of punishment. ~ Ron Rash,

261:Raising children was not designed for single parents. (Which is why divorce was such a taboo prior to birth control). ~ Warren Farrell,

262:Stephen Hawking is getting a divorce. That's scary. If the smartest guy in the world can't figure out women, we're screwed. ~ Jay Leno,

263:The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status. The ~ Karen Armstrong,

264:How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we'd profit from them. ~ Lucille Ball,

265:The Divorce, it's just like any performance that's given where I really just completely lost myself in that life. ~ Thomas Haden Church,

266:You don't sign up for a divorce when you get married. It's very painful. But it's taught me a great deal about myself. ~ Dwayne Johnson,

267:Even the most painful changes we can experience such as divorce, accidents, illness or death offer us powerful lessons. ~ Robin S Sharma,

268:I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind. ~ Bertrand Russell,

269:If I told my wife I was going to become a manager she'd say 'sign this then. Don't worry it's only a divorce. Au revoir'. ~ David Ginola,

270:John softened, and many years later he said to me, “You know, if we were ever to divorce, I get the cat.” There is a ~ Katherine Paterson,

271:Weekly church attendance alone lowers the divorce rate significantly—roughly 25 to 50 percent, depending on the study. ~ Shaunti Feldhahn,

272:As far as my divorce goes, I love my family and I love my wife to death and I just don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. ~ Hulk Hogan,

273:Marriage isn't all that it's cracked up to be, let me tell you. Honestly. Marriage is probably the chief cause of divorce. ~ Larry Gelbart,

274:a piece of graffiti scrawled on a Brazilian train read: “Those who petition for divorce use the ink of their children’s tears”. ~ Anonymous,

275:Everyone goes through all kinds of relationship situations. I'm lucky that I get to be on two comedy shows [during divorce]. ~ Fred Armisen,

276:the only things he had ever given her that she hadn’t discarded in their divorce, both retained in the name of sentimentality. ~ David Mack,

277:Yeah, I've been a little down. Totally natural. I'm getting a divorce, but now I'm ready to pull myself up by some G-strings. ~ Aziz Ansari,

278:A divorce is like a symphony with a screeching sound at the end—the fact that it ended badly does not mean it was all bad. ~ Daniel Kahneman,

279:But a man cannot by writing a bill of divorce to his vice get rid of all trouble at once, and enjoy tranquillity by living apart. ~ Plutarch,

280:Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable. ~ Erica Jong,

281:Divorce sucks. Let me tell you, after five years of marriage, it is devastating to have the person with the good credit move out. ~ Rich Vos,

282:And they all lived happily ever after (barring death, divorce, arrest for tax fraud, that incident with the pool boy...) ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,

283:Change your story, change your life. Divorce the story of limitation, and marry the story of the truth and everything changes. ~ Tony Robbins,

284:My wife divorced me because she could not trust me anymore. I never want a divorce because I love and care about our daughter. ~ Toba Beta,

285:Then I’m telling it wrong.” “Bad?” “Yes. Divorce shouldn’t be friendly. It just makes everything that much more confusing, ~ Jonathan Tropper,

286:If we wish to express anger fully, the first step is to divorce the other person from any responsibility for our anger. ~ Marshall B Rosenberg,

287:Is it possible to want to divorce a man simply because he doesn't want to be rude about Ginger Spice? I rather fear it might be. ~ Nick Hornby,

288:it’s important not to divorce developers from the consequences of their work since the fires are frequently set by their code. ~ Mike Loukides,

289:I believe I went through a divorce. My relationship with Ellen is no less significant as a marriage than my relationship to Coley. ~ Anne Heche,

290:People always assume I don't need to work for money, but my divorce settlement was not as much as it's always reported to be. ~ Daphne Guinness,

291:The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa. ~ Johann Georg Hamann,

292:At this moment, I am obscenely happy. Please don’t screw this up or dump me or cheat on me or divorce me.” “All right,” he said. ~ Robyn Carr,

293:Change your story, change your life. Divorce the story of limitation and marry the story of the truth, and everything changes. ~ Anthony Robbins,

294:Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence. ~ Caitlin Flanagan,

295:Divorce, she could see, would be like marriage - a power grab, as in who would be the dog, and who would be the owner of the dog. ~ Lorrie Moore,

296:Long-term marital intimacy requires accepting this truth: to stop giving yourself to your spouse is to spiritually divorce them. ~ Gary L Thomas,

297:Now we don’t celebrate divorce, of course. But we see it as a personal tragedy, not as a scandal in our witness to the gospel. ~ Russell D Moore,

298:ONE OF THE most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. ~ Sam Harris,

299:The ceremony took six minutes. The marriage lasted about the same amount of time though we didn't get a divorce for almost a year. ~ Hedy Lamarr,

300:As my friend Amy observed: "Divorce is like a Polaroid picture. What truly happened will develop over time and you will see. ~ Augusten Burroughs,

301:When I left, after my divorce, when I left Oklahoma, I never looked back. It was the future. It was looking forward from then on. ~ Reba McEntire,

302:Anybody that's been through a divorce, and I hope it's something people never have to experience, it's the worse thing in the world. ~ Cheryl Cole,

303:Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial contest that is about to ensue. ~ P J O Rourke,

304:I believed that divorce was for cowards who used their partner’s failings as an excuse to avoid looking too closely in the mirror. ~ Janelle Brown,

305:I took about a year to fully adjust. Like there's a death at the family or a divorce, you don't just snap your fingers and it's over. ~ Dan Barker,

306:it’s important not to divorce developers from the consequences of their work since the fires are frequently set by their code. So, ~ Mike Loukides,

307:Just as a father hates cancer, because of what it does to his child, so God hates divorce, because of what it does to His children. ~ Kyle Idleman,

308:Most women outlive their spouses. Divorce remains at record rates. Its important for a woman to be able to control her finances. ~ Maria Bartiromo,

309:At that age I thought apartments were built specifically to house the single or the newly single, a divorce dormitory of sorts. ~ Carrie Brownstein,

310:(Cleaning women: You will get a lot of liberated women. First stage is a CR group; second stage is a cleaning woman; third, divorce.) ~ Lucia Berlin,

311:Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others. ~ Rachel Cusk,

312:Everybody is agreeing so tersely. I just had a flashback to the month before my parents finally admitted they were getting a divorce. ~ Samantha Bee,

313:Let any pretty girl announce a divorce in Hollywood and the wolves come running. Fresh meat for the beast, and they are always hungry. ~ Hedy Lamarr,

314:Literature is a wound from which flows the indispensable divorce between words and things. All our blood can flow out of that hole. ~ Carlos Fuentes,

315:Write about “leaving.” Approach it any way you want. Write about your divorce, leaving the house this morning, or a friend dying. ~ Natalie Goldberg,

316:My parents' divorce left me with a lot of sadness and pain and acting, and especially humour, was my way of dealing with all that. ~ Jennifer Aniston,

317:Try refusing the arrangement, or later petition for divorce -- the first is impossible while the second is like admitting you're a whore. ~ Euripides,

318:What a holler would ensue if people had to pay the minister as much to marry them as they have to pay a lawyer to get them a divorce. ~ Claire Trevor,

319:And then, aware that I was gay, aware that I had been about to divorce my late wife, aware that I now had a boyfriend, my father hugged me. ~ L A Witt,

320:Perhaps the sadness of a divorce doesn’t actually disappear, she realized. Instead you have to incorporate it, learn to coexist with it ~ Marian Keyes,

321:Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person. ~ Alain de Botton,

322:A man in Texas won a divorce from his wife because she tore out the last chapter of every mystery story he borrowed from the library. ~ Shirley Jackson,

323:Death is a divorce nobody asked for; to live through it is to find a way to disengage from what you thought you couldn't stand to lose. ~ Gail Caldwell,

324:Divorce is very difficult, especially on the kids. Of course, I'm the result of my parents having stayed together, so you never know. ~ Jason Alexander,

325:I don't know, one out of every two marriages ends up in divorce so there's a lot of great people out there who people aren't happy with. ~ Mark Ruffalo,

326:Said of her husband on the day their divorce became final: Oh, don't worry about Alan. . . . Alan will always land on somebody's feet. ~ Dorothy Parker,

327:Viking women were able to rule kingdoms, divorce husbands, own land, and Vikings were very progressive in terms of the rights of women. ~ Gabriel Byrne,

328:Among Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries no one questioned the legitimacy of divorce. The only question was what constituted adequate grounds; ~ Elaine Pagels,

329:At the time that I knew them, they were not living together. They began dating again after their divorce, so I didn't really see fighting. ~ Kato Kaelin,

330:Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted. ~ Richard Wagner,

331:The press concentrates on a divorce an actor's going through and they ignore the good performances he gives, or the causes that he works for. ~ Rob Lowe,

332:We’ve all been through it. It’s a life stage. Well, all except John the Idiot, and he’d welcome the chance for an agonising divorce. ~ John Joseph Adams,

333:Dear citizen, if you were my love, I'd stole your money!' Admin if you were my love, I would ask you for divorce and spousal support! ~ Winston Churchill,

334:I don't think anybody whose ever been divorced can tell you divorce is easy or fun or feels like anything other than a tremendous failure. ~ Sharon Stone,

335:Divorce is, of course, difficult for a child. I didn't go through it as my parents stayed together, but I have a lot of friends who did. ~ Elizabeth Hurley,

336:Mental cruelty, nondisfiguring physical abuse or just plain unhappiness are rarely considered grounds on which a woman can seek divorce. ~ Geraldine Brooks,

337:The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands. ~ Amy Poehler,

338:Books and I went back. My old man taught me to read at age three-and-a-half. I bloomed into a classic only child/child-of-divorce autodidact. ~ James Ellroy,

339:Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce. ~ Richard Yates,

340:Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about "character issues." ~ P J O Rourke,

341:Once when I was working for the Daily News, I was summoned back to work from vacation because Donald Trump announced he was getting a divorce. ~ Gail Collins,

342:Please do not ask me to talk about my divorce. Mr. Ziegfeld and I are such very good friends. It is only a little matter quite between ourselves. ~ Anna Held,

343:Divorce is just about change, you know. It's God saying, You need a change. And I'm going to make it so your bank account only has change. ~ Christopher Titus,

344:Divorce is marital welfare.It’s just couples asking society to bail them out because they didn’t do enough research before they got married. ~ Stephen Colbert,

345:Empathy is at the core of family stability and love. I've never had a couple come to me and say, I want a divorce; my partner understands me. ~ Warren Farrell,

346:There is a crisis in America. That crisis is divorce. It is easier to get out of a marriage than (to get out of a) contract to buy a used car. ~ Mike Huckabee,

347:Sometimes divorce is as easy as opening a door, Son. Open it just a crack, and the winds of discontent and frustration can blow it wide open. ~ Karen Kingsbury,

348:We were far more civilized in our divorce than we had ever been in marriage. It seemed we'd finally found something we could do together amicably. ~ Robyn Carr,

349:A divorce, after all, is not really a thing so much as the absence of a thing, like weather or gravity, that you never knew could not exist. ~ Frances Lefkowitz,

350:But as my dear friend and relationship sponsor Louis CK has noted, “divorce is always good news because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. ~ Amy Poehler,

351:Let me be serious: divorce is a sacred institution between a man and a woman who hate each other. God wanted Adam to pay alimony to Eve, not Steve. ~ Lewis Black,

352:Obamacare is making people divorce so they can afford it. And divorce hurts women and the children, and that is Obamacare and their War on Women. ~ Rush Limbaugh,

353:The details surrounding both my marriage and subsequent filing for divorce are private, and I had hoped to keep them that way for the sake of my family. ~ Eminem,

354:Divorce is contagious. That's right - when you have a close couple friend split up, it increases your chances of getting a divorce by 75 percent. ~ Jenna McCarthy,

355:If you're going through a divorce and you're in a comedy you have to find some way to find the funny side of things even though you might not want to. ~ Alan Ruck,

356:I hope you meet somebody and get married and then they fucking disappoint you and you have to go through a divorce, and then maybe you'll get it. ~ Terry McMillan,

357:Dating, after all, only ends one way: poorly. If you think about it...all romantic relationships end in either (1) breakup, (2) divorce, or (3) death. ~ John Green,

358:Divorce is not easy, but if you genuinely put your kids first, that dictates the civility you should show each other. What example are you otherwise? ~ Dawn French,

359:During the first 10 years of my life, while my parents were married, I enjoyed a privileged upbringing. After their divorce, my life was difficult. ~ Bianca Jagger,

360:If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. ~ Betty Friedan,

361:In the suburbs of Delaware, spring meant not young love and damp flowers but an ugly divorce from winter and a second marriage to buxom summer. ~ Andrew Sean Greer,

362:My wife threatened to divorce me if I don't lose ten pounds." Given that he could easily lose forty I figured she was a very tolerant woman. ~ Marshall Thornton,

363:The refugee in Syria doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce. ~ Bren Brown,

364:There was altogether too much candor in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce. ~ Muriel Spark,

365:Before their eventual divorce I was spoiled and coddled and feted and fed Frosted Flakes in front of the television like King Shit of Fuck Mountain. ~ Samantha Irby,

366:Men with high baseline levels of testosterone marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, commit more spousal abuse, and divorce more often. ~ Helen Fisher,

367:We are far betting dealing with the big losses-death, divorce, debt, and debilitating illness-than with the daily onslaught of little losses. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach,

368:Divorce lawyers stoke anger and fear in their clients, knowing that as long as the conflicts remain unresolved the revenue stream will keep flowing. ~ Craig Ferguson,

369:Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce. ~ P J O Rourke,

370:There was altogether too much candor in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce... ~ Muriel Spark,

371:Anytime you go through a divorce, you're completely lost, whether you want to admit it or not, or whether you know it or not, you're completely lost. ~ Justin Hartley,

372:A society's apprehensiveness about divorce is an expression of its fear of change and of its resulting desire that personality remain unvarying. ~ Elsie Clews Parsons,

373:I know I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you.” A new thought struck him. “You know that, right? Marriage for me is forever. I don’t do divorce. ~ Cora Seton,

374:In a study of more than twelve thousand teenagers after divorce, children living with single dads fared better than children living with single moms. ~ Warren Farrell,

375:It is a sad fact that 50 percent of marriages in this country end in divorce. But hey, the other half end in death. You could be one of the lucky ones! ~ Richard Jeni,

376:They had a sound basis of union. Margot was too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and Macomber had too much money for Margot ever to leave him. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

377:Being an official divorce brought late-night channel-surfing up to a staggering new level of depressing. I just wanted to belong to someone already. ~ Jonathan Tropper,

378:I don’t know why anyone wants to get married," said Burke. "I think the whole thing was cooked up by lawyers so they can get rich off of divorce. ~ Michael Thomas Ford,

379:One of the disappointing truths about divorce is that when you have children together, you are never free of the one you’ve tried so hard to leave. Never. ~ Deb Caletti,

380:A great future awaits you. However, you have to divorce your past and get hooked for a better life. Embrace the great future ahead with all optimism! ~ Israelmore Ayivor,

381:Divorce is a fire exit. When a house is burning, it doesn’t matter who set the fire. If there is no fire exit, everyone in the house will be burned! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

382:I have a long track record of really horrible relationships and a divorce behind me; so I'm not the guy to ask. I just got really fortunate with this one. ~ James Denton,

383:I think you’re permanently disqualified from the lucky category after four miscarriages, a virtual divorce, and a face that could scare small children. ~ Jennifer Coburn,

384:My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith. ~ Elie Wiesel,

385:But when you've had children with someone you're divorced from, divorce defines everything; it's the lurking fact, a slice of anger in the pie of your brain. ~ Nora Ephron,

386:If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping. ~ Mignon McLaughlin,

387:The divorce was rough on all of us. I don't blame Hollywood for my family's problems. But having all of it reported in the press made it more of an ordeal. ~ Kieran Culkin,

388:All conflict can be traced back to someone’s feelings getting hurt, don’t you think? Divorce. World wars. Legal action. Well, maybe not every legal action. ~ Liane Moriarty,

389:Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce. ~ Jennifer Weiner,

390:I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters. ~ Susan B Anthony,

391:It wasn’t just the past you walked away from in a divorce; you walked away from your future as well. Everything you’d expected from life was changed. ~ Victoria Helen Stone,

392:When men give lines, women learn to not trust men. When women wear makeup, men learn to not trust women. Male lines and female makeup are divorce training. ~ Warren Farrell,

393:At the (record company) meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, 'I think you're daft. I want a divorce.' ~ John Lennon,

394:Thanksgiving when he marched into the house after staying, supposedly, at the hospital with a critical patient all night, to tell her he'd filed for divorce. ~ Carolyn Brown,

395:Today's new climate policy is like delivering the final divorce papers to the public and the world, ... And it is divorced from the reality of global warming. ~ Jim Jeffords,

396:Irrationally, I think, Will You Marry Me? Four words. I Want a Divorce. Four words. I would like time to count the letters as well, but there is not time. ~ Suzanne Finnamore,

397:What did they want her back for?” “Her husband’s honor demanded it.” “I should think his honor demanded that he divorce her and find himself a decent wife. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,

398:You know that recent Supreme Court ruling where a husband can legally murder his wife if he can prove she wouldn’t under any circumstances give him a divorce? ~ Philip K Dick,

399:Before I left, as they did at the end of my wedding, as they did at the conclusion of divorce ceremonies hundreds of years ago, the rabbis wished me a mazel tov. ~ Tova Mirvis,

400:Finding a cat--or having a cat find you--can change your world as much as marriage, divorce, love, death, or even winning the lottery can, and sometimes more. ~ Kinky Friedman,

401:I firmly believe in marriage. It's a real important decision that takes a lot of dedication and time. If you're thinking about divorce. You shouldn't get married. ~ Seth Green,

402:Is this what my life’s come to? I’m a couples counselor, and I’m getting my own relationship advice from a divorce lawyer.” “You’re an idealist. I’m a realist.” I ~ Vi Keeland,

403:I think that when something happens when you're growing up, like a death or divorce, it does open the world slightly because things aren't as straightforward. ~ Felicity Jones,

404:A church can ignore the culture only until, as the divorce culture did in the past, that culture reshapes the church in a way that obscures the gospel itself. ~ Russell D Moore,

405:A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table. ~ Jean Kerr,

406:In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time. ~ David Hockney,

407:Very romantic,” said Lillian, her voice now like the sound of snapping dry bones in her bare hands. “A middle-aged Romeo, and a Juliet who wants a divorce. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,

408:Both polygamy and divorce, on the other hand, increased opportunities for reproduction—not for women, but for the men who wrote the laws and benefited from them. ~ Elaine Pagels,

409:I tell you, if I'm going to go through a divorce, I would date again a younger man. Because I have so much energy, there's no way an older man can keep up with me. ~ Ivana Trump,

410:I think that the divorce rate's over 50% for a reason. I don't think people are taking enough time now to really see if they can make it work and live together. ~ Channing Tatum,

411:I wonder if he could hear the excitement careening around in my chest. A matter of days ago I’d been separated, approaching divorce, approaching 40. Then this. Him ~ Rosie Walsh,

412:I would have to say that my divorce was an incredibly difficult experience in my life, but I am truly thankful for it. It made me a stronger and better person. ~ Sebastian Roche,

413:Life, to be happy at all, must be in its way a sacrament, and it is a failure in religion to divorce it from the holy acts of everyday, of ordinary human existence. ~ Freya Stark,

414:I have heard earnest American sociologists say that American children have a right to the divorce experience as an enriching element of an advanced civilisation. ~ Anthony Burgess,

415:It was tough when people would say, "Aren't you so excited?" about the new show and I couldn't really say, "Yes, well, I'm going through a divorce right now, too." ~ Larry Wilmore,

416:Marriage has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. (from "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine") ~ Wendell Berry,

417:Today, one year after their divorce, Pamela and Tommy Lee announced they're getting back together. You know what that means? There's still hope for Ike and Tina Turner. ~ Jay Leno,

418:Divorce is expensive. I used to joke they were going to call it 'all the money,' but they changed it to 'alimony.' It's ripping your heart out through your wallet. ~ Robin Williams,

419:Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else. ~ Sarah Dessen,

420:I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce. ~ Freeman Dyson,

421:Most grandiose gestures are suspect—the couple who renew their vows just before divorce or the politician who publicly swears he’s clean, then enters rehab. Building ~ Chris Offutt,

422:Personally, emotionally, I'd rather divorce myself from the world than face the heartbreak of partial success. Because partial success implies overwhelming failure. ~ George Carlin,

423:Anyone who tries to separate or divorce domestic politics from international politics does not get it, and that might be dangerous for the future of Western Muslims. ~ Tariq Ramadan,

424:People say, 'Oh, God, how devastating to go through a divorce.' Did I wish for this to happen to my family? No. But everyone is healthy; we're moving on with our lives. ~ Heidi Klum,

425:You have to be with the right person. Its so much more important to meet the right person, whether youre married or not, than it is to get married and get a divorce. ~ Joanna Garcia,

426:For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce. We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something you always have. ~ Woody Allen,

427:In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street. ~ Charles Simic,

428:just a moment his own consciousness had plunged through his daddy’s darkness to an incomprehensible word much more frightening than DIVORCE, and that word was SUICIDE. ~ Stephen King,

429:Of the many horrors of divorce, the most egregious is that it robs a kid of the best of both worlds. Dads can do many things that even the best moms can't, and vice versa. ~ Rob Lowe,

430:... things such as losing a job, the death of a loved one, divorce, bankruptcy, illness. Once you have handled any of those things, you emerge a much stronger person. ~ Susan Jeffers,

431:Dating, after all, only ends one way: poorly. If you think about it, and Colin often did, all romantic relationships end in either (1) breakup, (2) divorce, or (3) death. ~ John Green,

432:I thought the divorce statistics would never apply to me. I was beyond heartbroken when they did. But I got up and got on with it. I also kept my belief in marriage. ~ Jennifer Garner,

433:You were in a libido freeze for some reason. You didn’t care about men, good-looking or not. Usually a libido freeze is caused by divorce or death.” “Or commitment issues, ~ Elise Sax,

434:I think that divorce is hard for anyone. It's a nightmare - it just is - and you can pretend you're fine. And [there are] days you're great [and] days you're not great. ~ Nicole Kidman,

435:"I wish I had never been born," she said. "What are we born for?" "For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. "you can step out into it at any moment..." ~ C S Lewis, The Great Divorce,

436:The divorce prompted Paul McCartney to pen the Beatles' classic "Hey Jude" to help Julian cope with his parents' separation. He changed the name Julian to Jude in the song. ~ Anonymous,

437:The pastor made a funny comment. He said that when he taught marriage classes most of those attending took naps. It was the divorce classes where everyone took notes. ~ Debbie Macomber,

438:By going along with feelings, you unify your emotional, mental and bodily states. When you try to fight or deny them, you divorce yourself from the reality of your being. ~ Jane Roberts,

439:Divorce hadn’t devastated her. She’d felt awful for her son, but God, she’d felt free, and she’d hoped that a happy mom was more important for Sawyer than a married one. ~ Victoria Dahl,

440:I have the loftiest idea, and the most passionate one, of art. Much too lofty to agree to subject it to anything. Much too passionate to want to divorce it from anything. ~ Albert Camus,

441:Leah wouldn’t tolerate facial hair. She said it chaffed her face. When she used the word “chaffed” I wanted to divorce her. Or maybe I just always wanted to divorce her. ~ Tarryn Fisher,

442:Women can go on marrying and pretending that their boyfriends and husbands are Mr. Darcy or some RomCom dream man. But where's that going to get 'em? Besides divorce court? ~ Dan Savage,

443:After divorce of Pompeia in 62 BC I feel that members of my family should never be suspected of breaking the law. -Meos tam suspicione quam crimine iudico carere oportere ~ Julius Caesar,

444:It's my wife Ruth's birthday soon. I said to her: "What would you like for your birthday?" She said: "I want a divorce." I said: "I wasn't planning on spending that much." ~ Frank Carson,

445:People accepted the worst from each other, screaming and slapping. Divorce and abortion were never a plot option. If this was love or just inertia, Misty couldn't tell. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

446:The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason. ~ G K Chesterton,

447:...And no prenup. Prenups are for people who plan on getting a divorce. I have so much, Bernie. But I've never had anyone to share it with. From now on, what's mine is yours ~ Jane Graves,

448:Modern love is the enterprise that everyone wants to be a part of, yet there's a fifty percent divorce rate in round one and a sixty-five percent divorce rate in round two. ~ Esther Perel,

449:The greatest terror of Danny’s life was DIVORCE, a word that always appeared in his mind as a sign painted in red letters which were covered with hissing, poisonous snakes. ~ Stephen King,

450:I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally. ~ Lucille Ball,

451:I've gone through too much, from beefs to divorce to my mom passing which I always expressed in my music, so there's not album that sticks out as more important than the other to me. ~ Nas,

452:Divorce is fairly common these days, and I think many times people disregard the emotional impact that divorce has on a couple and a family, because it happens so frequently. ~ Steve Carell,

453:It was a difficult day. Disorienting. What is it they say? Death, divorce, and moving are the three most stressful events for your heart. And your psyche, too, I’ll wager. ~ John Katzenbach,

454:To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities . . . than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises. ~ Hannah Arendt,

455:You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I've never detected any conflict between God's will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other. ~ Jimmy Carter,

456:Divorce is a journey that the children involved do not ask to take. They are forced along for a ride where the results are dictated by the road their parents decide to travel. ~ Diane Greene,

457:Divorce is hard. I was about 29 when my husband and I split up. I think we probably fared better than most, because we were young and didn't have kids - but divorce is hard. ~ Connie Britton,

458:I suddenly feel a vague pity for all those writers who have to ply their trade from sleepy American suburbs, writing divorce scenes symbolized by the very slow washing of dishes. ~ Teju Cole,

459:Mum, you’re not going to get divorced, are you?” Her eyes shot open. “Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity. ~ Jojo Moyes,

460:People are still encouraged to marry as if they could count on marriage being for life, and at the same time they are absorbing a knowledge of the great frequency of divorce. ~ Margaret Mead,

461:[The] liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute . . . ~ Edward Gibbon,

462:The psychological trauma of losing a job can be as great as the trauma of a divorce. It creates a lot of anger and emotional hardship. People may become quite depressed. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich,

463:There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,

464:I think golf is a waste of time and a waste of a sunny afternoon. I also stink at it. I have never found anything, including divorce and a sexual harassment suit, more frustrating. ~ Jay Mohr,

465:My divorce was like a death - a genuine death of commitment and love. After I got over the shock, I was like, tell me theres some way we can save this. We can save this, right? ~ Shania Twain,

466:We get divorce, we get conned, someone we love dies, or we can't find anybody to love us or somebody breaks our heart and we realize this fairy tale ain't fair. So we suffer. ~ Terry McMillan,

467:Einstein offered her a deal. He would win the Nobel Prize someday, he said; if she gave him a divorce, he would give her the prize money. She thought for a week and accepted. ~ Walter Isaacson,

468:It is not wise, or even possible, to divorce private behavior from public leadership.... By its very nature, true leadership carries with it the burden of being an example. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

469:So what happened when base desires and unworthy passions troubled the flesh of men and women inhibited from casual promiscuity, adultery, and divorce that keep us so healthy? ~ Wallace Stegner,

470:The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

471:Hollywood is the same as any other place when it comes to love, marriage, and divorce ... some people have trouble staying married and some people have trouble staying single. ~ Jayne Mansfield,

472:It'll be okay," I said. "We're here for you." Kelly said. "I've decided to become a divorce lawyer," Amanda said. Well, we all have our own ways of showing we care. ~ Janette Rallison,

473:The children don't choose to be in the business, but the harming and long-term effects through arguments, divorce and conflicts over the financial issues in a business are huge. ~ Robert Irvine,

474:She named her cat Phil Donahue, hoping he'd greet her the way Donahue ran to the women in his audience, eager to hear anything they had to say about seat belts, war, or divorce. ~ Natalie Serber,

475:That’s a divorce. You ever seen a divorce? That’s like her taking not only the furniture and the silverware -- she took the dog, too. (Harvick) didn’t get the animal, I would say. ~ Clint Bowyer,

476:Bad divorce?" Hardy asked, his gaze falling to my hands. I realized I was clutching my purse in a death grip. “No, the divorce was great,” I said. “It was the marriage that sucked. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

477:I doubt if there is one married person on earth who can be objective about divorce. It is always a threat, admittedly or not, and such a dire threat that it is almost a dirty word. ~ Nora Johnson,

478:Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. ~ Michel Faber,

479:The craze of genealogy is connected with the epidemic for divorce. If we can't figure out who our living relatives are, then maybe we'll have more luck with the dead ones. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard,

480:The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease. ~ Baron de Montesquieu,

481:Frannie had an idea that her father might have faced a choice many years ago: continued opposition resulting in divorce, or surrender. He had chosen the latter--but on his own terms. ~ Stephen King,

482:Initiating and going through a divorce with four kids can be a brutal experience, but also a tempering one. It gave me perspective and insight to be able to find the love of my life. ~ Tony Robbins,

483:It was a long time in the making, my divorce. One day became less special than the next, and pretty soon, we ceased all conversation. It is a sad day when you have nothing left to say. ~ Ricki Lake,

484:Faced with a divorce or separation, faced with the need to terminate a long-standing friendship, I must remind myself that sometimes the most loving involvement is a non-involvement. ~ Julia Cameron,

485:I think the animation helps divorce the violence from reality. The sex certainly doesn't look all that realistic. I think the fact that it's animated, we get some leeway because of that. ~ Adam Reed,

486:No, not secrets so much as just the Secret. What he knew and had not told anybody, what he knew about his mother that had caused the divorce, what he knew, what he knew--- the Secret. ~ Gary Paulsen,

487:The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate. ~ Will Durant,

488:Marriage made more sense when it was indissoluble. It's the woman trying to cope with the strains of a one-parent family who will suffer most from the relaxation of the divorce laws. ~ Germaine Greer,

489:My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids' reaction to that divorce. ~ Kevin Hart,

490:The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child. ~ John Irving,

491:But, I knew I didn’t believe in divorce. You couldn’t make vows and just break them. If I married a woman, I was going to stay married. I wouldn’t treat marriage like a lease. Ever. ~ Tarryn Fisher,

492:I'm so wrapped up in my work that it's often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this. ~ Jim Carrey,

493:There are four stages to marriage. First there's the affair, then there's the marriage, then children, and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce. ~ Norman Mailer,

494:wasn’t just the past you walked away from in a divorce; you walked away from your future as well. Everything you’d expected from life was changed. She didn’t want to start over. ~ Victoria Helen Stone,

495:Why do you read all the details of divorce cases in the newspapers? ... you are enjoying it. You would not dream of doing these things yourself, but you are doing them by proxy. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones,

496:Your old man sent me anonymous letters himself to make me divorce him.” She rippled with he-hes. “I hung on to spite him. I didn’t want him. It’s my only pleasure left.” She laughed. ~ Christina Stead,

497:I'm for gay marriage. I've been married for 14 years. Marriage is not for everybody, it's not easy and divorce is there for a reason. If a gay person wants to get married, get married. ~ Wendy Williams,

498:Bad divorce?" Hardy asked, his gaze falling to my hands. I realized I was clutching my purse in a death grip. “No, the divorce was great,” I said. “It was the marriage that sucked. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

499:The fact is, I am in my third marriage and I do not believe in divorce. But I was half the problem, I guarantee you. More than half the problem. I couldn't negotiate with the other women. ~ James Brolin,

500:to him in legal terms how all that he lived in was coming apart—and the breaking and shattering of all the solid things. His home, his life—all the solid things. Divorce. A breaking word, ~ Gary Paulsen,

501:Victoria summarized it with this last gem, "Look, all I know is that it’s really hard for a couple to ask for a divorce from each other when their genitals are buried in each other’s faces. ~ Luke Young,

502:A decent person does not alienate children from a parent, no matter how angry they are at the parent for the divorce. It's unfair to the children, and it's unfair to the other human being ~ Dennis Prager,

503:Hence, by a series of almost unnoticed changes, allowing ever easier divorce, and ever more blatant neglect of children, the state has overseen the gradual undoing of the marriage vow, to ~ Roger Scruton,

504:Her eyes shot open. “Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity.” She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh. ~ Jojo Moyes,

505:I don't want to say that most rock bands live these formulaic biography existences - but they kinda do. There's always a divorce. There's always an OD. There's always a bad business manager. ~ Dave Grohl,

506:To abandon children, any children, after divorce is to teach them that love is not only conditional, but also circumstantial. Some legacy that is. Divorce is hard enough on children, our ~ Connie Schultz,

507:When Teresa was told that she had lost summers, she made a point to curse and weep, but she wondered silently if she hadn't just been handed the divorce equivalent of a Caribbean vacation. ~ Ann Patchett,

508:A divorce is much like a ten-car pile up. It affects not just two drivers but a whole slew of perimeter vehicles that get caught in the chaos. Not even innocent bystanders come out unscathed. ~ Tez Brooks,

509:Can’t say I miss my husband, though. He turned into a real asshole about this and kicked me out of my house and then filed for divorce. Just because I nailed his brother, and the minister. ~ Mario Acevedo,

510:Marriage is sacred. And the Bible says that God hates divorce. He hates it because he wants better for you. He never intended for you to have a broken marriage of a broken home. He loves you. ~ Glenn Beck,

511:research has shown that many couples entering marriage do not have anything like a clear idea of what generally happens, with respect to either child support or alimony payments, upon divorce. ~ Anonymous,

512:The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population. ~ Denis Diderot,

513:What's going to be hard for me is to try to divorce myself as much as possible from what I wrote. I'll have to approach it simply as raw material and try to craft a film script out of it. ~ Michael Chabon,

514:Surely they would divorce you for it.” “No, why? It would be to lose everything for the man while his wife would lose nothing. In any case, it is not possible. Divorce is a thing of women. ~ Jennifer Blake,

515:Hulk Hogan's wife has filed for divorce. This is the most devastating breakup since Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee. And then Pam Anderson and Kid Rock. And soon, Pam Anderson and Rick Salomon. ~ Chelsea Handler,

516:I found out about Jonathan Winters death a day after it happened. That seems wrong. A talent like his should be more revered. The world knew about Kim Kardashians divorce before she did. ~ Gilbert Gottfried,

517:I never thought in my life, I never really thought I would get married. I watched my parents go through a divorce, and I thought, like, this is just not something people are supposed to do. ~ Ashton Kutcher,

518:People that go through what I went through and people going through divorce, it's really a difficulty process; it's heartbreaking and it hurts really bad. It can really mess with your head. ~ David Arquette,

519:Family, to me, is most important, and I can't wait to have one of my own, but I am not going to rush into it. I don't want to get a divorce. I want to take my time, do it once and get it right. ~ Drew Fuller,

520:Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother "worked" at anything besides raising her children. ~ Joyce Maynard,

521:Sure, I suffered a lot. But it's not like the end of the world and it's not who I am. I lead quite a pleasant life and I'm able to divorce a perceived reality from my actual experience of life. ~ Ben Affleck,

522:An arguing couple spiraling into negativity and teetering on the brink of divorce is actually mathematically equivalent to the beginning of a nuclear war. ~ Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love (2015), p. 104.,

523:I committed to directing 'Catch Me If You Can' not because of the divorce component, but principally because Frank Abagnale did things that were the most astonishing scams I had ever heard. ~ Steven Spielberg,

524:If you raise the bar and offer your best to others then you deserve the same or better. Sometimes you have to divorce people who add no value to your life because they have nothing to offer but drama. ~ Bindu,

525:I'm not convinced about marriage. Divorce is so easy, and that fact that gay people are not allowed to marry takes much of the meaning out of it. Committing yourself to one person is sacred. ~ Natalie Portman,

526:The girl is twenty-five. It has not been very long since her divorce but she cannot remember the man who used to be her husband. He was probably nice. She will tell the child this, at any rate. ~ Joy Williams,

527:Next to me N floats in a parachute of his own design: He wants the divorce; I don´t. He pushed me; I fell. I plummet; he pulls the ripcoard and feels a refreshing lack of weight or gravity. ~ Suzanne Finnamore,

528:Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England "American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers ~ W Somerset Maugham,

529:Years later I would hear my father say the divorce had left him dating his children. That still meant picking us up every Sunday for a matinee and, if he had the money, an early dinner somewhere. ~ Andre Dubus,

530:Divorce is never a pleasant experience. You look upon it as a failure. But I learned to be a different person once we broke up. Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success. ~ Michael Crawford,

531:Divorce isn’t supposed to happen, but it does, and no one really knows how to deal with it. It frees you of one thing while imprisoning you with a thousand others. Life isn’t even remotely fair. ~ Tarryn Fisher,

532:Divorce is war and unfortunately, some parents live in constant entanglements with their ex-spouses and they shift aside the issues that post-divorce can leave on the shoulders of their children. ~ Diane Greene,

533:It's more likely in America that your parents will file for bankruptcy than divorce. We think of divorce as so prevalent, but we all know that happens because somebody moves out of the house. ~ Elizabeth Edwards,

534:That’s right, you got a divorce. You remarried— what about your present husband?” “He died last year.” “You go through ’em,” Nicolet said. “What kind of work did he do?” “He drank,” Jackie said. ~ Elmore Leonard,

535:There are people that regardless of what it is, if it's something that's stressful, whatever it may be, they don't eat, they lose a lot of weight, a divorce, they get real thin. I'm the opposite. ~ Janet Jackson,

536:Would you go into a relationship planning the breakup? Would you write the prenup on a first date? Would you meet with a divorce lawyer the morning of your wedding? That would be ridiculous, right? ~ Jason Fried,

537:I don't have any jokes about my divorce or my ex-husband, who is a lovely person. It really is about how I was an idiot trying to push this guy to get married when I wasn't even sure if I wanted to. ~ Jen Kirkman,

538:In one of my plays, honestly I forget with one, I wrote that relationships only end in one of two ways: They end in divorce or they end in death. Ironically, death is the happier ending. (Mac) ~ Marshall Thornton,

539:look back at those huge obstacles—such as illness, accidents, addiction, financial loss, children’s struggles, and divorce—and see in retrospect that they were actually gifts disguised as problems. ~ Wayne W Dyer,

540:Norman Mailer said there were four stages in a marriage: first the affair then the marriage, then children and then finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce. ~ Michael Robotham,

541:They ought to do away with divorce settlements. Instead, both parties should flip a coin. The winner gets to stay where he or she is and keep everything. The loser goes to Paraguay. That´s it. ~ Suzanne Finnamore,

542:wouldn’t get married on her birthday. He wouldn’t do that to the mother of his children, even if the divorce had been finalized two years ago this past April. Nicole made a sound of disgust. “Of ~ Barbara Bretton,

543:You know, I'm allowed to f--king date, I haven't seen this guy in three years. We're in the middle of a divorce. For a woman, she has to wait. For a man, who cares? That's what it's painted as. ~ Khloe Kardashian,

544:Charnay’s journey at Hopkins solidified her commitment to herbal medicine (she now works for a supplement maker in Northern California); it also confirmed her in a decision to divorce her husband. ~ Michael Pollan,

545:Every couple has the same five arguments in their lifetime, which is really just the one, over and over, until people die or divorce. What it is depends on who you are and what your parents did to you. ~ Amy Bloom,

546:You want to walk into that funeral and have every dude in that room whip their head around and say, ‘God-damn them is some fine-ass titties. I got to find me a divorce lawyer in the next five minutes. ~ David Wong,

547:Faith will get in the ditch with you, faith will go in the prison with you, faith will go into divorce court with you, faith will go in the hospital with you, faith will go in the nursing home with you. ~ T D Jakes,

548:If soulmates did exist I am pretty sure they would never divorce you, dump you, kick you out, separate from you or make you an option. They would never give up because you meant that much to them. ~ Shannon L Alder,

549:On the British Royal Divorce (Charles and Dianna). She is such a sad soul. It is good that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow. I know I should preach family love and unity, but in their case. . . . ~ Mother Teresa,

550:What makes divorce happen is that you can't be in the same space any more, for whatever reason - but the love stays. And that's the killer. That's where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from. ~ Dustin Hoffman,

551:Compared to America or Europe, God isn't a big part of our lives here. I don't know anyone here who goes to church when he's had a rough divorce or is going through depression. We go out into nature instead. ~ Bjork,

552:In the Bhāgavatam, Twelfth Canto, it is said that in the Kali-yuga marriage will be based on the consideration of sex life; as soon as there is deficiency in sex life, the question of divorce will arise. ~ Anonymous,

553:The end of a marriage has got to be one of the saddest events one can experience. I’ve heard that the pain [of divorce] is second only to an actual death in the family, and that sounds about right. ~ Danica McKellar,

554:You promised me you would never cheat on me, that you’d love me forever and we would never get a divorce.” “I still love you, and I hate that I cheated on you, and I wish we’d never gotten divorced. ~ Terry McMillan,

555:I think one of my favourite films is 'Dark Victory' with Bette Davis. Why? She was so wonderful in that film. And maybe I just want a good cry once in a while without having to go through a divorce. ~ Debbie Reynolds,

556:Hey, I’m still in my-parents-just-got-a-divorce mode. Remember? This is the time when I’m allowed to question all relationships, wonder if true love exists at all anymore, and swear to a life of celibacy. ~ Kasie West,

557:Immediately after a divorce or a breakup, your mind whispers that there are plenty more fish in the sea, while your heart shouts that there is only one whoever-you-just-divorced-or-broke-up-with. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,

558:People do not get married planning to divorce. Divorce is the result of a lack of preparation for marriage and the failure to learn the skills of working together as teammates in an intimate relationship. ~ Gary Chapman,

559:We cannot divorce what we are producing from what we are. We create technology out of the vision we have of ourselves. If we are blind in our conception of ourselves we will create a blind technology. ~ Shirley MacLaine,

560:And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know. ~ Vince Gill,

561:Divorce is not just about the separation of two individuals. It’s the separation of families. A drawing of lines, never to be crossed. My family is now solely mine. Your family is yours. His family is his. ~ Janis Thomas,

562:For those who believe in the quote, Laughter is the best medicine and are looking for a divorce quote on the lighter side, the following divorce sayings range from mildly humorous to outrageously funny: ~ Pamela Anderson,

563:A 99-year-old man is filing for divorce from his 96-year-old wife, making them the world's oldest divorced couple. It's got to be weird when a divorce lawyer is fighting for your kids to get custody of you. ~ Jimmy Fallon,

564:I can usually tell when a woman is going through a divorce because they look so gaunt and tired and sad. It's just a huge sadness. It's horrible. It's like death. You mourn, but the person's still there. ~ Andie MacDowell,

565:I stayed away from you because I figured you would have moved on. But you’re not happy. I can see it plain as day. Give me a chance?” I looked to the table. “No. I want a divorce.” “You won’t get one. ~ Devney Perry,

566:On the news two dozen events of fantastically different importance are announced in exactly the same tone of voice. The voice doesn't discriminate between a divorce, a horse race, a war in the Middle East. ~ Doris Lessing,

567:A new study found that women gain more weight after marriage, but men gain more weight after a divorce. Yeah, the divorce usually takes place after men point out that women gained more weight after marriage. ~ Jimmy Fallon,

568:Cal and I had both predicted that Brizzey would marry young, divorce, then elope with some European slob with a fake title. She was doomed to run around Greenwich, forcing everyone to call her "the Duchess. ~ Amber Dermont,

569:I am what is known as a benched Catholic and disillusioned by the church doctrine. I believe in things the Catholic Church does not believe in: divorce being one, and a women's right to choose being another. ~ Kitty Kelley,

570:Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure. ~ Joseph Heller,

571:Conner moaned a long weary sound under his breath. He had almost forgotten about the young troll queen who had been madly in love with him since they met. “Gosh, I hope divorce exists in this world,” he said. ~ Chris Colfer,

572:In the bible homosexuality is condemned, but along with divorce and greed and callousness toward poor people. So its elevation to a highest priority among some religious groups has been very disturbing to me. ~ Jimmy Carter,

573:I think every person deserves two marriages, because you may not get the first one right. You really never knew. That's why divorce is so big. We all want it to last, but that's not always the reality of it. ~ Tichina Arnold,

574:I've never met a couple yet who, when they were walking down the aisle, said, 'What we want is three years of happiness, two years of [torment], a messy divorce and 15 years of fighting over custody of the kids.' ~ Wade Horn,

575:But in China, even as rates of divorce have climbed, so much of the culture revolves around family and offspring that 98 percent of the female population eventually marries—one of the highest levels in the world. ~ Evan Osnos,

576:I'm going through a divorce now. This is the second one, and like baseball, I'm not gonna get three strikes. I've been living by myself for five years and I'm very comfortable. I can play my guitar when I want to. ~ Buddy Guy,

577:Marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions whereas when the ratio approaches 1 to 1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce. ~ John M Gottman,

578:I do not believe that there were more happy marriages before divorce became socially acceptable, that people tried harder, got through their rough times, and were better off. I believe that more people suffered. ~ Ann Patchett,

579:Things never got tidied up the minute a couple got divorced. It seemed, from what I’d seen, that the divorce itself was the easiest part and all the real shit is what came afterward, shit that went on for years. ~ Karina Halle,

580:You may not become a celebrity. You may even experience lots of illness or divorce, or unhappiness. But I think there is still a thread of individual character that determines how you live through those things. ~ James Hillman,

581:We as a culture are forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very, very deep connection and contact with nature. You can’t divorce civilization from nature - we totally depend on it. ~ James Balog,

582:If every man would make his prime concern the comfort and well-being of his wife and every wife make her chief concern the comfort and well-being of her husband, we would have very little divorce in the land. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

583:It wasn’t only his business practices that distressed Olivia. Everyone knew that Warren had cheated on his wife—correction, wives. He’d flaunted his affairs until both women had filed for divorce and left town. ~ Debbie Macomber,

584:Suicide is a confession of failure. And like divorce, it is shrouded in excuses and rationalizations spun endlessly to disguise the simple fact that all one's energy, passion, appetite and ambition have been aborted. ~ Al lvarez,

585:Going through a divorce after twenty-five years of marriage was the most difficult time for me. It was challenging to reorient my life from being centered around family, a family home, and a long-term relationship. ~ Tim Matheson,

586:Henry," said Charlotte, who seemed to have recovered from her shock, "if you set yourself on fire deliberately, I will institute divorce proceedings. Now sit down and eat your supper. And say hello to our guest. ~ Cassandra Clare,

587:I was a major fan of people in the industry, I was a major movie fan and I was just thrown into it. I was never a gregarious kind of a young man. I was very frightened. It was difficult to divorce myself from myself. ~ Tab Hunter,

588:The divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it's over. Enough about that. The point is that for a long time, the fact that I was divorced was the most important thing about me. And now it's not. ~ Nora Ephron,

589:The divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it's over. Enough about that.The point is that for a long time, the fact that I was divorced was the most important thing about me.And now it's not. ~ Nora Ephron,

590:1059 True The shoemaker sticks to his last and he's right; By divorce, though, we wouldn't be cursed, If everyone else in this great world of ours Would be willing to stick to his first. ~ Edgar Albert Guest,

591:Henry," said Charlotte, who appeared to have recovered from her shock, "if you set yourself on fire deliberately, I will institute divorce proceedings. Now sit down and eat your supper. And say hello to our guest. ~ Cassandra Clare,

592:I have heard of people's lives being changed by a dramatic or traumatic event--a death, a divorce, a winning lottery ticket, a failed exam. I never heard of anybody's life but ours being changed by a dinner party. ~ Wallace Stegner,

593:Is everything funny? For me, yes. There's a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there's something in there that'll make you laugh. ~ Kevin Hart,

594:An elderly black man with gray hair said, "Every bottle should come with a warning: 'This bottle may cause you to lose your job. This bottle may cause you to get a divorce. This bottle may cause you to become homeless. ~ Akhil Sharma,

595:he predicted, was the “complete extinction” of America: families torn apart by divorce and the young addled by drugs, booze, and sexual “deviance,” leading to wholesale depopulation as reproduction ground to a halt. ~ Shereen El Feki,

596:She edged closer. “If this is your attempt to scare me away because you think I should be with a mortal man, it’s not going to work.” She rolled her eyes. “Been there, done that, have the divorce papers to prove it. ~ Kristen Painter,

597:Besides, everywhere, life is getting longer, marriages fall apart, divorce is a reality that happens even where the law doesn't sanction it. It remains the tradition that women are trusted to take care of the children. ~ Dacia Maraini,

598:I am a divorced child, of divided, uncertain background. Within this division I - supposed fruit of their love - no longer exist. It happened nearly forty years ago, yet to me nothing is sadder than my parents' divorce. ~ Sylvia Kristel,

599:I had a really good childhood up until I was nine years old. Then a classic case of divorce really affected me and I moved back and forth between relatives all the time. And I just became extremely depressed and withdrawn. ~ Kurt Cobain,

600:I wouldn't be surprised if many marriages end in divorce largely because one or both partners are running from their own revealed weaknesses as much as they are running from something they can't tolerate in their spouse. ~ Gary L Thomas,

601:Well … not exactly together. He’d buy a sofa and I’d buy a couple of matching chairs. One has to plan on divorce at all times … still, it was a landmark of sorts. I’d never gotten to the furniture-buying stage before. ~ Armistead Maupin,

602:The sad reality is that when we get married for trivial reasons, we will seek divorce for trivial reasons. We need something much more lasting on which to base a lifelong commitment—one that even has eternal implications. ~ Gary L Thomas,

603:Lovers who are free to go when they are restless always come back; lovers who are free to change remain interesting. The bitter animosity and obscenity of divorce is unknown where individuals have not become Siamese twins. ~ Germaine Greer,

604:The cure for sex is marriage;the cure for love is marriage;the cure for infidelity is divorce;the cure for unhappiness is work;the cure for extreme unhappiness is drink;the cure for death is a frail belief in the afterlife. ~ Julian Barnes,

605:Women would be better off when they no longer needed men more than they needed their own independent identities...How long a time it took me after my divorce to understand that being alone is not the same as being lonely. ~ Alice Steinbach,

606:I didn't expect to be doing a whole bunch of Amber Browns. And because it was just one book, and the father had moved away, I didn't realize I was going to have to deal more with shared custody, divorce and all those issues ~ Paula Danziger,

607:If you hope to play a part in this empire, Sanlitun had told her time and time again, you must learn to divorce your feelings from your face. The world sees what you allow it to see, judges you according to what you reveal. ~ Brian Staveley,

608:Now, your mother and I made a deal when we first got married that if either one of us ever watched the 'wunnerful, wunnerful' Lawrence Welk Show or listened to country music the other one got to get a free divorce. ~ Christopher Paul Curtis,

609:Henry and I have always talked about partnership, working together to make things work. He's always said he'd never divorce. That divorced rich men are inevitably poor men. That any marriage can be fixed, that love fluctuates. ~ Kate Moretti,

610:I see marriage as an operation that sews two people together, and divorce is a kind of amputation that can take a long time to heal. The longer you were married, or the rougher the amputation, the harder it is to recover. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

611:Let's be honest, half the marriages end in divorce. For me, it's never made much sense. I have a girlfriend and I'm not interested in anyone else, but I still wouldn't want to bring the federal and state government into my life. ~ Bill Maher,

612:Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That's an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can't cheat real connection. It's built up slowly. It's about trust and time. ~ Brene Brown,

613:Neither of my parents suffered from the little spooky prejudices that devour the people who know nothing but automobiles and movies and what’s in the ice-box and what’s in the papers and which neighbors are getting a divorce. ~ Thomas Merton,

614:This supposed idyllic society we have is the most confused, warped, addicted society in the history of the world. We are addicted to power, we're addicted to our own image of ourselves, to violence, divorce, abortion, and sex. ~ Martin Sheen,

615:He said that he would sooner kill himself than leave his children.” “And what did you say?” “I said I think that all children do better with happy parents than married parents. I said there’s no stigma about divorce anymore. ~ Caroline Kepnes,

616:Some jobs are worse than actual wives. Ad agency vs. Matrimony, for instance: Even the most capricious and demanding spouse is not going to divorce you for refusing to spend forty hours a week making up lies about toilet paper. ~ P J O Rourke,

617:What is fascinating to me is that divorced people tend to be the least depressing or depressed people I know. They’re all unburdened and cleansed, and the wiser for it. This is the case even if they didn’t initiate the divorce. ~ Mindy Kaling,

618:I thought at the time of my parents' divorce that I was upset by deeper, more profound things and I was just taking it out on the joint custody agreement. But that disruption was bad enough. That was a huge deal for a teenager. ~ Noah Baumbach,

619:Women enjoyed rights in Egypt they would not again enjoy for more than 2,000 years. They owned ships, ran vineyards, filed lawsuits, practiced medicine. Their husbands supported them after divorce. Their power was unprecedented. ~ Stacy Schiff,

620:The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. ~ Anthony Burgess,

621:The cure for sex is marriage; the cure for love is marriage; the cure for infidelity is divorce; the cure for unhappiness is work; the cure for extreme unhappiness is drink; the cure for death is a frail belief in the afterlife. ~ Julian Barnes,

622:I get sick of that old rationalization, "We're staying together because of the children." Kids couldn't be more miserable living with parents who can't stand each other. They're far better off if there's an honest, clean divorce. ~ Johnny Carson,

623:Men cheat. They lie. They love porn. The don't respect you and don't care if they hurt you. It's the fucking breaks. Women divorce 'em 'cause we can't tame 'em or train 'em or control 'em like we do household pets. End of story. ~ Terry McMillan,

624:Somewhere within the concept of justice, the worst of the guilty must always be removed. I cannot divorce this, not completely. The people must have justice and so I want to reinstate and enshrine the blessed and holy guillotine! ~ Roseanne Barr,

625:There are not many writers who would mention their divorce lawyer in the acknowledgments, but mine deserves special recognition. Farhana Shazady fought fiercely for my rights. Thank you for teaching me to value myself again. ~ Lindsey Fitzharris,

626:For a time after my divorce everything began to seem profoundly ironic to me. I found myself thinking of other peoples' worries as sources of amusement and private derision which I thought about at night to make myself feel better. ~ Richard Ford,

627:God loves you simply because He has chosen to do so. He loves you when you don't feel lovely. He loves you when no one else loves you. Others may abandon you, divorce you, and ignore you, but God will love you always. No matter what! ~ Max Lucado,

628:In the late twentieth century we consider solitude our natural condition. Mates divorce, and even friendship is diagnosed as a disorder - co-dependency. So the concept of living a life interlocked with another human is unthinkable ~ Penn Jillette,

629:I just understand... I mean this may sound kind of bigheaded, bullheaded, or cumbersome, but when people say they've had a really deep experience with the record, like it caused a divorce or it like...I've gotten all these stories. ~ Justin Vernon,

630:I'm not a person who I ever thought would do well with divorce. Not that it can't happen. I just didn't want that. So I waited a long time to meet the right person. Then I finally met someone that I was willing to be divorced from. ~ Albert Brooks,

631:In ancient times people mistook us for gods, but we peculiars are no less mortal than common folk. Time loops merely delay the inevitable, and the price we pay for using them is hefty—an irrevocable divorce from the ongoing present. ~ Ransom Riggs,

632:One good thing I'd like to say about divorce is that it sometimes makes it possible for you to be a much better wife to your next husband because you have a place for your anger; it's not directed at the person you're currently with. ~ Nora Ephron,

633:When woman work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework. ~ Sheryl Sandberg,

634:I would like to believe that most people don't get married anticipating divorce. When I reached that crossroad, I felt like such a failure. After years of therapy together, I realized that staying together was emotionally destructive. ~ Regina King,

635:Jennifer Lopez has been very much in the news because of her divorce from Marc Anthony, also a top singer, a top player in Latin music, her joining the cast of judges on "American Idol." But the music has not been at the forefront. ~ Jennifer Lopez,

636:The Bible is a love story that begins with a divorce. Everything from the third chapter of Genesis through the end of Revelation is the story of a betrayed lover wooing us back into His arms so we can enjoy the love of family forever. ~ Larry Crabb,

637:Three factors--the belief that child care is female work, the failure of ex-husbands to support their children, and higher male wages at work--have taken the economic rug from under that half of married women who divorce. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild,

638:Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood. ~ Tess Gerritsen,

639:People are still people, and they make their decisions based on their life experiences and their beliefs. You really can't divorce the two. It's important to fight against stereotypes and oversimplifications in very complex people. ~ Benjamin Walker,

640:Disagreements over money are the biggest cause of divorce." She waved her hand. "Absolutely no problem. Your money is our money. My money is my money." She wrote away. "I should make you negotiate with Phoebe. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips,

641:I divorce myself from listeners who aren't tolerant of humor. I did notice universally that, especially when it comes to weight, people look in the mirror and get the angle just right, tell themselves it's all right, and then they go out. ~ Ben Folds,

642:With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish. ~ Vince Gill,

643:A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr,

644:if you find one true friend in your life, you're richer than most. If that one true friend is your husband, you're blessed." She paused. "And if that one true friend is your sister, don't feel bad. At least, she can't divorce you. ~ Mitch Albom,

645:The groom should not see you in the dress just before the wedding, that’s bad luck. You know what’s worst luck? Is getting married, itself. I’ve read studies. It’s like 2 out of 3 of those end in divorce, sometimes more. 3 out of 2, some. ~ Hank Moody,

646:Divorce is not an issue. That's people's lives! So, I don't like to be too puffed up about the importance of family. It's going to be tough and it changes as time goes by. I don't know. I just don't think it should be made an issue. ~ Martha Wainwright,

647:For every veteran who goes through a divorce, a wife goes through one, too. For every veteran alone in the basement, there is a wife upstairs, bewildered, isolated and in despair from the dark clouds of war that hangs over family life. ~ Karl Marlantes,

648:If success could heal, why do so many celebrity marriages end in divorce and celebrated artists wind up in rehab or the morgue? Why do people with a firm grip on the world's tail take their own lives or pursue suicidally risky behaviors? ~ Peter Coyote,

649:There was something about being a child of divorce...I'd always felt somehow responsible for everyone's mood. If I was cute and cheerful enough, I believed, everyone would be happy. If they weren't, clearly I wasn't trying hard enough. ~ Kristan Higgins,

650:The truth is, the notion that gay marriage is harmful to marriage, is sort of mind-boggling, because these are people trying to get married. But it seems to me, if you want to defend marriage against something, defend it against divorce. ~ Cokie Roberts,

651:For a time after my divorce everything began to seem profoundly ironic to me. I found myself thinking of other peoples' worries as sources of amusement and private derision which I thought about at night to make myself feel better. ~ Richard Ford,

652:I've never had a divorce, but I've seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can't write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I'm able to kind of express it, or their joy. ~ Dolly Parton,

653:Better to be looked over than overlooked. You want to walk into that funeral and have every dude in that room whip their head around and say, ‘God-damn them is some fine-ass titties. I got to find me a divorce lawyer in the next five minutes. ~ David Wong,

654:We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents. ~ Rick Riordan,

655:I can't imagine having a real personal thing, like divorce and marriage, all those things, being in the public eye. I try to not talk about anything personal, and then nobody has the fire to throw back at you, like 'You said this back then!' ~ Kirsten Dunst,

656:Oh, quite so. Count them both in as possibles. She for jealousy. He for his career. Divorce would have dished that. Not that divorce means as much as it used to, but in his case it would have meant the antagonism of the Kidderminster clan. ~ Agatha Christie,

657:Catholicism is a really mean religion, and it's incredibly hypocritical. But it plays a role in my life 'cause you can't really get a lot of things out of your head, such as what Jesus Christ looks like and that divorce is a horrible thing. ~ Madonna Ciccone,

658:No one justifies lying, cheating, betraying, promise breaking, devastating and harming strangers. But we expect and we tolerate doing this to the one person in the world we promised most seriously to be faithful to forever: we justify divorce. ~ Peter Kreeft,

659:Our own statistics about violence, depression, drug abuse, divorce, and crime indicated that although ours was one of the wealthiest societies in history, it may also be one of the least happy societies. Why would we want others to emulate us? ~ John Perkins,

660:Never run away with the idea that it doesn't matter much what we believe or think; it does. What we believe and think, we are; not what we say we believe and think, but what we really do believe and think, we are; there is no divorce at all. ~ Oswald Chambers,

661:Serena is full of advice, about everything from how to cure thrush, how to survive a divorce, how to write novels. She feels that if she knows things others don't it is her duty to pass them on. Many of her sentences begin with 'Why don't you—?'  ~ Fay Weldon,

662:We're beginning to play God and get into cloning. We give up quickly. Divorce is an easy option. So why not just create your own mate? Synthesize a human being. You get tired of it, turn it off and put it in the closet like the vacuum cleaner. ~ Lenny Kravitz,

663:Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air. The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands. ~ Amy Poehler,

664:Miranda,” he said. “How long has it been?” This seemed to her a silly question. She’d assumed, she realized, that everyone remembers the date of their divorce, the same way everyone remembers their wedding date. “Eleven years,” she said. ~ Emily St John Mandel,

665:The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

666:Jesus—for example, his categorical rejection of divorce, or his statement that “if anyone does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)? ~ Elaine Pagels,

667:The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman's aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild,

668:Will you be wanting to contest the divorce?" I asked Mrs. Davis. "I should think not," she said calmly, "although I suppose on of us should, for the fun of the thing. An uncontested divorce always seems to me contrary to the spirit of divorce. ~ Donald Barthelme,

669:This idea that the employment of women, the movement of women outside the home into the work world, and their demand for equality is somehow responsible for increasing juvenile delinquency or the increase in divorce rate, is just so much bullshit. ~ Betty Friedan,

670:Ask any single parent whether they’d like an extra set of hands around the house and they’d take it.” They’d take it if it weren’t the set of hands belonging to the rat bastard who asked for a divorce the same day the pregnancy test read positive. ~ Jennifer Coburn,

671:But things were changing. Everywhere one looked the boundary between the moral and the wicked seemed to be degrading. Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued in favor of divorce. Clarence Darrow advocated free love. A young woman named Borden killed her parents. ~ Erik Larson,

672:I have found consolation, for example, in C. S. Lewis's depiction in The Great Divorce of hell as a place that people choose, and continue to choose even when they end up there. As Milton's Satan put it, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. ~ Philip Yancey,

673:I swallowed. “Mum, you’re not going to get divorced, are you?” Her eyes shot open. “Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity.” She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh. ~ Jojo Moyes,

674:All of that should have sent me running in the opposite direction, but I felt only intrigued, and then dazzled by his hunger for me, and the desperation we felt trying to be together when it was impossible. His wife, Marcelle, wouldn’t grant a divorce. ~ Paula McLain,

675:The WWII generation shares so many common values: duty, honor, country, personal responsibility and the marriage vow " For better or for worse--it was the last generation in which, broadly speaking, marriage was a commitment and divorce was not an option ~ Tom Brokaw,

676:Once you get to your forties or fifties in this society, very few people haven't had at least one body blow - financial, bankruptcy, divorce, relationship disaster, addiction, trouble with a child, trouble with a parent. Most people take some blow. ~ Marianne Williamson,

677:there is no evidence that we are genetically driven to find sexual love with the same person for our entire lives. Our genes want someone; they don’t care whom. This truth is evident in the high divorce rate and the almost equally high remarriage rate, ~ William Glasser,

678:This is the moment too many couples struggle in vain to avoid or ignore—even to the point of choosing bitter divorce and fractured family over the daunting task of confronting the sky together, with all the “confident girders” behind them in the past. ~ Christopher Ryan,

679:By this means we presume we have established for ever, a true and legitimate marriage between the Empirical and Rational faculty; whose fastidious and unfortunate divorce and separation hath troubled and disordered the whole race and generation of mankind. ~ Francis Bacon,

680:I always worry that people are going to be very confused; sometimes timelines get confused with how movies get made. So when I say, "Oh, I made this movie when I was going through a divorce," people think, "Oh no! She's pregnant with a child and divorced?" ~ Jenna Fischer,

681:It's important to prepare audience for the worst in life. People come to forget their problems, and it's my job, right before I leave, to go, "Don't forget: You're going through a divorce and there's a recession." It's always good to end on a pensive note. ~ Eugene Mirman,

682:Some things happened and some other things didn’t, and at one point I found I’d gone to a place where I married Jascha. Pyotr Frankis had been right: life was funny. It was also reasonably good and so was the relationship. And after the divorce, I got a job. ~ Pat Cadigan,

683:The base has chosen or is choosing a candidate that the establishment says is absolutely unacceptable. And what that means is this marriage of an elite, big business-backed establishment and a blue-collar, downwardly mobile base has really come to a divorce. ~ Mara Liasson,

684:But a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will. ~ John Steinbeck,

685:I sort of feel sorry for gays being the last ones at the sexual revolution window. We've had liberalizing rules on divorce. We've had the sexual revolution. We've had, you know, the pill, and burning bras and rampant premarital sex and polymorphous perversity. ~ Ann Coulter,

686:Long gone are the days when I am content with a bunch of people who sing loud, don’t divorce, and give to missions. I now want to know I can drop off any member of my church in a city and that person could grow in Jesus, make disciples, and start a church. My ~ Francis Chan,

687:If two people truly have feelings for one another then they don’t have an affair. They get a divorce and they sort out their feelings. You are accountable for the people you hold hostage in a marriage when your mind and heart refuse to fully commit to them. ~ Shannon L Alder,

688:Parizeau had initially planned to go into the referendum with a harder question, one that would not have involved a future association with Canada. What the premier had in mind was a divorce, pure and simple, possibly, but not necessarily, on amicable terms. ~ Chantal H bert,

689:I said what do you mean by his country? A flag someone invented two hundred years ago? The Bench of Bishops arguing about divorce and the House of Commons shouting Ya at each other across the floor? Or do you mean the T.U.C. and British Railways and the Co-op? ~ Graham Greene,

690:Make no mistake, what’s yours is mine. I don’t need a legal document to make me feel any safer in our marriage. If you decide to divorce me and rake me over the coals, I’m not sure any amount of money would ease the pain of losing you. It’s a non-issue for me. ~ Meredith Wild,

691:Open discussions of political and social issues are key to healthy unity. Society works very much like a marriage in the sense that open communication facilitates harmony. In almost all marriages that end in divorce, there is a serious breakdown in communication. ~ Ben Carson,

692:The minute I landed back in Alaska, it was back to hip boots and fish guts. This cultural flipping wasn't easy - especially on top of the post-divorce fighting that was still going on between my parents. But this is why you don't write a memoir at age fourteen. ~ Leigh Newman,

693:Happy endings are absolutely ludicrous, they're not true at all. We see the guy carry the girl across the threshold and everybody lives happily ever after -- that's bullshit. Three weeks later he's beating her up and she's suing for divorce and he's got cancer. ~ Robert Altman,

694:American family life has never been particularly idyllic. In the nineteenth century, nearly a quarter of all children experienced the death of one of their parents.... Not until the sixties did the chief cause of separation of parents shift from death to divorce. ~ Richard Louv,

695:For the first time I realized that perhaps my drinking was getting a bit out of hand, but I knew you’d drink too if you had my stress: recent divorce, new home, new job, didn’t know anyone—and an unacknowledged, progressive disease that was destroying me. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous,

696:The after-school specials of my youth seemed to be dedicated to exploring just these ideas. They brought us the mean boy who really just wanted to be included and the know-it-all girl who was showing off at school to hide her misery over her parents’ recent divorce. ~ Bren Brown,

697:What I think is amazing is not that 85% of people who get married under the age of 25 get divorced, it's that 15% of them stay together. How did they manage to pull that off? You almost can't wait too long. It's the single simplest measure to predict divorce. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

698:Listen, I know your emotions are all over the place—bad divorce, ugly legal problems, major pregnancy… Abby, I love you. I’m not just a guy under the same blanket with a girl. If it wasn’t you, this wouldn’t be happening. God, I hope that doesn’t scare you away.” “Is ~ Robyn Carr,

699:Sixty-three percent of our university students are female. But you still see violations of women's rights in Iran. A Muslim man can have up to four wives. He can divorce his wife without offering any reason, while it is quite difficult for a woman to get a divorce. ~ Shirin Ebadi,

700:I had been through, of course, the divorce and I had been hit with some taxes that really showed me to be careful who's working with you and your money, and you have to be the one that is responsible for your money - you can't trust anyone and I did and I ran into a problem. ~ Nas,

701:about life after divorce. Like you’re walking along as always, sure you’re on the right path, when the path suddenly vanishes, and you’re facing an empty space, no sense of direction, no clue where to go, and you just keep trudging along. That’s what it feels like. ~ Haruki Murakami,

702:A great pollster may have an ideology, but they must divorce it from his or her analysis or raw polling data. That is never to say a poll should cause a candidate to change a heartfelt position. Rather, it is a question of emphasis and deemphasis that must be examined. ~ Roger Stone,

703:I just feel like [creativity] is a reflection of the world around me and I don't think you can divorce yourself from that. So I don't really think in terms of, 'Do you still have it?' Even if I was doing something new, I think I would be engaged in the same process. ~ Antony Hegarty,

704:Stewart, Jr. who was called Stewie Two, graduated from Steering before Garp was even of age to enter the school; Jenny treated Stewie Two twice for a sprained ankle and once for gonorrhea. He later went through Harvard Business School, a staph infection, and a divorce. ~ John Irving,

705:As C. S. Lewis says in The Great Divorce, if in this life you never say to God, “Thy will be done,” then eventually God will say to you for the afterlife, “All right, then thy will be done.” If you want freedom from God, you will quite justly get what you hope for. ~ Timothy J Keller,

706:But for a man, it's different. Like, separation can take years - it can take years to make divorce final. What am I supposed to do during those years? I think that's, you know it's not the *craziest* thing, but it's where a lot of rumors come from. It's frustrating. ~ Khloe Kardashian,

707:I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought u wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else. ~ Mitch Albom,

708:Marriage is always something of a compromise, as I'm sure you're now aware. Any long-term relationship is - and one does have to see it in the long term, Charles. No, I expect your mother and myself will never divorce. It's uneconomic and, at my age, usually unnecessary. ~ Martin Amis,

709:Without financial literacy, divorce rates soar, families rupture, and women stay with abusive men for financial security. A lack of jobs contributes to riots and illegal activity. Name any situation and it goes back to money. We need to focus on poverty eradication. ~ John Hope Bryant,

710:"The Prince Of Tides" is a lot about my mother - what my mother would do after Dad would hit one of the kids or hit two of the kids, hit all the kids, hit her, she would usually get in the car. We'd drive out. She would say, I'm going to divorce him. I'm never going back. ~ Terry Gross,

711:The girl thought of all the leavings a person does over the course of her life. Leaving the womb, growing up and leaving home, letting go of friends, breakups with lovers, divorce, houses packed up and moved out of. She pictured abandoned, grown-out-of-skins everywhere. ~ Ramona Ausubel,

712:When you are a person going through a divorce you feel incredibly alone, yet you are constantly reminded by society of how frequently divorce happens and how common it has become. You aren’t allowed to feel special, but no one understands the specific ways you are in pain. ~ Amy Poehler,

713:With the divorce rate at 53 percent, if you added the number of unhappy marriages that wouldn’t end in divorce because of religious beliefs or sheer stubbornness, which she estimated was running at about 46 percent, only 1 percent of all marriages could be considered happy. ~ Robin Kaye,

714:Arranged marriages are just an effort for you to know that your wife is with you. All religions resist divorce for the simple reason that if divorce is allowed, then the basic purpose marriage was invented for is destroyed. The basic purpose was to give you a companion, a lifelong ~ Osho,

715:Divorce the idea of your being a physical being, and realize that you are above body. But do not let this conception and realization cause you to ignore the body. You must regard the body as the Temple of the Spirit, and care for it, and make it a fit habitation ~ William Walker Atkinson,

716:It's crap, divorce,' he says. 'We tell ourselves the kids are fine, that it's better this way than two unhappy people shouting at each other, but we never dare ask them the truth.' 'The truth?' 'What they want. Because we know the answer. And it would break our hearts. ~ Jojo Moyes,

717:She sometimes wishes she'd paid attention to her aunt's remedies for dispelling a careless curse. Is it when you throw salt over your shoulder? Is it when you spit on the floor? Maybe this is the time you spit on your husband; maybe a divorce is what is called for… ~ Judith Claire Mitchell,

718:You know that recent Supreme Court ruling where a husband can legally murder his wife if he can prove she wouldn't under any circumstances give him a divorce?"   "Yes, the so-called-"   "I don't care what it's called; what matters is that we have a TV ad made up on that already. ~ Anonymous,

719:Divorce is so common and accepted in America that beating myself up over it may sound ridiculous. But I was raised to believe that divorce wasn't an option; to me, divorce equaled failure. I wasn't able to change that equation until I found myself in the right relationship. ~ Trisha Yearwood,

720:in Malibu on weekends. She hadn’t really been looking for a man in the past eleven years. She had accepted her single state after the divorce and made her peace with it. She really didn’t want to be with a man unless she loved him. But at times the companionship of a man was ~ Danielle Steel,

721:My parents never got along super well, but it had grown worse in the last year before he left. Eventually he moved to an apartment on the other side of town, where he stayed for almost five months while the divorce wound its way through the intestinal tract of the county courts. I ~ Dan Wells,

722:This may seem confusing considering the "swing to the right" this country has taken, but raunch culture transcends elections. The values people vote for are not necessarily the same values they live by. No region of the United States has a higher divorce rate than the Bible Belt. ~ Ariel Levy,

723:Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak. ~ Henry Miller,

724:What's really cool is to be able to write music and have people around the world [who are] able to relate to it. They tell you that [your] song helped them get through a divorce or they got married to that song. It makes me want to keep doing that for [myself] and for people. ~ Colbie Caillat,

725:Falling in love is biologically natural; sustaining love is biologically un-natural. Sustaining love requires a learned discipline. The discipline of love. The discipline of understanding our partner. (I've never heard someone say I want a divorce - my partner understands me.) ~ Warren Farrell,

726:In Hollywood everything is so documented. If you go for a drink with somebody, it's passed around the world so quickly. So, yes, divorce is talked about a lot, but it's so much more fun to be able to spin it with dark humour, rather than talk about real people's divorces. ~ Catherine Zeta Jones,

727:He opens his mouth and I want to kill him. I've actually had fantasies of ripping of his head Savannah." The older witch looked at her a long moment. "What?" "Don't do it in front of his Dogs." "Hopefully, I won't do it at all. If things get too bad, I'll divorce him. ~ Ilona Andrews,

728:Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty. ~ Jenny Han,

729:I often say that if you want to really want to understand the contract of marriage just ask anyone who has been divorced. The marriage contract is one of property rights. Or maybe you can look in the bible to see what Adam had to say about divorce since Eve was his second wife. ~ Harvey Fierstein,

730:I think most of us become nicer as we get older, less judgmental, less full of certitude; life tends to knock a few corners of us as we go through. Cancer, divorce, teenagers, and other plagues make us give up on expecting ourselves - or life - to be perfect, which is a real relief. ~ Molly Ivins,

731:She said Robert Joyner had killed himself with a gun. And then I asked why, and then she told me that he was getting a divorce and was sad about it.' 'Lots of people get divorces and don't kill themselves,' I said. 'I know,' she said, excitement in her voice. 'That's what I told her. ~ John Green,

732:The available divorce data show that marital breakdown is now considerably more common in the Bible Belt than in the secular Northeast. . . . The percentages of broken families and unwed mothers remained higher in places like Arkansas and Oklahoma than in New York and Massachusetts. ~ Joe Conason,

733:During the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them; and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanished underground but was sure to bubble up again at one's feet. ~ Edith Wharton,

734:in Divorce American style, there was the discomfort of seeing one of the beautiful wasted actresses of the screen, Jean Simmons. Her suggestions of sensibility - what she embodies - were too fine for the world of that movie. Her presence made the movie she was trapped in seem uglier. ~ Jean Simmons,

735:One of life's great challenges is getting out of your own way after a divorce or breakup... Heartache and anger make you feel like enemies, but your children need you to be a team. Unfortunately, few rise to this challenge, and the children pay an emotional debt they did not incur. ~ Steve Maraboli,

736:We drove up onto the interstate and went toward Spokane, where I had lived once and Arlene had, too, though we didn't know each other then the old days, before marriage and children and divorce, before we met the lives we would eventually lead, and that we would be happy with or not. ~ Richard Ford,

737:In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us. ~ Erica Jong,

738:Not long ago, someone who was dissatisfied with his or her spouse and wanted a divorce had to justify that decision. Today it’s the opposite: If you’re not fulfilled by your marriage, you have to justify staying in it, because of the tremendous cultural pressure to be good to one’s self. ~ Anonymous,

739:The United States, with all her time zones and logos, was the home to so many lonely souls, but none at that particular moment felt such an extraordinary loneliness as Blue Gene Mapother, who felt like someone had just signed the divorce papers that would separate himself from himself. ~ Joey Goebel,

740:Call it the Darwinian contradiction. We come down from the trees and walk upright and what do we get for it? Foot pain! Bad backs! We cease living sexual lives regulated by mating seasons, by hormonal tides or the rotation of the earth and what happens? Marital misery. Divorce. Rape. ~ Jonathan Rosen,

741:Dear Dan, Why is the divorce rate so high? D.A.: It is hard to imagine we can be happy with any decision we make even one year down the road, much less when we look back at our decisions five, ten, twenty, or even fifty years later. Frankly, I am amazed by how low the divorce rate is. ~ Dan Ariely,

742:Divorce was the darkest, saddest place I had ever been. It was a struggle - there were a good four or five months of not being able to get out of bed. It was the worst time in my life. You get through it. It's a process that's not easy, but I get less and less sad about it every day. ~ Ryan Phillippe,

743:I left home as soon as I could, when I was 18. I thought I was in love and got married - the press called it Prince Charming and Cinderella. He was a Hilton so I was the poor little Cinderella. And when I got a divorce nine months later I never told the court why, but he was cruel. ~ Elizabeth Taylor,

744:Some people are cut out to follow a higher being, like God or the hosts of the Home Shopping Network, but there are other people, people like me, who find it harder to follow the whims of parents or teachers or two-thousand-year-old undead Jewish mystics with strong opinions on divorce. ~ Katie Henry,

745:Divorce is one of the loneliest of modern rituals. Before, during, and after the actual culmination of the legal process it is an ordeal that rips people away from their roots, their important relationships, and a part of themselves. There is really nothing like it - except perhaps war. ~ Suzanne Gordon,

746:Mariana had filed for divorce that same day and she’d made arrangements to have hers and Caleb’s things sent up from D.C. rather than traveling back there to collect them. When asked what should be done with the house, she’d told her lawyer to find someone to burn the fucker down. Caleb ~ Sloane Kennedy,

747:His Grace called Virginius in and said: "Do you think a priest of the Anglican Communion should be a divorced man with two wives living?" That's the way he talks. And do you know what Virginius said? He said: "Your Grace, if it weren't for divorce, there wouldn't be an Anglican Communion. ~ Florence King,

748:Radical transparency has an enormous impact on our personal lives. We can no longer share thoughts, quips, photos or personal opinions anywhere on the web without being mindful that they may turn up where we least expect it (notably job interviews, divorce proceedings or public media). ~ Simon Mainwaring,

749:Divorce was emotionally traumatic for me. It was the death of a dream. I was in fairytale land, and the reality of it wasn't so. But I don't really like talking about it anymore, because it feels like a thousand lifetimes ago, and also it makes me look desperate, like I need it for attention. ~ Katy Perry,

750:God’s true love pretty much nullifies dating as we know it. . . . It seems that dating as we have come to know it doesn’t really prepare us for marriage; instead it can be a training ground for divorce. We cannot practice life-long commitment in a series of short-term relationships. ~ Joshua Harris,

751:In 1975,Bob Dylan was almost 10 years past his prime - and then he released the best album of his career, Blood on the Tracks. Written and recorded amid a painful divorce, Blood on the Tracks is proof that heartbreak makes great art - just as many of the albums that followed were the opposite. ~ Bob Dylan,

752:On blogs, I read about parents terrified of seeking divorce for fear that they will lose their children to a more religious spouse. And it’s not only among the ultra-Orthodox. I hear about a Modern Orthodox husband suing his ex-wife for full custody because she wasn’t sufficiently observant. ~ Tova Mirvis,

753:Let me remind you, this is a community property state, Josh. And let me also remind you that hiding assets during a divorce is a serious offense! Oh, wait! But you’re a lawyer, so I guess you already knew that. Too bad you won’t be able to plead ignorance when I take you back to court!” Josh ~ Laura Griffin,

754:Life actually is this mystery and gift. And every moment of it can be full of real radical joy and wakefulness. And for some reason in our most difficult times, we have the best chance to wake up. Many people will tell you that their divorce or illness or loss of job was the wake up call. ~ Elizabeth Lesser,

755:Poor Hollywood! These things happen all over the world but what a great backdrop to have Hollywood in our movie. No, but I know people who divorce a lot....and have really nice houses. But I didn't model the character on anyone in particular. And if I did, I would never tell the name. ~ Catherine Zeta Jones,

756:Myron nodded. “The hotel on Route 80? Maybe five miles from here?” “Right. My source doesn’t know what it was for or what ended up on it. He just knows the work was for the Downing divorce. He also confirmed the obvious: this thing is usually done to catch a spouse in flagrante delicto.” Myron ~ Harlan Coben,

757:There will be gay couples; it will exist. It is not very nice that people who are married - who divorce in three seconds - don’t want protection for the others. The legal system should protect everyone, not just the few people who think they are above everybody else because they are married. ~ Karl Lagerfeld,

758:Why Noirmoutier? He wondered as the car sped on and Mélanie hummed to "Let It Be." He had never considered himself a nostalgic person. He had never looked back. But since his divorce he had changed. Relentlessly he had found himself thinking more about the past then the present or future. ~ Tatiana de Rosnay,

759:What about Alys?” asked Wylan. Again Kaz shrugged. “No one is going to believe that girl had anything to do with a financial scheme. Alys will sue for divorce and probably move back in with her parents. She’ll cry for a week, sing for two, and then get over it. Maybe she’ll marry a prince. ~ Leigh Bardugo,

760:When a couple decides to divorce, they should inform both sets of parents before having a party and telling all their friends. This is not only courteous but practical. Parents may be very willing to pitch in with comments, criticism, and malicious gossip of their own to help the divorce along. ~ P J O Rourke,

761:If you have suffered the loss of a family member to chronic disease, if you suffer debilitating seasons of depression, if you have lost your job and livelihood, gone through a divorce that came out of the blue, know that God is not punishing you. He is not waiting for you to do something. ~ Tullian Tchividjian,

762:Now it is firstly a matter of a clean divorce, because citizens and companies need legal certainty. Can there be a new partnership with the United Kingdom one day? All 27 Member States would have to agree to that. And the United Kingdom would first have to reflect on what it wants itself. ~ Jean Claude Juncker,

763:She said Robert Joyner had killed himself with a gun. And then I asked why, and then she told me that he was getting a divorce and was sad about it.' 'Lots of people get divorces and don't kill themselves,' I said. 'I know,' she said, excitement in her voice. 'That's what I told her. ~ John Green,

764:As her thrashing weakened, he considered the mark the noose would leave. Initially, he had wished there would be no mark at all. But he now thought of it as his first gift, a beautiful necklace to signify their bond. Regular people used a ring around a finger. No wonder the divorce rate was so high. ~ Mike Omer,

765:People in close relationships often avoid making their own interests known and instead compromise across the board to avoid being perceived as greedy or self-interested. They fold, they grow bitter, and they grow apart. We’ve all heard of marriages that ended in divorce and the couple never fought. ~ Chris Voss,

766:I have nothing against Sean Penn. I don't even mind that he ended up divorcing Madonna. I mean, I still like Shia LaBeouf even though he chose to star in Transformers, which turned out to be a movie about robots from space. That Talk. Which is just as bad as choosing to divorce Madonna, if you ask me ~ Meg Cabot,

767:Do you think Jock will come after me?” Boy asked when I recounted the whole story back at Soysambu. “Now that he knows about us?” “Why would he? His whole argument has been about keeping up appearances and avoiding gossip. If anything, he’ll make my life harder or dig in more about the divorce.” We ~ Paula McLain,

768:If people really grew up, there would be no crime, no divorce, no Civil War reenactors....it's not like you think it will be, that one day you'll wake up and realize that you've got things figured out. You never figure it out. Ever." - Isabel Spellman attempting to explain growing up to her sister Rae ~ Lisa Lutz,

769:I think that people might watch reality television or what they see played out on media outlets and get ideas. We might be more anesthetized to divorce or bad behavior now because of what we see on television or on postings on TMZ. So it definitely could be filtering in to how we conduct ourselves. ~ Laura Wasser,

770:The fact is, out of all the possible reasons for going bankrupt, only three account for nearly 90 percent of bankruptcy: a job loss, a medical problem, or a divorce. And the fact is that those are exactly the kind of calamities that the bankruptcy courts were designed to help people through. ~ Amelia Warren Tyagi,

771:I know in my own marriage I stayed in it to provide my son with what I thought was a stable background and to give him what I thought was the family life a child should have with two parents. But that isnt always the best way, and it took me taking my son to therapy after the divorce to really see it. ~ Regina King,

772:I totally agree. I hate knowing too much when I'm going to the cinema and watching as a viewer. I don't want to know that the actor has just gone through a divorce. I don't want to know that the person is an alcoholic. It just gets in the way of my pleasure of watching the character on the screen. ~ Keira Knightley,

773:Of Silken Speech And Specious Shoe 896 Of Silken Speech and Specious Shoe A Traitor is the Bee His service to the newest Grace Present continually His Suit a chance His Troth a Term Protracted as the Breeze Continual Ban propoundeth He Continual Divorce. ~ Emily Dickinson,

774:Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes. ~ Ayn Rand,

775:The popular belief that the rate of divorce is the same inside and outside the church is based on a deeply entrenched misunderstanding about the results of several George Barna surveys over the past decades. A misunderstanding that, Mr. Barna told me, he would love to correct in the public’s mind. ~ Shaunti Feldhahn,

776:A lot of the guilt didn't help my drinking at that point. I never expected a divorce to happen in my life particularly, but it just slowly happened. My wife was proud of me, but she hated the business, and for good reason. The spouses get moved, shoved aside, and ignored, and it's just, it's terrible. ~ Dick Van Dyke,

777:I think Dad was just too cheap to afford a divorce, so he splurged on a fancy hotel, someplace that probably has terry-cloth robes and heart-shaped good-night chocolates. Someplace parents like mine will renew their vows and think life can always fell this refreshed, from this anniversary night forward. ~ Tim Federle,

778:We all come from divorce. This is an age of divorce. Things that belong together have been taken apart. And you can't put it all back together again. What you can do, is the only thing that you can do. You take two things that ought to be together and you put them together. Two things! Not all things. ~ Wendell Berry,

779:According to Domino's head of marketing, whose job we are doing for her right now, quote, "it makes it easy for people to ask and receive something that they'll really use." It's cute. What better way to practice for your inevitable divorce than a gift you can easily divide evenly between the two of you? ~ Peter Sagal,

780:Biblically defined marriage is a man and a woman for life, and so anything different than that is not God's ideal whether it be polygamy, whether it be divorce, whether it be a marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. The ideal would be a man and a woman under a covenant of God's blessing. ~ Max Lucado,

781:I have nothing against Sean Penn. I don't even mind that he ended up divorcing Madonna. I mean, I still like Shia LaBeouf even though he chose to star in Transformers, which turned out to be a movie about robots from space. That Talk. Which is just as bad as choosing to divorce Madonna, if you ask me ~ Meg Cabot,

782:This is the violence that captures our fear and attention, even though only 20 percent of all homicides are committed by strangers. The other 80 percent are committed by people we know, so I’ll focus on those we hire, those we work with, those we fire, those we date, those we marry, those we divorce. ~ Gavin de Becker,

783:C. S. Lewis shocked many people in his day when he came out in favor of allowing divorce, on the grounds that we Christians have no right to impose our morality on society at large. Although he would continue to oppose divorce on moral grounds, he maintained the distinction between morality and legality. ~ Philip Yancey,

784:A person can want love all they want, but if they don't figure out who they are and learn to love their own self first, they'll never stay in love. They'll marry for the wrong reasons and divorce five years down the road. Inevitable. How can someone love you for who you are if you don't even know who you are? ~ Anonymous,

785:Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out, we continue to cling to the wreckage with absolute faith in its structural soundness. ~ Esther Perel,

786:But here’s the thing: none of us deserve anything. That’s an illusion we all exist under. What I know now is that even after the divorce I should simply have been grateful for what I had. I should have celebrated my life as it was, imperfections, sadness, and all, and not forensically examined its faults. ~ Gilly Macmillan,

787:The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community. ~ James A Garfield,

788:The roles that men and women play are no longer the standard traditional roles of way back when but are those of two very individual people living their lives. I think it's been a hard transition in society - just take a look at the divorce rate - to figure out what that means now. How do you resolve that? ~ Lisa Edelstein,

789:You can't really divorce women's struggles in the world from women's in the cinema. As long as there's hierarchy it means that women are somehow secondary or second class or less than. That's going to be reflected in movies because films are the most powerful medium to reflect back society's view of itself ~ Sally Potter,

790:God, Agnes has decided, is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. So, They tolerate each other, and take care of the world as best They can. Moving ~ Michel Faber,

791:His first job was to find some rich lady’s pedigree Siamese cat. He managed to run it over on the way to see her. The second job was a divorce case – which you may think is run-of-the-mill until I tell you that the clients were perfectly happily married until he came along… There hadn’t been a third case. ~ Anthony Horowitz,

792:I firmly believe that every six years, a person goes through a serious change. Think about it: At 6, you start school. At about 12, you start hitting puberty. And then it goes on. You start hitting these different mental levels, and people change. I think that's part of the reason the divorce rate is so high. ~ Randy Houser,

793:I sound like an idiot. But what else am I supposed to say? My parents are getting a divorce? I'm practically flunking drawing and literature? My best friend's barely speaking to me and changes the subject when I ask where she was on Saturday night? I think about you all the time and I want your body? ~ E Lockhart,

794:I don't get the obsession with strangers, her first husband, Sol, once said to her, and Frances had struggled to explain that strangers were by definition interesting. It was their strangeness. The not-knowing. Once you knew everything there was to know about someone, you were generally ready to divorce them. ~ Liane Moriarty,

795:In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, 'Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn't understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn't fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn't want it to get any worse. You're the mother of my kids - I don't want to hate you.' ~ Kevin Hart,

796:My parents' divorce was explosive. But as with all things that explode, a clean, flattened area was created. I could see the horizon now. The fights between my parents would be over because they weren't speaking; the tension in the house would be eased because there was no house. The canvas was now clean. ~ Augusten Burroughs,

797:Seeing that the compact of marriage is not done away by divorce intervening; so that they continue wedded persons one to another, even after separation; and commit adultery with those, with whom they shall be joined, even after their own divorce, either the woman with a man, or the man with a woman. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,

798:The divorce rate in 1945 shot up to double that of the prewar years, to 31 divorces for every 100 marriages—or 502,000 in all. Although the divorce rate dropped in 1946 and returned to prewar levels by the early 1950s, its jump in 1945 exposed the rise of domestic tensions in the immediate aftermath of war. ~ James T Patterson,

799:Being a dominatrix, sticking my foot up people's asses for money, necessitated that I divorce myself from any sort of objective perspective on what I was doing. In order to think about things as a writer you have to objectify your experience. I couldn't have been enacting that experience if I was objectifying it. ~ Melissa Febos,

800:From time to time, I'll look back through the personal journals I've scribbled in throughout my life, the keepers of my raw thoughts and emotions. The words poured forth after my dad died, when I went through a divorce, and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are so many what-ifs scribbled on those pages. ~ Hoda Kotb,

801:I'm one of the people that were divorced by 30, which is apparently a growing group... Obviously it's something that affects you forever. It's going to be interesting to see in ten, twenty years what kind of lasting effect young divorce has on the people that are doing it because it's becoming more and more common. ~ Diablo Cody,

802:I've known Emma Watson since she was 9, we've watched each other grow up, formed this sort of brother/sister bond, and suddenly I'm leaning in to kiss her. Well, it felt completely wrong... but, you know, you try to sink into the character and divorce yourself from it. We ended up laughing hysterically afterwards. ~ Rupert Grint,

803:The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time is really the stuff that interests me. ~ Steven Bochco,

804:Oh, you still don’t understand,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’ve fallen in love with her, and I’d like you to give me a divorce as soon as it can be arranged.’ I suppose, with those words, that part of my life–my happy, successful confident life–ended. It was not as quick as that, of course–because I couldn’t believe ~ Agatha Christie,

805:Babe was newly divorced from a Tuxedo Park blueblood (who had hit her on occasion, but that was what makeup was for, Gogs had sternly reminded her when Babe came running home for comfort; funny, though, how vehemently her mother argued for divorce after the blueblood revealed all his money was tied up in trust). ~ Melanie Benjamin,

806:But the truth is you don't always know you're getting a divorce. For years, you're married. Then, one day, the concept of divorce enters your head. It sits there for a while. You lean toward it and then you lean away. You make lists. You calculate how much it will cost. You tote up grievances, and pluses and minuses. ~ Nora Ephron,

807:He spent two decades wandering the wilderness, overmedicated, set upon by the tax man, divorce lawyers, everything but a rain of toads. There were more fights and pills and liquor and car crashes and women and discharge of firearms—accidental and on purpose—than a mortal man could be expected to survive, but he played. ~ Rick Bragg,

808:They should whistle at men in the streets, aid beauty parlors, picket toy manufacturers who produce sexist toys, convert in sizable numbers to militant lesbianism, provide feminist divorce counseling, establish make-up withdrawal centers, adopt their mothers' family names." - The Third World of Women, Partisan Review ~ Susan Sontag,

809:You know, your first album is about really amazing things. Your first album is always about coming of age, first love, first loss, usually you suffer a first loss of someone that you love to death, even, you know, really big life lessons, things you learn from your parents' divorce or from the travels that you took. ~ Brandi Carlile,

810:Bingeing is such an emotionally frenetic activity that no other concerns can exist in the same space. It is a hell that people who are food-sensitive are familiar with; and, because it is known, it is therefore not so terrifying as some of the problems that are outside our control. Problems like divorce, illness, death. ~ Geneen Roth,

811:Bobby and I were married in 1954 and by now we know that anger does not mean "I don't love you" or "I want a divorce." It means, "I am wounded and in need of love, and I feel safe telling you about it because you are my family." Sometimes our behavior with each other is no different from the cry of an unattended baby. ~ Bernie Siegel,

812:In interviews, on the set, talking to people, I'll just start talking about my parents' divorce, and go on and on. My mom's always like, 'You don't have to be that honest. You have to be more fake.' You see some of these actors, they have a permanent smile on their face. How can they do that? It really fascinates me. ~ Agnes Bruckner,

813:Faith is indeed intellectual; it involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you have only knowledge. ~ J Gresham Machen,

814:Single men and women, for instance, generally exercise far more than do married people, although divorce can change that. Men typically exercise more after a marriage ends; women in that situation frequently exercise less. Meanwhile, employed men, even those with desk jobs, usually exercise more than men who are unemplyed. ~ Anonymous,

815:We all come up against our own version of the Red Sea—Seas of Divorce, Debt, Death, Depression, Guilt, Fear, Loneliness or Hopelessness. And hey, if you’re anything like me, you might look around for a boat when God wants to display His glory by parting the Sea instead. Rebecca Lusignolo Devotions for Difficult Days (2006) ~ Anonymous,

816:[Hermogenes] despises God's law in his painting, maintains repeated marriages [almost certainly a reference to remarrying after divorce or perhaps even widowhood, which Tertullian, who became a Montanist, opposed], alleges the law of God in defense of lust [likely same reference], and yet despises it in respect of his art. ~ Tertullian,

817:I've married before and it was no better, and if I divorce Kathy I'll marry again—because as my brainbasher puts it I can't find my identity outside the role of husband and daddy and big butter-and-egg-man wage earner—and the next damn one will be the same because that's the kind I select. It's rooted in my temperament. ~ Philip K Dick,

818:No, I don’t wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven. ~ C S Lewis,

819:There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

820:There must be a divorce! Within the egg of sin there sleeps the seed of damnation! Man, there must be a divorce between you and your sins. Not a mere separation for a season, but a clear divorce. Cut off the right arm; pluck out the right eye, and cast them from you, or else you cannot enter into eternal life. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

821:My mother, whom I love dearly, has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce, step-children, dysfunction, and obfuscation. I've spent most of my adult life attempting to deconstruct that history and separate fact from fiction. ~ Melissa Gilbert,

822:The triumph of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent. ~ Bertrand Russell,

823:Faith is indeed intellectual; it involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you have only knowledge. ~ John Gresham Machen,

824:Once you do embark upon the separation or divorce process, it is very important to remember three key things: Be kind, be reasonable, be brief. Remember that this person will no longer be your spouse, but he or she will continue to be your co-parent, family member and perhaps business partner in certain assets or entities. ~ Laura Wasser,

825:Our motivation is simple: if we were starting from scratch, no sane person could possibly devise the existing system, which is so full of confusion and arbitrariness that in many states, even experienced divorce lawyers often have no idea how disputes are likely to come out. ========== Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, ~ Anonymous,

826:The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status. The Quran prescribes some degree of segregation and veiling for the Prophet’s wives, but there is nothing in the Quran that requires the veiling of all women or their seclusion in a separate part of the house. ~ Karen Armstrong,

827:I really try to divorce myself from any thought of possible use of this stuff. That's part of the discipline. My only purpose while I'm working is to try to make interesting photographs, and what to do with them is another act - an alter consideration. Certainly while I'm working, I want them to be as useless as possible. ~ Garry Winogrand,

828:There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

829:Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen. ~ Iris Murdoch,

830:I UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE READ SO MANY BOOKS ON DIVORCE. When you are a person going through a divorce you feel incredibly alone, yet you are constantly reminded by society of how frequently divorce happens and how common it has become. You aren’t allowed to feel special, but no one understands the specific ways you are in pain. ~ Amy Poehler,

831:When I wrote 'The Giver,' it contained no so-called 'bad words.' It was set, after all, in a mythical, futuristic, and Utopian society. Not only was there no poverty, divorce, racism, sexism, pollution, or violence in the world of 'The Giver'; there was also careful attention paid to language: to its fluency, precision, and power. ~ Lois Lowry,

832:I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If you are ill or going through a trial like a divorce or a loss, you did not manifest it. You did not attract it. It is not punishment or payback. You do not deserve to be sick or unhappy. It is not your fault. You deserve to heal. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to feel whole. ~ Anthony William,

833:Later, when I started to date, when I would go to girls’ houses and their mothers and fathers would ask, “What do your parents do?” I’d say, “They’re divorced,” as though it were a full-time job. They’d look at me, instantly dismissive, as though I too was doomed to divorce, as though domestic instability was genetically passed down. ~ A M Homes,

834:My dad got divorced six times. Well, he actually only got divorced five times. He wouldn't divorce the sixth one 'cause he said he didn't want people to think he couldn't commit. 'I don't want people not taking me serious.' Dad, your last marriage was performed in Reno by an ordained lesbian Elvis impersonator. Who you hit on. ~ Christopher Titus,

835:Why did we divorce? I guess you could say we had trouble synchronizing. You know that carnival ride where two cages swing in opposite directions, going higher and higher until they go over the top? That was us. We passed each other all the time, but we never actually stopped in the same place until it was time to get off the ride. ~ Diane Hammond,

836:You need a clear, legitimate excuse for why you're behind [the bankruptcy], such as a layoff, divorce, or medical emergency. Be prepared to back up the circumstances with supporting documents. Anything you have to substantiate your story - including proof that you have, for instance, been actively looking for a new job - will help. ~ Jean Chatzky,

837:The truth of the gospel is intended to free us to love God and others with our whole heart. When we ignore this heart aspect of our faith and try to live out our religion solely as correct doctrine or ethics, our passion is crippled, or perverted, and the divorce of our soul from the heart purposes of God toward us is deepened. The ~ John Eldredge,

838:Everyday, you get home from the shops with a bag of cat food and bin-liners and realise that, yet again, you failed to have cosmetic surgery, book a cheap weekend in Paris, change your name to something more glamorous, buy the fifth series of The Sopranos, divorce your spouse, sell up and move to Devon, or adopt a child from Guatemala. ~ Lynne Truss,

839:He sighed, breaking the eye contact. “I just wanted you to know why I’m cautious. When the divorce was final, I swore I’d never let another woman into my heart. Love made me weak.” He forced himself to look her in the eyes. “I’ve never met anyone like you, and today, I would’ve died for you and wouldn’t have regretted it for a second. ~ Lisa Kessler,

840:Saying “I’m fine” to keep the peace, when we’re really not fine, isn’t honest. It may seem godly in the moment, but it’s false godliness. Truth and godliness always walk hand in hand. The minute we divorce one from the other, we stray from soul integrity and give a foothold to the instability that inevitably leads to coming unglued. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

841:The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me. ~ Sebastian Junger,

842:Oh, I play this rather defeated father and husband who's going through a divorce.' 'You!' the actor is unable or unwilling to hide the contempt, outrage and disapproval in his voice. 'What the hell would you know about that?' I grin tightly and move on. So I should be playing nothing but celibate gay men? Is that how acting works? ~ Stephen Fry,

843:Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces - no communication, adultery, divorce? You can't do it, not if you're being true and honest with yourself. ~ Julian Lennon,

844:When people meet you, I guarantee they're not thinking, There goes a divorced woman. They may see a tired woman, a hurt woman. But divorce isn't a banner or a badge you carry. It's not who you are; it's just a piece of your story. And it's not where the story ends... This is not your defining. It is your refining. ~ Denise Hildreth Jones,

845:But that's just the thing thought. Family isn't something that is supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else. Even that picture of James’s family was only the true representation for that day. By the next, something has probably changed. It had to. ~ Sarah Dessen,

846:Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists, for instance, take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority, then we would be more open to slavery, to the subjugation of women, to wider use of stoning. Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms. ~ Jon Meacham,

847:Rebound guys are the best." "They are?" "They never even think of getting serious, because everyone knows you don't jump into a relationship right after a divorce. They just want to be your welcome wagon when you start having sex again. It's your time to experiment, girl!" "The world is my petri dish," I said, raising my drink. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

848:As for me, I'm modern and traditional at the same time. I, too, believe in intimacy—who doesn't? But I also believe in commitment. Marriage is, as she says, "a peculiar institution." My parents' divorce made it clear what kinds of raw deals are brokered at the altar. But right now, in America, marriage is the closest thing to what I want. ~ Tayari Jones,

849:He’s that guy that’s so tired from work, so stressed about the project he’s working on. He’s just been through an awful breakup and it’s really hitting him hard. His parents’ divorce has scarred him and he has trust issues. Right now he has to focus on his career. He can’t get involved with anyone until he knows what his life is about. He ~ Greg Behrendt,

850:my mom, and she’s totally cool with it… Look she’s still going through a hard time right now—divorce. My dad’s basically a dick who cheated on her. So, if she’s, like, depressed or just staring at the pool like a zombie or something, it’s because of that." As they crossed the state line into Florida, Rob said, "And no thinking about Natalie. ~ Luke Young,

851:The feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. ~ Albert Camus,

852:In 1980, evangelicals overwhelmingly elected a candidate who was a known womanizer when he was in Hollywood. He would be the first divorced president in U.S. history. His name was Ronald Reagan. And when evangelicals voted for Reagan, they weren't endorsing womanizing. They weren't endorsing divorce. They were endorsing Reagan's policies. ~ Robert Jeffress,

853:A Muslim man can have up to four wives. He can divorce his wife without offering any reason, while it is quite difficult for a woman to get a divorce. The testimony of two women is equal to that of one man. Any woman who wishes to travel needs the written permission of her husband. And the number of unemployed women is four times that of men. ~ Shirin Ebadi,

854:The best parent is both parents" means mommy is no substitute for daddy, money is not substitute for daddy, and another man is no substitute for daddy. Just as daddy is no substitute for mommy, money is no substitute for mommy, and another woman is no substitute for mommy. Divorce does not change that. The best parent is still both parents. ~ Warren Farrell,

855:I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter what happened, I still had my family, or at least the remnants of a family ripped apart by divorce and then glued back together in various odd arrangements through a series of ill- advised remarriages. It was good to know I had a solid foundation. ~ Bill Bryson,

856:You stopped loving me. We're a sick, fucking toxic Möbius strip, Amy. We weren't ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves - surprise! - we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way. You don't even really love me, Amy. You don't even like me. Divorce me. Divorce me, and let's try to be happy. ~ Gillian Flynn,

857:Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain. ~ Barbara Kingsolver,

858:I shouldn’t use the word ‘car’, because this isn’t a car, it’s a minivan. A big, safe, screams it’s-for-a-family vehicle. I obviously got this in the divorce settlement, while he drives around in his new Mercedes, which is not for families. It’s for cheating bastards who only get their kids every other weekend and once during the week. Making ~ Natasha Madison,

859:This is a difference between nuclear weapons and bayonets. It is not in the number of people they can eventually kill but in the speed with which it can be done, in the centralization of decision, in the divorce of the war from political processes, and in computerized programs that threaten to take the war out of human hands once it begins. ~ Thomas C Schelling,

860:Eastern mysticism embraced both the tangible and the intangible, through the yin and yang of duality. The god Shiva was both the creator and the destroyer of worlds; indeed, one aspect of the deity Nishkala Shiva was the Shiva “without parts”—the void. Through their ability to divorce numerals from physical reality, the Indians invented algebra. ~ Chris Anderson,

861:If every husband and every wife would constantly do whatever might be possible to ensure the comfort and happiness of his or her companion, there would be very little, if any, divorce. Argument would never be heard. Accusations would never be leveled. Angry explosions would not occur. Rather, love and concern would replace abuse and meanness. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

862:...I have always felt as thought we are all made for deep relationship. I don't mean this in a prudish, judgmental way, but in the sense that whenever we do give up easily on people, or have one-night stands, or divorce, especially on a whim, it's no wonder we feel empty inside, even if we don't want to admit it. We seem 'wired' for so much more. ~ Carolyn Weber,

863:Abortion is the insurance against that fate worse than death which is called a family. Our no-fault insurance has removed our responsibility for car accidents, and no-fault divorce has removed our responsibility for marriage accidents; why should abortion not be our no-fault sexual insurance policy that removes our responsibility for sex accidents? ~ Peter Kreeft,

864:But now, without leaving home, from the comfort of your easy chair, you can divorce yourself from the consensus on what constitutes “truth.” Each person can live in a private thought bubble, reading only those websites that reinforce his or her desired beliefs, joining only those online groups that give sustenance when the believer’s courage flags. ~ Ellen Ullman,

865:There's no adventure in knowing the outcome of who you're supposed to be with. If everybody did follow this device, and it was supposed to work, then I guess there would be no divorce, no children coming from broken homes and a lot fewer people in therapy. So ultimately society would be functioning at a much higher level. There would be advances. ~ Emma Caulfield,

866:We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce,mind you. And we invented infidelity,too, as well as romantic misery. In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

867:You mean we're going chronological order within each author?" he gasped. "But no one even knows for sure when Shakespeare wrote his plays!" "Well," I blustered, "we know he wrote Romeo and Juliet before The Tempest. I'd like to see that reflected on our shelves." George says that was one of the few times he has seriously contemplated divorce. ~ Anne Fadiman,

868:Ce que j'ai tenté avec Belle de Jour, c'est de montrer le divorce terrible entre le cœur et la chair, entre un vrai, immense et tendre amour et l'exigence implacable des sens. Ce conflict, à quelques rares exceptions près, chaque homme, chaque femme qui aime longtemps, le porte en soi. Il est perçu ou non, il déchire ou il sommeille, mais il existe. ~ Joseph Kessel,

869:In Stage I, divorces were not allowed, so men's [sexual] affairs did not put women's economic security in jeopardy; in Stage II, affairs could lead to divorce, so men's affairs did place women's economic security in jeopardy. We did not want political leaders who would be role models for behavior that would put women's economic security in jeopardy. ~ Warren Farrell,

870:Nothing provides the antidote to narcissism, or the environment for the healthy raising of children, or the way for people to take care of one another, as does the marriage of a man and a woman. And while most divorces are terribly sad, divorce itself no more undermines the institution of marriage than car crashes undermine the institution of driving. ~ Dennis Prager,

871:This is the Marina. This is where you go between the fraternity or sorority house and your first divorce. Look around, except for our waitress, who I guarantee doesn’t live in this neighborhood, it’s all people who are completely self-absorbed without a shred of self-awareness.” “Wow, that’s harsh,” Mike said. “You haven’t served them,” Lily said. ~ Christopher Moore,

872:It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being ... must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. ~ James Baldwin,

873:Divorce Myths: 1. When love has gone out of a marriage, it is better to get divorced. 2. It is better for the children for the unhappy couple to divorce than to raise their children in the atmosphere of an unhappy marriage. 3. Divorce is the lesser of two evils. 4. You owe it to yourself. 5. Everyone's entitled to one mistake. 6. God led me to this divorce. ~ R C Sproul,

874:In New York State they have a strange law that says you can't get a divorce unless you can prove adultery - and it's weird, because the Ten Commandments say 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' But New York State says you have to. Well, finally, what happened was that my wife committed adultery for me. She's always been more mechanically inclined than I have. ~ Woody Allen,

875:The idea that 'preaching the Gospel' has nothing to do with sex and that 'preaching about sex' has nothing to do with the Gospel betrays layers and layers of seriously misguided thinking. When we divorce God's love from sexual love, as Pope Benedict says, 'the essence of Christianity' becomes 'decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life.' ~ Christopher West,

876:There are two kinds of books in the world--the boring kind they make you read in school and the interesting kind that they won't let you read in school because then they would have to talk about real stuff like sex and divorce and is there a God and if there isn't then what happens when you die, and how come the history books have so many lies in them. ~ LouAnne Johnson,

877:Men with high baseline levels of testosterone marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, commit more spousal abuse, and divorce more often. As a man’s marriage becomes less stable, his levels of testosterone rise. With divorce, his testosterone levels rise even more. And single men tend to have higher levels of testosterone than married men.65 The ~ Helen Fisher,

878:Sometimes between lunch and dinner, when there's a lull, Jill and Shaniqua and I will sit around and fantasize about what we'd do if a REAL celebrity walked into the place, like Chad Michael Murray (although we've gone off him a bit since his divorce) or Jared Padalecki, or even Prince William (you never know. He could have gotten his yacht lost, or whatever.) ~ Meg Cabot,

879:love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word. ~ Liane Moriarty,

880:On the plane, an eight-year-old with an excess of testosterone keeps running across my feet. Finally I grab him by his T-shirt and say, very sweetly, 'Listen, darling, if you don't stop trampling me I'm going to make you sit on my lap while I tell you my entire life story. Including a lot of details about drug rehab and my divorce.' He goes back to his seat. ~ Rosanne Cash,

881:Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives’ families. Each extended family lived in a “long house.” When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband’s things outside the door. ~ Howard Zinn,

882:Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best-- well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word. ~ Liane Moriarty,

883:Have any of your clients died?” Ford asked. “Someone you were trying to help?” “Brett,” Jenks said. “Peter?” I blurted out. But the amulet went a negative gray. “Nick,” Jenks said nastily, and the color on the metal disk became a violent shade of purple. Ford blinked, trying to divorce himself from the hate. “I’d say no,” he whispered. ~ Kim Harrison,

884:My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse. ~ Sue Grafton,

885:The victims recede from view. Their rhythm is off, their confidence drained. They’re laden with phobias and made tentative by memory. Divorce and drugs beset them. Statutes of limitations expire. Evidence kits are tossed for lack of room. What happened to them is buried, bright and unmoving, a coin at the bottom of a pool. They do their best to carry on. ~ Michelle McNamara,

886:The world is always changing. Learn how to allow for it. Somone makes a promise, and then they break it. A play gets good notices, and then it folds. A marriage looks strong, and then they divorce. For a while there's no war, and then there's another war. If you get too upset about it all, you become a stupid, unhappy person—and where's the good in that? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

887:every issue that we deal with in this country has a moral component to it. And so, to divorce a moral component to the debt burden we're leaving the next generation, the tax structure to how we spend our money in Washington, and how we - you know, how we value human life - I mean, all of those things, to me interrelate. They're not - they're not separate issues. ~ Rick Santorum,

888:Colin believed that the world contained exactly two kinds of people: Dumpers and Dumpees. A lot of people will claim to be both, but those people miss the point entirely: You are predisposed to either one fate or the other. Dumpers may not always be the heartbreakers, and the Dumpees may not always be the heartbroken." (1) breakup, (2) divorce, or (3) death. ~ John Green,

889:Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word. ~ Liane Moriarty,

890:Some postdivorce statistics: * James saw the children 75 percent less than before. * He missed 85 percent of their afterschool woes. * He was absent for 99 percent of their family dinners. Screw statistics. ONe hundred percent of Charlotte's marriage had ended in divorce, and for her, that was the only number that meant anything at all. ~ Shannon Hale,

891:What happens now is that if some unfortunate man goes to bed with some woman, overnight there's a divorce. He thinks and feels about the authenticity of his being, then they have to get married. So they just end up having serial marriages, which is distressing for the children. It would be much better if people just put up with the guilt of having erred and shut up. ~ Fay Weldon,

892:How can you respect a religion that forces women into polygamous marriages, mutilates their genitals, forbids them to drive cars and subjects them to the humiliation of 'instant' divorce? In fact, none of these practices are Islamic at all. Anyone wishing to understand Islam must first separate the religion from the cultural norms and style of a society. ~ Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood,

893:In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,

894:The big challenge with Aimee was her emotional attachment to much of her stuff. Her "keep” items consisted mostly of things that had belonged to her late mother, who had been her closest friend and a major source of support during a difficult divorce from an abusive man. Aimee came to realize that the trauma of losing her mother had, in fact, triggered her hoarding. ~ Matt Paxton,

895:Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. ~ Jane Austen,

896:pledged to be married. The betrothal period was often a year, and Jewish tradition suggests that couples in Galilee were not left unchaperoned during that time. Betrothal involved a financial agreement between families, and it could be ended only by divorce or death. It concluded with the wedding night, at which point the marriage could finally be consummated sexually. ~ Anonymous,

897:recent studies have debunked the oft-repeated assertion that half of all marriages end in divorce. A closer look at the statistics indicates that a majority of marriages actually last a lifetime. Furthermore, surveys show that the vast majority of married people describe themselves as happy, fulfilled, and unwilling to contemplate any other condition of life.1 ~ R Albert Mohler Jr,

898:Divorce really stinks. It's like going to the store and buying clothes, wearing them for years and years, then returning them and asking for your money back...A store won't buy back a pair of used jeans, so how come people can trade each other in, like it was nothing? If your only pair of jeans is torn, you get a needle and some thread, and you sew them up, right? ~ Neal Shusterman,

899:In divorce cases, this is called “mental torture” or “domination.” Really, it is egocentricity, in which one ego loves itself in the other ego. The I is projected into the Thou and is loved in the Thou. The Thou is not really loved as a person; it is only used as a means to the pleasure of the I. As soon as the other ceases to exhilarate, the so-called love ceases. ~ Fulton J Sheen,

900:After my last divorce, I said I was absolutely going to marry somebody in another field, an aid worker or something. Then I met Brad, everything I wasn't looking for, but the best man, the best father I could possibly wish for, you know? I don't see him as an actor. I see him very much as a dad, as somebody who loves travel and architecture more than being in movies. ~ Angelina Jolie,

901:The bewilderment is the worst part. That’s what they don’t tell you in divorce articles. They talk about anger and loneliness and growing apart and starting over and being kind to yourself, but they don’t tell you about the untold hours in the black hole of why. Why? What changed? When? Why was I the one you chose to marry, but all of a sudden, I’m not enough anymore? ~ Kristan Higgins,

902:There's moments that are very personal in The Divorce. There are moments that are sort of unwatchably vulgar or intimate or pathetic. I even had this conversation with my mom. My mom saw the pilot and she was like, "I just thought that some of it seemed nasty." I'm like, "Mom. You're from a whole different generation. And yeah. There's some nastiness that goes on." ~ Thomas Haden Church,

903:What I know now is that even after the divorce I should simply have been grateful for what I had. I should have celebrated my life as it was, imperfections, sadness, and all, and not forensically examined its faults. Those faults were largely in the eyes of a critical and sharp-edged society anyhow, and I had learned to recognize them by osmosis, by following the herd. ~ Gilly Macmillan,

904:You Operate You operate on the afternoon You perform open heart surgery on the ghosts of your suicidal friends You divorce your parents before you have time to be born You kick out your wife & child You tell your girlfriend to go screw herself This is the solitude you wanted The silence is stitching you up you write ~ Erica Jong,

905:To have a simple, untroubled faith, you must keep your spiritual innocence. That requires avoiding cynicism and criticism. This is the day of the cynics, the critics, and the pickle-suckers. Criticism is the forerunner of divorce, the cultivator of rebellion, sometimes a catalyst that leads to failure. In the Church, it sows the seed of inactivity and finally apostasy. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

906:Ben isn’t hard to manage, but Blix’s wife, Karen, likes the title too much to part with it. He’s made her a baroness.” She sighed. “The whole thing has got rather baroque. Karen and I are friends, or were, in any case. Blix asked her for a divorce and told her he was in love with me, probably thinking it would soften the blow.” She shook her head. “Now she won’t speak to me. ~ Paula McLain,

907:Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. ... You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're 'not at all like yourself but will be soon,' but you know you won't. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,

908:The peace we are offered is not a peace that is free from tragedy, illness, bankruptcy, divorce, depression, or heartache. It is peace rooted in the trust that the life Jesus gives us is deeper, wider, stronger, and more enduring than whatever our current circumstances are, because all we see is not all there is and the last word about us and our struggle has not yet been spoken. ~ Rob Bell,

909:You must try to divorce your actions from conscious control. Try not to focus on anything concrete, visually or mentally. You must let your mind drift, drift; only then you can use the force. You have to enter to a state in which you act on what you sense, not on what you think beforehand. You must cease cognition, relax, stop thinking... let yourself drift... free... free... ~ George Lucas,

910:We see morality in speeches and writings. We do not find it in practice. We are having different regulations for the males and the females. Our code of conduct is unfair to women. Child marriage is abolished. If there is right to divorce, right for widows to remarry and if women are now given certain rights, we will not see prostitution in the country. It will gradually disappear. ~ Periyar,

911:But we all know the power of the passion of love; and I would ask you to remember, gentlemen, in listening to her evidence, that, married to a drunken and violent husband, she has no power to get rid of him; for, as you know, another offence besides violence is necessary to enable a woman to obtain a divorce; and of this offence it does not appear that her husband is guilty. ~ John Galsworthy,

912:"Hit it with the back of your left hand" was the first swing thought I ever heard, brusquely bu not unlovingly put to me by the aunt-in-law who had moments before placed a golf club in my virgin grip. I was twenty-five, and had spent my youth in a cloisterd precinct of teh middle class where golf was a rumoured something, like champagne breakfasts and divorce, that the rich did. ~ John Updike,

913:On another occasion, Amos and I wondered about the rate of divorce among professors in our university. We noticed that the question triggered a search of memory for divorced professors we knew or knew about, and that we judged the size of categories by the ease with which instances came to mind. We called this reliance on the ease of memory search the availability heuristic. ~ Daniel Kahneman,

914:And as we get older, our lenses get more and more narrow and blurrier until we only see our own tiny pin-point view; this limited vision eventually makes bigots of us all. This is why so many marriages fall apart. You meet someone, think that you know them, marry them and then ten years later you divorce them because they turned out not to be who you thought they were. They never were. ~ Ruby Wax,

915:Being a parent is a huge part of who I am, and of course I share that with other women. I'm not just a business woman. I'm my sons' mother and my husband's wife - although I never post about him on social media because he'd probably divorce me if I did! But I think by showing who I am as a mom and as a business owner, I show other women that we're all balancing those two worlds. ~ Elle Macpherson,

916:Tonight the man being liquidated had committed adultery. Caesar understood why The Genesis didn't want that happening. He understood that if left rampant, it could destroy the institution of marriage. He understood that adultery could lead to divorce, and divorce could lead to maladjusted children. He understood that maladjusted children grew up to create more problems of their own. ~ David Beers,

917:Love, marriage, divorce, infidelity... life was the same here as anywhere else, wasn't? She realized now wrong she'd been; the pali wasn't a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn't a grave. It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, and people here went to their deaths as people did anywhere: with great reluctance, dragging the messy jumble of their lives behind them. ~ Alan Brennert,

918:Mama wrote a letter to my father saying' I want to work with you' and she ended the letter saying' in Italian I can only say ti amo( I love you)' and of course the press used that to say women are sexual predators, in 1949 they made a first film together,' Stromboli', and they fell in love and my mother became pregnant with my brother Roberto before she could obtain a divorce. ~ Isabella Rossellini,

919:The story of my life has been of public interest, which is why I've been so passionate about having a private identity. When I step into a character, people have to be able to suspend their disbelief; they have to be able to divorce me from Hermiona. And not having everyone know every single intimate detail of my entire life is part of me trying to protect my ability to do my job well. ~ Emma Watson,

920:Uh-uh, dude. I tried it your way with the dating and the girls and the kissing and the drama, and man, I didn't like it. Plus, my best friend is a walking cautionary tale of what happens to you when romantic relationships don't involve marriage. Like you always say, kafir, everything ends in breakup, divorce, or death. I want to narrow my misery options to divorce or death - that's all. ~ John Green,

921:Having to parent your mother or father is a challenge that way too many teens have to deal with. Teens whose parents are dealing with substance abuse, financial hardship, job loss, mental illness and divorce deserve our love, support, and compassion. I wish America would stop judging and criticizing teens and instead, try to understand the battles they have to fight every day. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson,

922:But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God...is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. ~ Michel Faber,

923:Heckman discovered that when you consider all kinds of important future outcomes—annual income, unemployment rate, divorce rate, use of illegal drugs—GED recipients look exactly like high-school dropouts, despite the fact that they have earned this supposedly valuable extra credential, and despite the fact that they are, on average, considerably more intelligent than high-school dropouts. ~ Paul Tough,

924:I'm against divorce. I think the Bible teaches that divorce is wrong, but at the same time, I also believe that the Bible has a leave way; Jesus said that a person should not be divorced and should not be separated. But in the Old Testament, men could have more than one wife under certain circumstances. And there must be reasons for that. And I think that some of them are valid reasons. ~ Billy Graham,

925:What marriage doesn't involve uncountable accretions, a language of gestures, a sense of recognition sharp as a toothache? Unhappy, sure. What couple isn't unhappy, at least part of the time? But how can the divorce rate be, as they say, skyrocketing? How miserable would you have to get to be able to bear the actual separation, to go off and live your life so utterly unrecognized? ~ Michael Cunningham,

926:There was no question that it was a necessary divorce, but that didn’t make it less painful. You don’t think it will hurt, leaving a marriage like that, do you? But it’s the same misguided thinking that makes people ask, after your mother dies, how old she was. If she was ninety, the bereavement isn’t supposed to be as crushing. But of course it is. Of course. There’s no equation for loss. ~ Deb Caletti,

927:Well, Josh McMillan, you've messed with the wrong person. I'm a divorce attorney, and I specialize in digging up shit on people. By tomorrow night I'll know everything there is to know about you, including what blood type you are and whether you've been circumcised." Blair turned to Megan and pointed her finger. "And you better not find out the answer to that question first. ~ Denise Grover Swank,

928:You're supposed to congratulate the bridegroom, phral. Not threaten to dismember him." "It's not a threat," the Rom muttered. "It's a promise." Harry met Merripen's gaze directly. "I appreciate your concern for her. I assure you, I'll do everything in my power to make her happy. Poppy will have anything she wants." "I believe a divorce would top the list," Leo mused aloud. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

929:My family, before the divorce, moved several times, and after that we moved a whole bunch more times, and so I don't have an anchor to a single place. Probably as a result of that, I'm a little more attenuated to when people do feel close identification to place, whether they say it out aloud or not. I think that there's a sort of local patriotism that is deeper than national patriotism. ~ John Darnielle,

930:My dear son, when you're a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything—what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You're a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn't end that. Oh no—love may come and go, but the caring goes on. ~ Nina George,

931:My dear son, when you’re a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything—what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You’re a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn’t end that. Oh no—love may come and go, but the caring goes on. ~ Nina George,

932:In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (1850),

933:And divorce was the chemotherapy of marriage, so expensive and toxic that only couples in extremis would attempt it as a cure. And if half of marriages were so cancerous that they justified treatment with the equivalent of chemotherapy, what did that say about the others? How many of the nondivorced had just learned to live with the illness because the cure seemed even worse than the disease? ~ Barry Eisler,

934:careful or to keep off the streets altogether. Finally, he can no longer work, his wife gets a divorce and he is held up to ridicule. He tries every known means to get the jay-walking idea out of his head. He shuts himself up in an asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out he races in front of a fire engine, which breaks his back. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn’t he? ~ Alcoholics Anonymous,

935:Lex, do you think, six weeks without you, I didn’t learn my fuckin’ lesson?” She blinked. He kept going. “I learned, baby. Lived raw for six fuckin’ weeks, wasting my own goddamned life and yours. Downloading on-line divorce papers…” He shook his head, not going back there. Not fucking there. Doing that shit cost him too much, he couldn’t go back there. So he finished, “Fuck yeah, I learned. ~ Kristen Ashley,

936:The remedy for most marital stress is not in divorce. It is in repentance and forgiveness, in sincere expressions of charity and service. It is not in separation. It is in simple integrity that leads a man and a woman to square up their shoulders and meet their obligations. It is found in the Golden Rule, a time-honored principle that should first and foremost find expression in marriage. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

937:Even Karenin, who might well have turned out to be a flat caricature with his stick-out ears and cracking knuckles, is endowed with a complex personality as the other characters see him differently on different occasions: when Anna sees him at the Petersburg station, when he is at his government desk, when his son recoils from his embrace, when he is at the interview with his divorce lawyer, when ~ Leo Tolstoy,

938:A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. ~ Albert Camus,

939:It was his fourth trip to the attic in so many days, ferrying out the odds and ends of a marriage to his new flat, and the Hoover was amongst the very last items he reclaimed – one of the most broken things, most ugly things, the things you demand out of sheer bloody-mindedness because you have lost the house. This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love ~ Zadie Smith,

940:It was like a death in the family: You go through the mourning stage, then the rebellion, and then all of a sudden you have to find life by yourself. . . . I loved everything about marriage. I loved having a companion to wake up with and have barbecues with. But things happen and people grow apart. I don't really ever talk about the divorce because it was a heart-wrenching thing to go through. ~ Jessica Simpson,

941:Maybe there are so many divorces because we use expressions like “tie the knot” to describe a marriage. Knots are so easy to untie! If we wanted marriages to last longer, we should refer to them differently. Like, “I’m soldering the steel.” Or, “I’m fusing the atoms.” Or, “I’m making a roux.” If my husband asked me for a divorce, it just wouldn’t work. I’d be like, “I’m sorry, dude. We’re soldered. ~ Mara Altman,

942:A plan was a plan and a decision was truly a decision and knowing all this and having been well educated in the usages of divorce, Thomas Hudson was happy that a compromise had been made and that the children were coming for five weeks. If five weeks is what we get, he thought, that is what we draw. Five weeks is a good long time to be with people that you love and would wish to be with always. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

943:Someday, one of your friends is gonna get divorced, it's gonna happen, and they're gonna tell you. Don't go, 'ohhhh I'm sorry.' That's a stupid thing to say. First of all you're making 'em feel bad for being really happy, which isn't fair. And second of all: divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it's true, because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. It's really that simple. ~ Louis C K,

944:become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I ~ James Baldwin,

945:No doubt the shortness of your memories is a very convenient thing for you; for without it I really don't know how you could have the conscience to repudiate your debts, swear in your witness boxes, take your marriage vows, traverse your divorce petitions, or do half the things that you do do. But, owing to the perfection of our remembrance, I can recall every trifle of the life that I then enjoyed with him. ~ Ouida,

946:...I always feel like a better person when I'm on the water.” The air smelled cleaner here. The water seemed purer. She wanted to strip off her clothes and dive off the side of the boat and let the water baptize her a free woman. “The ocean is big”, Ty said. “And we aren't. It's good to be humbled every now and then.” “You ever go through a divorce?” she asked. “Not yet.” “Trust me, I know from humble. ~ Tiffany Reisz,

947:I think community is a shared history, it's a shared experience. It's not always agreement. In fact, I think that often it isn't. It's the commitment, again, to stay with something - to go the duration. You can't walk away. It's like a marriage, only I think it's more difficult to divorce yourself from community than it is to a human being because the strands are interconnected and so various. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,

948:Divorce helped to drive these numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, but by the 1980s unwed parenthood was largely to blame. Today, more than 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. Only 16 percent of black households are married couples with children, the lowest of any racial group in the United States, while nearly 20 percent are female-headed with children, which is the highest of any group. ~ Jason L Riley,

949:I confess I had a Child of Divorce Reunion Fantasy Number One Thousand, where I for a moment imagined my father finding out that Dino really was a killer woman and that my parents would have to get back together. I saw them running through a meadow, hand in hand. Okay, maybe not a meadow. But I saw me having only one Christmas and one phone number and only my father's shaved bristles in the bathroom sink. ~ Deb Caletti,

950:It was hard to imagine that one day I would be able to recall Larry with only a neutral kind of tenderness. Now the divorce brought back memories, and thinking of Larry was like touching a bruise, tender and aching at the edges, more so at the center of its blue-black heart. The hurt was less when I didn’t touch it, but time and again my mind moved back to go over it, like a tongue on a sore tooth. In ~ Mary MacCracken,

951:I don't read reviews. Just because that is something that's directly connected to my job. I'm doing this because I love it, not because I'm necessarily looking for approval or anything like that. To me, it seems that reading reviews - whether they're good ones or bad ones - can only sort of force the person to divorce themselves from the reality of what it is they do for a living. So I don't read reviews. ~ Kate Winslet,

952:Look at the statistics. You're more likely to top yourself if you've just gone through a divorce. Or if you're anorexic. Or if you're unemployed. Or if you're a prostitute. Or if you've fought in a war, or if you've been raped, or if you've lost somebody . . . There are lots and lots of factors that push people over the edge; none of these factors are likely to make you feel anything but fucking miserable. ~ Nick Hornby,

953:Regarding the first aspect, the sacred law obliges the payment of zakat, charity distributed to the needy. Miserliness in the form of not giving zakat is explicitly forbidden. The same is true with one’s obligation to support his wife and children. Even if a couple suffers a divorce, the man must still pay child support. When it comes to the obligations of sacred law, miserliness is the most virulent form. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

954:It is worth noting that the standard American tests of success that they have flunked are almost exclusively economic. If one applied social indices instead—such as rates of crime, child abuse, illegitimacy, and divorce—the Hmong would probably score better than most refugee groups (and also better than most Americans), but those are not the forms of success to which our culture assigns its highest priority. ~ Anne Fadiman,

955:Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard. ~ Kenneth Tynan,

956:In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude. ~ Cyril Connolly,

957:I think the media has got into this Enquirer mentality. Years ago, legitimate press didn't really concern itself with sordid details of people's personal lives. That wasn't the focus. But also a lot of celebrities were bullied into revealing this breakup or tragedy or divorce or problem. They started to talk about it and the press just started to talk about people's private lives. That just seems to be the norm. ~ Joan Jett,

958:OLD JOKE Sadie and Moishe go to see a lawyer. “What can I do for you, folks?” Moishe: “We want a divorce.” “Well, this is very odd. I mean, um, how old are you folks?” “I’m ninety-three,” Moishe says. “Wife’s ninety-one. We’ve been married sixty-seven years.” “And you mean to tell me, after sixty-seven years of marriage, at your ages, you want a divorce?? Why now??” “We wanted to wait ’til the kids were dead. ~ Lisa Grunwald,

959:He felt that the job was not particularly hazardous physically but was incredibly hazardous emotionally and too often led to divorce, alcoholism, and suicide. No, policemen were not danger lovers, they were seekers of the awesome, the incredible, even the unspeakable in human experience. Never mind whether they could interpret, never mind if it was potentially hazardous to the soul. To be there was the thing. ~ Joseph Wambaugh,

960:Pornography hurts more than the user. It alienates spouses. It destroys real intimacy. It reduces people to objects. And those are just the immediate human costs. The social impact is much wider and more damaging. It’s a major factor in divorce, infidelity, and broken families. And even more brutally, the porn industry also fuels and feeds on the exploitation of women and minors forced into “sex work.” Today ~ Charles J Chaput,

961:When a divorce is initiated, regardless of who files with the court, blamers particularly feel threatened. Many cannot handle seeming in any way responsible for the divorce, which triggers their lifelong fears of abandonment and inferiority. Therefore, they split their partner into all bad. It feels like a war between good and evil to blamers, so they create one. Their extreme feelings create their own problems. ~ Randi Kreger,

962:Even short commutes stab at your happiness. According to the research,* commuting is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insomnia, stress, neck and back pain, high blood pressure, and other stress-related ills such as heart attacks and depression, and even divorce. But let’s say we ignore the overwhelming evidence that commuting doesn’t do a body good. Pretend it isn’t bad for the environment either. Let ~ Jason Fried,

963:Oliver, we’ve got something to tell you,” Dad says, dumping a cardboard box full of garden waste into a toad green mangler. Unlike the doctor, when Dad says we, he means we because Mum is omnipotent. “Who’s dead?” I ask, shot-putting a bottle of Richebourg. “No one’s dead.” “You’re getting a divorce?” “Oliver.” “Mum’s preggers?” “No, we—” “I’m adopted.” “Oliver! Please, shit up! ~ Joe Dunthorne,

964:I knew the man up until our divorce - after that I didn't know the man, but it didn't stop me caring about him and worrying because of the complete change that I saw in him. He'd lost his sense of humour and he got aggressive; he wasn't for the world any more, he was just for Yoko. Before that he opened his arms and embraced the world with his wit and humour - afterwards he was a completely different kind of person. ~ Cynthia Lennon,

965:My divorce has changed my life. I don’t cry anymore. My bad dreams are starting to go away. I feel stronger, as if all these ordeals have toughened me. When I go out in the street, sometimes women in the neighborhood call to me, congratulating me and shouting ‘Mabrouk!’ – a word once tainted by evil memories, but which I know like to hear again. And shouted by women I don’t even know! I blush, but deep down I’m so proud. ~ Nujood Ali,

966:For example, most mammals are either monogamous or polygamous. But as every poet or divorce attorney will tell you, humans are confused - After all, we have monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, celibacy, and so on. In terms of the most unique thing we do socially, my vote goes to something we invented alongside cities - we have lots of anonymous interactions and interactions with strangers. That has shaped us enormously. ~ Robert M Sapolsky,

967:One of PETA's agenda items is the extinction of problem breeds like the pit bull; the claim is that making them extinct is the only way to protect the animals from abuse. Apparently the problem of abuse is not one that involves the behavior of the abusive human. Following this line of "ethical" thinking, the problem of divorce should be solved by banning marriage, and child abuse is best addressed by euthanizing children. ~ Ken Foster,

968:You can’t divorce Margo the person from Margo the body. You can’t see one without seeing the other. You looked at Margo’s eyes and you saw both their blueness and their Margo-ness. In the end, you could not say that Margo Roth Spiegelman was fat, or that she was skinny, any more than you can say that the Eiffel Tower is or is not lonely. Margo’s beauty was a kind of sealed vessel of perfection – uncracked and uncrackable. ~ John Green,

969:You must learn in life to take things more lightly, my dear. The world is always changing. Learn how to allow for it. Someone makes a promise, and then they break it. A play gets good notices, and then it folds. A marriage looks strong, and then they divorce. For a while there’s no war, and then there’s another war. If you get too upset about it all, you become a stupid, unhappy person—and where’s the good in that? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

970:Rev. Lemuel Wiley I preached four thousand sermons, I conducted forty revivals, And baptized many converts. Yet no deed of mine Shines brighter in the memory of the world, And none is treasured more by me: Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce, And kept the children free from that disgrace, To grow up into moral men and women, Happy themselves, a credit to the village. ~ Edgar Lee Masters,

971:Wonderful art can spring from misery,I'm the last person to deny that.I'd go even further:the best works of art of all time are probably stemmed from the deep human sorrow or hellish frustration,the death of a loved one or a divorce and yes:jealousy.Heartache and impotence as the man-spring for making the unverifiable verifiable and for giving it face.How romantic,beautiful and especially useful pain and misery can be. ~ Esther Verhoef,

972:I love being divorced. Every year has been better than the last. By the way, I'm not saying don't get married. If you meet somebody, fall in love and get married. Then get divorced. Because that's the best part. Divorce is forever! It really actually is. Marriage is for how long you can hack it. But divorce just gets stronger like a piece of oak. Nobody ever says 'oh, my divorce is falling apart, it's over, I can't take it.' ~ Louis C K,

973:Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness of a queen consists in her being a pretty woman and having her head cut off, so the playwright of the first order can do nothing with his audience until he has cured them of looking at the stage through the keyhole, and sniffing round the theatre as prurient people sniff round the divorce court. ~ George Bernard Shaw,

974:Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That's how you move away from him. That's how the marriage ends. You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something, he should be something other than what he is. That's how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage. ~ Byron Katie,

975:The Divorce isn't like the Da Vinci Code of TV shows. I'm not saying only a secret society is going to understand divorce. But it is a very specific show. And I don't know if you looked at a lot of the press. There's been some unpleasant reviews. And I'm not faulting those people but, they're really just not getting what we're trying to do. Which is to say, look. That may not be some people's taste. And that's fine. ~ Thomas Haden Church,

976:The power of science. Sometimes she thought how one day even love might become like a science. Everyone saying exactly the same right words. Everyone reacting the same exact ways. Love feeling and tasting and looking exactly the way some scientists in some laboratory determined that it should. Perhaps a development like that would solve many romantic disputes, maybe even bring down divorce rates to a cool zero percent. ~ Chinelo Okparanta,

977:The relief of virtual space, of being plugged in, of having control. Everywhere I went in New York, on the subway, in cafés, walking down the street, people were locked into their own network. The miracle of laptops and smartphones is that they divorce contact from the physical, allowing people to remain sealed into a private bubble while they are nominally in public and to interact with others while they are nominally alone. ~ Olivia Laing,

978:first divorce, from Catherine of Aragon, was opposed by the pope, leading to England's break with the Roman Catholic Church. Hen·ry 2 (1394-1460), Portuguese prince; known as Henry the Navigator. The third son of John I of Portugal, he organized many voyages of exploration, most notably south along the African coast, thus laying the foundation for Portuguese imperial expansion around Africa to the Far East. Hen·ry 3 the name of ~ Erin McKean,

979:The unwinding brings freedom, more than the world has ever granted, and to more kinds of people than ever before—freedom to go away, freedom to return, freedom to change your story, get your facts, get hired, get fired, get high, marry, divorce, go broke, begin again, start a business, have it both ways, take it to the limit, walk away from the ruins, succeed beyond your dreams and boast about it, fail abjectly and try again. ~ George Packer,

980:So Kim Kardashian is getting a divorce, 72 days after a wedding that is variously reported to have cost $10 million or more. Just to put that in perspective, that sum could have built 200 schools in poor countries around the world for kids who desperately want an education. Then Kardashian could have helped transform the world, not just entertain it. And the schools would have lasted incomparably longer than her marriage. ~ Nicholas D Kristof,

981:When people think of food stamps they don't envision someone like me, someone plain faced and white, someone like the girl they'd known in highschool, someone who'd been quiet but nice, someone like a neighbor, someone like them. Maybe that made them too nervous about their own situation. Maybe they saw in me the chance of their own fragile circumstances, that with one lost job, one divorce, they'd be in the same place as me. ~ Stephanie Land,

982:Woods? Do you have a sec?" Ty asks. "Sure." "Alone?" Ty eyes Henry and Jerry Rice, and I jerk my head at Henry. "Fine," Henry says, rolling his eyes. "Divorce me if you must, Woods. I can't believe I've only been married half an hour and I'm already a single parent." Ty holds the door to the gym open so Henry can get the stroller through. I giggle at the sight of him carrying those diaper bags across the gym. ~ Miranda Kenneally,

983:I had been at the director's workshop for women at the AFI, which at the time was a great thing to do. I had always meant to direct, and for a variety of reasons that are hard to explain, I never did. I produced many things - there'll be people who tell you I directed through them - and of course I wrote. It took a divorce, a move back to New York and a kind of "now I can do anything" to say, "I really want to do this." ~ Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal,

984:Witnessing is not thought of as bringing knowledge, but as attempts to convince people to do things. When you divorce faith from knowledge, you wind up in the position of trying to get people to do things, not of providing them with a basis on which they can then decide how to live and how to lead their lives together. Witnessing has turned into a kind of process of bothering people, and very few people witness because of that. ~ Dallas Willard,

985:I don’t see us needing to open this box for any other reason than to celebrate our longevity, Quinn. But, if one of us ever decides we want a divorce—if we’ve reached the point where we think that’s the only answer—we have to promise not to go through with it until we open this box and read these letters. Maybe reminding each other of how we felt when we closed the box will help change our minds if we ever need to open it early. ~ Colleen Hoover,

986:When I'm writing, especially when I'm writing in first person, I don't think about the characterization, or how they are going to express themselves, I just express my own approach to these things. I think most writers can never divorce themselves from their private lives and personas; they are the ones that are writing. And the more they remove themselves from their own persona, the more, perhaps, mechanical the work becomes. ~ Richard Matheson,

987:Dying! To Be Afraid Of Thee 831 Dying! To be afraid of thee One must to thine Artillery Have left exposed a Friend— Than thine old Arrow is a Shot Delivered straighter to the Heart The leaving Love behind. Not for itself, the Dust is shy, But, enemy, Beloved be Thy Batteries divorce. Fight sternly in a Dying eye Two Armies, Love and Certainty And Love and the Reverse. ~ Emily Dickinson,

988:Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate “relationship” involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. ~ Wendell Berry,

989:Nigerian women came to America and became wild, Igbo Massachusetts Accountant wrote in one post; it was an unpleasant truth but one that had to be said. What else accounted for the high divorce rates among Nigerians in America and the low rates among Nigerians in Nigeria? Delta Mermaid replied that women simply had laws protecting them in America and the divorce rates would be just as high if those laws were in Nigeria. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,

990:The river passes by the side of a tree, saying hello, nourishing the tree, giving water to the tree … and it moves on, dances on. It does not cling to the tree. And the tree does not say, “Where are you going? We are married! And before you can leave me you will need a divorce—at least a separation! Where are you going? And if you were going to leave me, why did you dance so beautifully around me? Why did you nourish me in the first place? ~ Osho,

991:My off-the-cuff remarks at the University of Virginia were with regard to global macro traders, who are on-call 24/7 and of whom there are likely only a few thousand successful practitioners in the world today. Macro trading requires a high degree of skill, focus and repetition. Life events, such as birth, divorce, death of a loved one and other emotional highs and lows are obstacles to success in this specific field of finance. ~ Paul Tudor Jones,

992:And sometimes those remembered images aren’t even accurate; in revisiting some of the movies I discuss here, I’ve been surprised to realize that what I remember about a particular movie moment, the influential lesson that has stayed with me—how to kiss in the rain, what to say to my shell-shocked parents about their divorce, where in the linen closet to hide the liquor—sometimes doesn’t actually exist in the film. It’s a trick of memory, ~ Tara Ison,

993:It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she hurt you and the people you love, if she truly believed she was only trying to help? I had filed for divorce, but that wasn't what I really wanted. What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over. Had I ever really told her that? ~ Jodi Picoult,

994:I want to end my life like a human being: in Intensive Care, high on morphine, surrounded by cripplingly expensive doctors and brutal, relentless life-support machines. Then the corpse can go into orbit—preferably around the sun. I don't care how much it costs, just so long as I don't end up party of any fucking natural cycle: carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen. Gaia, I divorce thee. Go suck the nutrients out of someone else, you grasping bitch. ~ Greg Egan,

995:A disciple is someone who is learning by going through the process of change. All the things that we moan about and talk on and on about, such as pornography, divorce and drugs, are things that can be dealt with effectively only by bringing change into the mind and the spirit, into the will, into the body and into the fellowship of the person. Then people come out saying, “Who needs that stuff? I’ve got something much better than that. ~ Dallas Willard,

996:...Then dreams burst like bubbles in the wind. But change takes time.When people fall in love and lose the overwhelming desire for it to last a lifetime,they think something is wrong with them.Only now,when every other marriage ends in divorce,have people begun to understand that falling in love seldom grows into love,and that not even love can free a person from loneliness.And that sexual enjoyment does not make life meaningful. ~ Marianne Fredriksson,

997:What happens to a marriage when one partner ignores the other? After a short period of time bitterness begins to enter the heart. Words begin to cut like a sharp knife. Soon the animosity turns to anger, jealousy, and even worse. For many it results in separation, divorce, and hatred. But the rift can so easily be mended.All it takes is a fresh surrender that comes from your very soul.And a renewing of the vow to “love, honor, and cherish. ~ Benny Hinn,

998:God is passionate about good happening in this world, not evil. I’m convinced of that. God hates what happened here, Rae, the same way He hates divorce, and He hates injustice. But He won’t destroy people to proactively prevent them from doing evil things, nor will He destroy them today after they have done evil things. Not until His great patience has extended to them every chance and opportunity there is to change and become good again. ~ Dee Henderson,

999:Principles don’t react to anything. They don’t get mad and treat us differently. They won’t divorce us or run away with our best friend. They aren’t out to get us. They can’t pave our way with shortcuts and quick fixes. They don’t depend on the behavior of others, the environment, or the current fad for their validity. Principles don’t die. They aren’t here one day and gone the next. They can’t be destroyed by fire, earthquake or theft. ~ Stephen R Covey,

1000:Verbally abusive women often have psychological disorders. I have not known these abusive women to seek help even when they face divorce. Some, as if they were victims, even initiate divorce. They seem to believe their accusations. In other words, their accusations are automatic explanations (confabulations) that their mind forms that explain to them why they feel attacked by their spouse’s personhood, his success, or even his happiness. ~ Patricia Evans,

1001:And I tried to reconcile, and I tried to show her divorce was wrong, and she just got bitchier and bitchier, and worse than that I began to realize that it wasn’t just bitchy, it wasn’t just lazy—she was amoral, evil, just as evil as if she’d killed somebody. And she is incurable, because she is a psychopath who sucks the life out of other people and contributes nothing but pain and misery, and she can’t change so she had to be stopped. Some ~ Jeff Lindsay,

1002:There are people on the ratings board and so froth who don't want certain scenes in the film. There are people who come up and say, "What graphic love scenes. I think, How can a love scene be graphic? Have you seen Total Recall? In this R-rated movie you see a man who you've seen being in love with and sleeping with this fabulous woman shoot her right through the head. "Consider this a divorce" is supposed to be the funniest line in the movie. ~ Laura Dern,

1003:Many pagans who had been brought up to regard marriage essentially as a social and economic arrangement, homosexual relationships as an expected element of male education, prostitution, both male and female, as both ordinary and legal, and divorce, abortion, contraception, and exposure of unwanted infants as matters of practical expedience, embraced, to the astonishment of their families, the Christian message, which opposed these practices. ~ Elaine Pagels,

1004:We are “those people.” The truth is … we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health diagnosis, one serious illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being “those people”—the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our children play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.3 ~ Kyle Idleman,

1005:Marriage might be seen, in part, as a solution to a self-control problem, in which people take steps to increase the likelihood that their relationship will endure. If divorce is difficult, then marriages are more likely to be stable. Marital stability is usually good for children (though children can also benefit from the end of a bad marriage). ========== Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler, Richard H.;Sunstein, ~ Anonymous,

1006:It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. ~ James Baldwin,

1007:It was true. After our divorce, I'd ended up in a slight relationship with my last research assistant, Aurelia Feinstein, age 34-though let me state for the record it was not as hot as it sounded. Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure little red entry on Hungarian poetry. It was dead silent, no one gave me any dierection, and nothing was where it was supposed to be. ~ Marisha Pessl,

1008:The only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique, the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession. If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. ~ Betty Friedan,

1009:It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I ~ James Baldwin,

1010:It's hard enough to be in a marriage, and then have a kid, then kids, it changes everything. For me, I'd become more concerned with my children. Not that I ignored Britney, but my kids are always most important . . . I mean, we were having complications. I didn't give her an ultimatum, but I was trying to work stuff out with her, and she didn't even talk to me or anything and went behind my back and filed [for divorce]. [I was] completely blindsided. ~ Kevin Federline,

1011:As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These "humanitarian parts" are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its "antirent and anticapital parts," means to get rid of the poodle. ~ Daniel De Leon,

1012:My husband didn't want the divorce, but I did. So there was a lot of bitterness initially. Once we got to the space where we understood that we have the most important thing in the world in common; no one else shared that commonality. Our son is priceless, and in order to give him the best, we have to be better to each other. Although we are still divorced, we still call each other "family." It was a journey to get there, but it's a beautiful place to be. ~ Regina King,

1013:Smart people in white coats have extensively studied commuting—this supposedly necessary part of our days—and the verdict is in: long commutes make you fat, stressed, and miserable. Even short commutes stab at your happiness. According to the research,fn1 commuting is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insomnia, stress, neck and back pain, high blood pressure, and other stress-related ills such as heart attacks and depression, and even divorce. ~ Jason Fried,

1014:As a cultural emigrant from one group to the other, I am acutely aware of their differences. Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn—recently, an acquaintance used the word “confabulate” in a sentence, and I just wanted to scream. But I have to give it to them: Their children are happier and healthier, their divorce rates lower, their church attendance higher, their lives longer. These people are beating us at our own damned game. I ~ J D Vance,

1015:They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis? ~ Richard Ford,

1016:Your tests don’t have to define you. Your compatibility doesn’t have to be a ceiling over which your relationship can never rise. Your past hurts don’t have to constitute the first steps in a journey toward divorce court. We worship, serve, and are empowered by a supernatural God who can lift us above our scientific limitations and create something special out of something very ordinary. These tests don’t account for the power of a magnificent obsession. ~ Gary L Thomas,

1017:But I wanted less. I wanted so very much less. And while there were tiny bubbles of “is this what you really want?” all along, I was in denial about it until about forty-five minutes ago. Pretty led to bicker, bicker led to divorce, and divorce led to bitter. I didn’t want pretty, then separated. I didn’t want bitter; I wanted forever. I wanted swoony, sparky, maddening, sexy love. And if we were going to fight, we’d fight, not bicker. Bickering’s the worst. ~ Alice Clayton,

1018:Even when the divorce papers had come in the mail, even when he’d finally signed them, he’d still felt married, still felt as if he had to be faithful to those vows even though they were empty and meaningless now. Perhaps that was just because he was afraid of moving past those vows, afraid of starting over. So now he looked straight into the eyes of that fear. The fear of being hurt again. The fear of not being worthy of a woman’s love. The fear of failure. ~ Ann H Gabhart,

1019:I've had a pretty crazy life. It's colorful ... reliving some of those closets that I had shut, locked and thrown away the key intentionally because it was painful to revisit a lot of those places - especially the loss of my buddy Robbie Tooley, the divorce of my parents, some of the things I went through as a kid, a lot of that stuff was locked up for a reason - it was painful. But at the same time, there was some therapy in revisiting some of those spots. ~ Billy Ray Cyrus,

1020:You probably know stories of couples who never fight or argue and then suddenly to everyone’s surprise they decide to get a divorce. In many of these cases, the woman has suppressed her negative feelings to avoid having fights. As a result she becomes numb and unable to feel her love. When negative feelings are suppressed positive feelings become suppressed as well, and love dies. Avoiding arguments and fights certainly is healthy but not by suppressing feelings. ~ John Gray,

1021:Bernard: ... By the way, Valentina, do you want credit? - 'the game book recently discovered by.'? Valentine: It was never lost, Bernard. Bernard: 'As recently pointed out by.' I don't normally like giving credit where it's due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a certain cachet in citing a member of the aristocracy. I'll pop it in ad lib for the lecture, and give you a mention in the press release. How's that? Valentine: Very kind. ~ Tom Stoppard,

1022:I kind of hate Nick right now, too, but there's someone else higher on my list, someone I hate more than Saddam Hussein and any asshole named Bush combined, hate more than that fuckhead who canceled 'My So-Called Life' and left me with a too-small boxed DVD set that does not answer the questions whether Angela and Jordan Catalano did it, or if Patty and Graham got a divorce, or if there really was something to all that lesbian subtext between Rayanne and Sharon. ~ Rachel Cohn,

1023:      Nay, but he prated, And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms Against your honor, That, with the little godliness I have, I did full hard forbear him. But, I pray you, sir, Are you fast married? Be assured of this, That the magnifico is much beloved; And hath, in his effect, a voice potential As double as the duke's: he will divorce you; Or put upon you what restraint and grievance The law,—with all his might to enforce it on,— Will give him cable. ~ William Shakespeare,

1024:Adultery is not the unforgivable sin. Those who commit it will be forgiven by God if they repent. Nevertheless, adultery always has destructive consequences. It can lead to divorce. It can bring an end to a person’s good name. It can lead children to lose respect for a parent who has committed adultery. It can lead to the loss of a job. That adultery can lead to these consequences must be remembered. Though there is hope in forgiveness, adultery brings destruction. ~ Anonymous,

1025:An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connexion can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. ~ Jane Austen,

1026:It’s very difficult to give up on things we can’t control. And that’s what a divorce represents. It represents the ultimate loss of control, a marriage and a mate we can’t control. And if we give up on the mate and the marriage, by acknowledging that loss, we can free ourselves of the anger and resentment - and that will liberate our children. Finally, children are not affected by our grief and mourning. They are affected by our inability to grieve and mourn. ~ Daniel Gottlieb,

1027:Sally wasn't crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn't ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her. "They can just wait until I die. I'll be dead soon, probably next year..." Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound. ~ Lucia Berlin,

1028:Adolescence is a time when children are supposed to move away from parents who are holding firm and protective behind them. When the parents disconnect, the children have no base to move away from or return to. They aren't ready to face the world alone. With divorce, adolescents feel abandoned, and they are outraged at that abandonment. They are angry at both parents for letting them down. Often they feel that their parents broke the rules and so now they can too. ~ Mary Pipher,

1029:I had discovered after the Swindon game that loyalty, at least in football terms, was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or a hump, something you were stuck with. Marriages are nowhere near as rigid - you won’t catch any Arsenal fans slipping off to Tottenham for a bit of extra-marital slap and tickle, and though divorce is a possibility (you can just stop going if things get too bad), getting hitched again is out of the question. ~ Nick Hornby,

1030:In the parlance of today, our family was dysfunctional (is any family not?) I would never become an angel, or even a saint. Instead I would grow up wild, marry young, and settle down. We'd have two boys, forming our own dysfunctional family. We'd do the best we could. Then we'd divorce, and I'd feel "kindly nervous" myself. I'd remarry. I'd try like crazy. (We all do, don't we? We try like crazy.) My new husband and I would form our new, blended dysfunctional family. ~ Lee Smith,

1031:Quand on divorce on achète toujours La Séparation de Dan Franck. La première scène est émouvante: pendant une pièce de théâtre, l'homme s'aperçoit que sa femme ne l'aime plus car elle retire sa main de la sienne. Il tente de la reprendre mais elle l'enlève à nouveau. Je me disais: quelle salope! Pourquoi autant de cruauté? Ce n'est pourtant pas compliqué de laisser sa main dans la main de son mari, merde! Jusqu'au jour où la même chose m'est arrivée. ~ Fr d ric Beigbeder,

1032:There is that, and there is also the Irreconcilable Differences line. It seems so catchall, so vague. You could say that about anyone, any man and woman at all. Jesus and Mary Magdalene: "Irreconcilable Differences." JFK and Jackie, anyone at all. It´s built into the man-woman thing. What kind of paltry reason is that? "Insanity" is another box to be checked on the divorce petition, the only alternative to "Irreconcilable Differences." I would like to check it. ~ Suzanne Finnamore,

1033:The divorce boom had a huge impact on never or not-yet married women. First, it created more single people, helping to slowly destigmatize the figure of the woman without a ring on her finger. It also forced a very public reckoning with marriage as an institution of variable quality. The realization that a bad marriage might be bad enough to cause a painful split provided ammunition to those women who preferred to abstain from marriage than to enter a flawed one. ~ Rebecca Traister,

1034:My solo three-month hike on the Pacific Crest Trail had many beginnings. There was the first, flip decision to do it, followed by the second, more serious decision to actually do it, and then the long third beginning, composed of weeks of shopping and packing and preparing to do it. There was the quitting my job as a waitress and finalizing my divorce and selling almost everything I owned and saying goodbye to my friends and visiting my mother’s grave one last time. ~ Cheryl Strayed,

1035:I told them the whole story, from Ms. Besser’s fateful phone call until right now. “Now” was Jeff’s stuff slowly being packed away into trunks. It was my mom crying in her room at night. It was me crying in my room at night. It was all of us, even Jeff, feeling like we were going through the divorce again. And because of that, it was Mom clinging to me, as if to say, Don’t you go away, too. Well, I wouldn’t. That was the one thing she’d never have to worry about. ~ Ann M Martin,

1036:The lessons of rocks, stars,and life are clear. To understand Earth, you must divorce yourself for the inconsequential temporal or spacial scale of human life. We live on a single tiny world in a cosmos of a hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars. Similarly, we live day by day in a cosmos aged hundreds of billions of days. If you seek meaning and purpose in the cosmos, you will not find it in any privileged moment or place tied to human existence. ~ Robert M Hazen,

1037:We all lose our innocence soon enough; it’s inescapable. Most of us aren’t emotionally or intellectually ready for it until our thirties or even later, however, so when one loses it prematurely, in childhood and adolescence, through divorce or the sudden early death of a parent, it can leave one fixated on that loss for a lifetime. Because it’s premature, it feels unnatural, violent and unnecessary, a permanent, gratuitous wounding, and it leaves one angry at the world, ~ Russell Banks,

1038:So did yours. Joseph’s pit came in the form of a cistern. Maybe yours came in the form of a diagnosis, a foster home, or a traumatic injury. Joseph was thrown in a hole and despised. And you? Thrown in an unemployment line and forgotten. Thrown into a divorce and abandoned, into a bed and abused. The pit. A kind of death, waterless and austere. Some people never recover. Life is reduced to one quest: get out and never be hurt again. Not simply done. Pits have no easy exits. ~ Max Lucado,

1039:The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are “those people.” The truth is…we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being “those people”–the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door. ~ Bren Brown,

1040:I have walked much of my life in fear, never truly finding a place where I knew I belonged. Rejection, victimization, and divorce has left me like a beggar, seeking desperately to find my blessing somewhere, to find it anywhere. I didn’t know who I was or where I was going. I didn’t know how significant I was or what the meaning of my life was, and the saddest part of this is that I didn’t fully realize that God was holding the blessing for me that I was so desperately seeking. ~ Tim Young,

1041:In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce" came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide." In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert." I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else. ~ Mitch Albom,

1042:In the coming year, real life would come crashing in around us. Within days of our wedding, we would receive unexpected, startling news that would cause us to cut our honeymoon short. Within weeks, we would endure the jarring turmoil of death…divorce…and disappointment. In the first year of our life together, we would be faced with difficult decisions, painful conflict, and drastic changes in plans. And through every step of the way, it would be the passion that sustained us. ~ Ree Drummond,

1043:People always say that once it goes away, you forget the pain. It’s a cliché of childbirth: you forget the pain. I don’t happen to agree. I remember the pain. What you really forget is love. Divorce seems as if it will last forever, and then suddenly, one day, your children grow up, move out, and make lives for themselves, and except for an occasional flare, you have no contact at all with your ex-husband. The divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it’s over. ~ Nora Ephron,

1044:She just kept seeing the hopeless look in Baird’s eyes as he’d held her tight one last time. He hadn’t even said anything but then, he didn’t need to. She could see what was going on—he was dying inside from losing her. That was the real reason the Kindred didn’t do divorce, she finally understood. Because they couldn’t survive without their mates. She supposed it was a good thing she and Baird hadn’t actually bonded before she’d had to leave or he wouldn’t stand a chance. ~ Evangeline Anderson,

1045:Why bother trying? What was the point? So I could go to some suck-ass college, get a diploma, march out into a job that I hated, marry a pretty girl who would want to divorce me, but then she wouldn't because we'd have kids, so instead she'd be the angry woman at the other end of the kitchen table, and the kids would grow up watching this, until one day I'd look at my son and he'd look just like that face in the bathroom mirror? If that was life, then it was twisted. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson,

1046:There is no such thing as a "broken family." Family is family, and is not determined by marriage certificates, divorce papers, and adoption documents. Families are made in the heart. The only time family becomes null is when those ties in the heart are cut. If you cut those ties, those people are not your family. If you make those ties, those people are your family. And if you hate those ties, those people will still be your family because whatever you hate will always be with you. ~ C JoyBell C,

1047:The essence of the tribal lineage was the descent of property through the male line. But producing a male heir under medieval conditions of short life expectancy and high infant mortality was far from a sure thing. So the tribes had various strategies for keeping wealth within the lineage. These included cousin marriage, divorce if a woman bore no heir, adoption and the levirate (marrying of widows to their husband’s brother). In addition, women were not allowed to own property. ~ Nicholas J Wade,

1048:Alice loved in order to make up for her own insufficiencies, she searched in others for qualities she aspired to, respected but lacked. Her emotional needs were like a puzzle incomplete without a segment brought by another but the dimensions of the void altered in response to self-development, the piece which fitted at fifteen would no longer fit at thirty. The gap redrew its contours, and unless the puzzle-person kept up she would be left to divorce or awkwardly force the issue. ~ Alain de Botton,

1049:You've seen those pictures of couples kissing in front of a Christmas tree, or clasping hands on their wedding day, or holding a newborn baby between them-a snapshot of joy. But what do you really know about them? Just that at the second the shutter clicked, they loved each other. You have no idea what trials came before, or after. You don't know if one of them cheated, if they grew apart, if a divorce loomed on the horizon. You simply see that in one static moment, they were happy. ~ Jodi Picoult,

1050:After all, isn’t anyone who would actively seek to inhabit femininity frivolous, foolish, and therefore responsible for her own oppression? This stereotype in itself is pretty damn misogynistic; it also points out the misogyny inherent in many who would call themselves feminists, who, rather than reimagining femininity, buy into the dominant discourses that devalue it and do all they can to divorce themselves from that which they fear will make them weak and powerless. ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore,

1051:What Gottman is saying is that a relationship between two people has a fist as well: a distinctive signature that arises naturally and automatically. That is why a marriage can be read and decoded so easily, because some key part of human activity — whether it is something as simple as pounding out a Morse code message or as complex as being married to someone — has an identifiable and stable pattern. Predicting divorce, like tracking Morse code operators, is pattern recognition. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,

1052:If I’d really been sane I couldn’t have been calm, but I’d hit that switch in my head that let me think when awful things were happening. The same switch that let me kill without much remorse. Being able to divorce myself from my emotions kept me from shooting pieces off Zeke’s body until he told me where Micah and Cherry were. Besides, there was always the very real possibility that we could do it later. Talk reasonably first, torture only if you had to, conservation of energy. ~ Laurell K Hamilton,

1053:In one well-known case, a woman named Martha Robinson was for years beaten and physically misused by a cruel and unstable husband. Eventually, he infected her with gonorrhea and then poisoned her almost to the point of death by slipping antivenereal powders into her food without her knowledge. Her health and spirit broken, she sued for divorce. The judge listened carefully to the arguments, then dismissed the case and sent Mrs. Robinson home with instructions to try to be more patient. ~ Bill Bryson,

1054:Adolescents' immature thinking makes it difficult for them to process the divorce. They tend to see things in black-and-white terms and have trouble putting events into perspective. They are absolute in their judgments and expect perfection in parents. They are likely to be self-conscious about their parent's failures and critical of their every move. They have the expectations that parents will keep them safe and happy and are shocked by the broken covenant. Adolescents are unforgiving. ~ Mary Pipher,

1055:A Gy wears wings habitually when yet a virgin—she joins the Ana in their aerial sports—she adventures alone and afar into the wilder regions of the sunless world: in the boldness and height of her soarings, not less than in the grace of her movements, she excels the opposite sex. But, from the day of her marriage she wears wings no more, she suspends them with her own willing hand over the nuptial couch, never to be resumed unless the marriage tie be severed by divorce or death. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton,

1056:This sensible, sensible girl. A girl who knew how to protect herself. Never a daredevil, never stunting without a safety mat, without spotters. A girl for whom instability was the ultimate enemy. Who’d never known divorce or slamming doors or slamming fists. A girl whose home was a peaceful sanctum, even the basement padded. A life that had to be made safe because of the risks she put her body through. She was the most dangerous thing in her own life. Her body, the only dangerous thing. ~ Megan Abbott,

1057:women's entry into the public sphere can be seen not merely as the result of contemporary economic pressures, the high rate of divorce, or the success of the feminist movement, but rather as a profound evolutionary response to a pervasive cultural crisis. Feminine principles are entering the public realm because we can no longer afford to restrict them to the private domestic sphere, nor allow a public culture obsessed with Warrior values to control human destiny if we are to survive. ~ Sally Helgesen,

1058:Divorce too often is the bitter fruit of anger. A man and a woman fall in love, as they say; each is wonderful in the sight of the other; they feel romantic affection for no one else; they stretch their finances to buy a diamond ring; they marry. All is bliss-that is, for a season. Then little inconsequential activities lead to criticism. Little flaws are magnified into great torrents of faultfinding; they fall apart, they separate, and then with rancor and bitterness they divorce. ~ Gordon B Hinckley,

1059:If a couple doesn’t practice mindfulness and does not try to understand their own and each other’s suffering, they won’t go far. They may continue to live together for a long time even when they’re not happy. They may stay together for the sake of the children, or because they don’t want to complicate their lives. There are many couples like that—they’re together but they’re not happy. There are other couples who can’t support being in such a situation and so they separate or divorce. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,

1060:Rickey sometimes wondered what would have become of them if the Peychaud crew hadn't imploded one night in a marathon of apocalyptic drunkenness. No one remembered much of this night, but by the end of it, two cars were totaled, the sous chef and the bartender were in Charity Hospital, the chef was in jail, and the grill guy's wife was filing for divorce. The owner decided to close the place and they found themselves jobless. Rickey guessed this kind of thing was known as a "wake-up call ~ Poppy Z Brite,

1061:I could not bounce back from my divorce - emotionally - I just could not bounce back. With any bad situations I’d experienced before - a bad game or my two previous divorces - I got over them. This time I just could not get out of the hole. The anxiety attacks were frequent and extensive. I had weight loss, which I’d never had before. I couldn’t stop crying. And if I wasn’t crying, I was angry, bitter, hateful and mean-spirited. I couldn’t sleep - couldn’t concentrate. It just got crazy. ~ Terry Bradshaw,

1062:Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. The ~ Sebastian Junger,

1063:What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. ~ Albert Camus,

1064:One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not--that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral--that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. ~ Sam Harris,

1065:Maude regards the ones who don't make it as her own personal failures. "I guess I didn't put enough emphasis on 'until death do you part,'" she says sourly, whenever she hears about the latest divorce. "Sad to say, but some are in it just for the good times. Married folks, they gotta be like that cat's claw acacia I've got growin' in my yard. Gotta grab hard and hold on tight when the going gets rough. Only way to get through the bad times. Grab hard, hold on, and ride. No matter what. ~ Susan Wittig Albert,

1066:There are still many women - and their spouses and children - who view a reflected self - I'm Mrs. Smith, not Mary Smith - as psychologically healthy. Those people are not motivated to change. But it is really dangerous to live through others'. What ever your circumstances, it is not a good idea to be wholly dependent on responses from others to like, respect or love yourself. Your children will grow up and start their own families; the divorce rate has remained at 50 percent for decades. ~ Judith M Bardwick,

1067:Recognize those times when it's best to do nothing. The weeks and months following a significant loss, including death, divorce, or the incapacitation of a loved one, are fraught with emotions. We typically do not make our best decisions under circumstances such as these. **Avoid the inclination to immediately put your house on the market** cash in all your savings, and move to the south of France, or trust the first person who comes along who says he or she can give you all the help you need. ~ Lois P Frankel,

1068:You don't know when you're twenty-three. You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten - in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems. She didn't know at twenty-three. ~ Rainbow Rowell,

1069:It has always been like that with changes. In 1913, we established divorce as a right for women in Uruguay. You know what they were saying back then? That families would dissolve. That it was the end of good manners and society. There has always been a conservative and traditional opinion out there that's afraid of change. When I was young and would go dancing at balls, we'd have to wear suits and ties. Otherwise they wouldn't let us in. I don't think anyone dresses up for dancing parties nowadays. ~ Jose Mujica,

1070:We humans are born egocentric. The sky thunders and children believe that God is mad at them for something they’ve done—parents divorce and children believe it’s their fault for not being good enough. Growing up means putting aside our egocentricity for truth. Still, some people cling to this childish mindset. As painful as their self-flagellation may be, they’d rather believe their crises are their fault so they can believe they have control. In doing so they make fools and false Gods of themselves. ~ Anonymous,

1071:Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce. ~ Claud Cockburn,

1072:To the extent that power is the result of idol making and idol playing, it will almost always distort our deepest relationships. That distortion does not necessarily have to take the form of divorce; for every family visibly broken by a powerful member’s incapacity to keep his promises, there is another where spouse and children know the equally cruel reality of unavailability and unreliability. As the funny but also sadly cynical T-shirt puts it, “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. ~ Andy Crouch,

1073:There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related. The Panther Moderns differ from other terrorists precisely in their degree of self-consciousness, in their awareness of the extent to which media divorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent … ~ William Gibson,

1074:There is much made in the psychological literature of the effects of divorce on children, particularly as it comes to their own marriages, lo those many years later. We have always wondered why there is not more research done on the children of happy marriages. Our parents' love is not some grand passion, there are no swoons of lust, no ball gowns and tuxedos, but here is the truth: they have not spent a night apart since the day they married. How can we ever hope to find a love to live up to that? ~ Eleanor Brown,

1075:To switch lads and lassies from quickie ceremonies back to the catered works in to-be-worm-only-once white dresses, the [wedding] garment producers have turned to sociology. Through statistics as carefully laid out as a bridal train, they are establishing a correlation showing a higher divorce rate for the informally gowned.... They may just have something there.... If a bride has sunk a bunk of savings into a dress she can't use again in a second wedding, she might think twice about having a second. ~ Malcolm Forbes,

1076:American women are characteristically frigid and materialistic. The man who 'has his way' with an American girl is under a material obligation to her. The woman has granted a material favour. In cases of divorce American law overwhelmingly favours the woman. American women will divorce readily enough when they see a better bargain. It is frequently the case in America that a woman will be married to one man but already 'engaged' to a future husband, the man she plans to marry after a profitable divorce. ~ Julius Evola,

1077:She will not sit down after, when we all collapse on the mats, our sweaty limbs crisscrossing. She will not sit down, will not let the steel slip from between her shoulders. She has so much pride that, even if I’m weary of her, of her fighting ways, her gauntlet-tossing, I can’t say there isn’t something else that beams in me. An old ember licked to fresh fire again. Beth, the old Beth, before high school, before Ben Trammel, all the boys and self-sorrow, the divorce and the adderall and the suspensions. ~ Megan Abbott,

1078:There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is inately media-related. The Panther Moderns differ from other terrorists precisely in their degree of self-consciousness, in their awareness of the extent to which media divorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent. . . . ~ William Gibson,

1079:While the stability of marriage exists as a structural element of society the meaning and evaluation of life can be experienced at a personal and existential level. Once divorce emerges as the norm, or marriage is replaced by the ‘relationship’, itself a fleeting and undefined condition, the result is the isolated individual, and as such, the isolated individual is helpless to create a societal model. Marriage and inheritance – joining and transfer – are thus the warp and woof of the community. The ~ Abdalqadir as Sufi,

1080:I think as we look at this problem of ISIS, it's more than just an army. It's also a fight about ideas. And we have got to dry up their recruiting. We have got to dry up their fundraising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection, and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence. Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They have - they cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity. ~ James Mattis,

1081:I have this theory about divorce. I have a theory that is never a tragedy for adults and always a tragedy for children. Adults can lose weight, find someone nicer, get their life back. Divorce gives grown-ups a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is the children who pay the price, and pay it for the rest of their lives. But we can't admit that, all us scarred veterans of the divorce court, because it would mean admitting that we have inflicted wounds on our children that they will carry for the rest of their lives. ~ Tony Parsons,

1082:One of the most interesting accomplishments of the film community, it seems to me, is that it has made real for America the exquisite beauty of incompatibility. Divorce among the gods possesses the sweet, holy sadness that has long been associated with marriage among the mortals. There is something infinitely tender about the inability of an actor to get along with an actress. When it is all over, and the decree is final, the two are even more attentive to each other, are seen oftener together, than ever before. ~ E B White,

1083:We humans are born egocentric. The sky thunders and children believe that God is mad at them for something they've done - parents divorce and children believe it's their fault for not being good enough. Growing up means putting aside our egocentricity for truth. Still, some people cling to this childish mind-set. As painful as their self-flagellation may be, they'd rather believe their crises are their fault so they can believe they have control. In doing so they make fools and false gods of themselves. ~ Richard Paul Evans,

1084:And it was that idea of the divorce between women and power that made Melissa McCarthy’s parodies of the one time White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday Night Live so effective. It was said that these annoyed President Trump more than most satires on his regime, because, according to one of the ‘sources close to him’, ‘he doesn’t like his people to appear weak.’ Decode that, and what it actually means is that he doesn’t like his men to be parodied by and as women. Weakness comes with a female gender. ~ Mary Beard,

1085:We thought we were tying our marriage-knots more tightly by removing all means of undoing them;22 but the tighter we pulled the knot of constraint the looser and slacker became the knot of our will and affection. In Rome, on the contrary, what made marriages honoured and secure for so long a period was freedom to break them at will. Men loved their wives more because they could lose them; and during a period when anyone was quite free to divorce, more than five hundred years went by before a single one did ~ Michel de Montaigne,

1086:All those tough guys who want to scare the world into seeing them as men . . . who don't know how to be a man with a woman, only abrute or a boy, who fill up the divorce courts; all those corporate raiders and rain-forest burners and war starters who want more in hopes that will make them feel better; . . . are suffering from Father Hunger. They go through their puberty rituals day after day for a lifetime, waiting for a father to anoint them and say "Attaboy," to treat them as good enough to be considered a man. ~ Frank Pittman,

1087:If only the real world operated like Elfscape,” Pwnage said, chewing. “If only marriages worked that way. Like every time I did something right I earned man points until I was a grand-master level-hundred husband. Or when I was a jackass to Lisa I’d lose points and the closer I was to zero the closer I’d be to divorce. It would also be helpful if these events came with associated sound effects. Like that sound when Pac-Man shrivels up and dies. Or when you bid too high on The Price Is Right. That chorus of failure. ~ Nathan Hill,

1088:The thing about divorce is, there isn’t always one mistake. One nuclear bomb dropped on a couple that destroys their marriage. Sometimes, it creeps up on you slowly. And one day, realization hits and all you know is that you don’t want to be married anymore. Maybe a nuclear bomb would have been better than slowly burning to death. Maybe that wouldn’t make you feel like such a failure. It kills you to give up, but you know it’s the right decision. Because if you keep going, you’ll hate each other. ~ Devney Perry,

1089:Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce? It doesn't actually kill you. Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck. It should. When someone you've promised to cherish till death do you part says "I never loved you," it should kill you instantly. You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that, trying to understand how in the world you didn't know. The light just never went on, you know. I must have known, of course, but I was too scared to see the truth. Then fear just makes you so stupid. ~ Frances Mayes,

1090:Divorce is the hardest obstacle I've had to overcome in my life. I would like to believe that most people don't get married anticipating divorce. When I reached that crossroad, I felt like such a failure. After years of therapy together, I realized that staying together was emotionally destructive. My husband didn't want the divorce, but I did. So there was a lot of bitterness initially. Although we are still divorced, we still call each other "family." It was a journey to get there, but it's a beautiful place to be. ~ Regina King,

1091:There’s a term we use for it: “ambiguous grief.” It can be a life sentence. It’s a kind of unresolved grief. You might feel it if you have a child or another family member who is mentally impaired. You might mourn the person you think they could have been if things had turned out differently. That person is physically present but psychologically absent. Conversely, and this is what happens in cases of abduction, or more commonly in divorce, the child or the person is psychologically present but physically absent. ~ Gilly Macmillan,

1092:I wanted to kill myself. I would have done it, too, if I had owned a gun. I was considering the gruesome alternatives — pills, slitting my wrists with a razor blade, jumping off a bridge — when another student called to ask me a detailed question on relativity. There was no way, after fifteen minutes of thinking about Mr. Einstein, that suicide was still a viable option. Divorce, certainly. Celibacy, highly likely. But death was out of the question. I could never have prematurely terminated my love affair with physics. ~ Arthur C Clarke,

1093:They were more than colleagues. Triumphs of discovery, promotion, and publication were celebrated, but so were weddings and births and the accomplishments of their children and grandchildren. They traveled together to conferences all over the world, and many meetings were piggybacked with family vacations. And like in any family, it wasn’t always good times and yummy cheesecake. They supported one another through slumps of negative data and grant rejection, through waves of crippling self-doubt, through illness and divorce. ~ Lisa Genova,

1094:In that uncertain period when Paul and I had been separated for several months but were not yet sure we wanted to get divorced, we sat down together to scan a set of no-fault, do-it-yourself divorce documents we’d ordered over the phone, as if holding them in our hands would help us decide what to do. As we paged through the documents, we came across a question that asked the name we’d each have after the divorce. The line beneath the question was perfectly blank. On it, to my amazement, we could write anything. Be anyone. ~ Cheryl Strayed,

1095:Three things.” He shifted the cell phone to his left hand to accept a sheaf of messages a clerk was handing him. He sifted through them quickly. Dammit. A break in his biggest case. Looked like the scumbag’s secretary-slash-lover was ready to dish the dirt on her boss. Seeing surveillance photos of said boss renewing his wedding vows with his wife after promising he would divorce her must have done the trick. Quigg suppressed a groan. A month ago, he’d have given his left testicle to nail this guy, but the timing really sucked. ~ Norah Wilson,

1096:Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc. ~ Henry Miller,

1097:People with a college education are now less likely to divorce than they were a few decades ago, and they're more likely to describe their marriages as happy. That finding really surprised me. It appears that those with a higher education have been more able to dismantle strict traditional roles and, in doing so, gain more freedom. I call it a seesaw marriage, one in which both the man and the woman take turns being the breadwinner, making it possible for each of them to experience career advancements or breaks at different times. ~ Hanna Rosin,

1098:I think people take Blink-128 more seriously now than they did before. And it's largely our fault because we called our records Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. We were always kind of the underdogs, especially critically. People wrote us off as this joke band. But the people who listened to Blink knew that we were silly and whatever, but we wrote songs about divorce and suicide and depression. Those kids that were listening to Blink are now the ones that control all these outlets that used to just write us off. ~ Mark Hoppus,

1099:My grandfather asked whether the country had “come to the point in our life as a nation where the Governor of a great state—one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for President of the United States—can desert a good wife, [the] mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the Governor.” Clearly Prescott Bush was not afraid to express his beliefs. I can only imagine what he would say if he saw what our society looks like today. ~ George W Bush,

1100:People are unrealistically optimistic even when the stakes are high. About 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and this is a statistic most people have heard. But around the time of the ceremony, almost all couples believe that there is approximately a zero percent chance that their marriage will end in divorce—even those who have already been divorced!10 (Second marriage, Samuel Johnson once quipped, “is the triumph of hope over experience.”) ========== Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler, Richard ~ Anonymous,

1101:Early in my career I discovered that there was something really special about photographing at night that places your mind on the surface of the planet. You’re no longer just a human being walking around in the regular world. You’re a human animal striding around on the surface of the planet that’s out in the middle of the galaxy. We as a culture, we’re forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very deep connection and contact with nature. You can’t divorce civilization from nature. We totally depend on it. ~ James Balog,

1102:Pastors, we have to ask ourselves honestly whether the divorce culture and family breakdown inside the churches have not been fueled in part by our own preaching and teaching. When we reduce marriage to endless sermon series on “Putting the Sizzle Back in Your Spouse” and “Ten Tips for Couples for a Hotter, Holier Romance,” are we not contributing to the very same emphasis on hormonally-driven acquisitiveness as the culture, rather than on the model of a Christ who displays not just affection but cross-carrying fidelity to his Bride? ~ Russell D Moore,

1103:She meant that they'd never used words like "separation" and "divorce" even in their worst screaming matches. They yelled things like, "You're infuriating!" "You don't think!" "You are the most annoying woman in the history of annoying women!" "I hate you!" "I hate you more!" and they always, always used the word "always," even though Clementine's mother had said you should never use that word in an argument with your spouse, as in, for example, "You always forget to refill the water jug!" (But Sam did always forget. It was accurate.) ~ Liane Moriarty,

1104:when our boulevards are lined with an infinity of bad eating houses filled with dead-faced people placed like mute beasts in their stalls; today, when one out of every three marriages ends in divorce ... It seems incredible that normal human beings not only tolerate the average American restaurant food, but actually prefer it to eating at home. The only possible explanation for such deliberate mass-poisoning, a kind of suicide of the spirit as well as the body, is that meals in the intimacy of a family dining-room or kitchen are unbearable. ~ M F K Fisher,

1105:College graduates and women with higher earnings are now more likely to marry than women with less education and lower wages, although they generally marry at an older age. The legal profession is one big exception to this generalization. Female attorneys are less likely to ever marry, to have children, or to remarry after divorce than women in other professions. But an even higher proportion of male attorneys are childless, suggesting there might be something about this career that is unfriendly to everyone’s family life, not just women’s. ~ Stephanie Coontz,

1106:[83:7.7] The high degree of imagination and fantastic romance entering into courtship is largely responsible for the increasing divorce tendencies among modern Occidental peoples, all of which is further complicated by woman's greater personal freedom and increased economic liberty. Easy divorce, when the result of lack of self-control or failure of normal personality adjustment, only leads directly back to those crude societal stages from which man has emerged so recently and as the result of so much personal anguish and racial suffering. ~ Urantia Foundation,

1107:Lots of kids wet the bed when they are little but grow out of it. An example of a tolerable stress response would be a child who reverts back to bedwetting after his parents’ divorce. The split isn’t acrimonious, and while the dad moved out, both adults are committed to co-parenting and understand that their child needs stability and extra support. As a result of that buffering of the child’s stress, he stops wetting the bed after a few months. Like my drive-by-induced stress, the effects are temporary if a solid support network is in place. ~ Nadine Burke Harris,

1108:The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much. ~ Anthony Burgess,

1109:My goal in shepherding has changed so much. Long gone are the days when I am content with a bunch of people who sing loud, don’t divorce, and give to missions. I now want to know I can drop off any member of my church in a city and that person could grow in Jesus, make disciples, and start a church. My faith in the Holy Spirit’s power convinces me this is possible. It is in our very DNA. We all have been given a spirit of courage and the power to do beyond what we can imagine. We must train our people to be independently dependent on the Holy Spirit. ~ Francis Chan,

1110:Many of those who railed against family break-up assailed the rise of welfare, especially the Aid to Families of Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which mainly aided low-income divorced, separated, or single women and their children. The rolls of AFDC, like divorce and illegitimacy, rose rapidly in the 1960s, from 3.1 million recipients in 1960 to 4.4 million in 1965 to 6.1 million in 1968. Costs of the program, which was supported by both the federal and state governments, increased during the same eight years from $3.8 billion to $9.8 billion. ~ James T Patterson,

1111:Only children can get spoiled. You have to have at least two. Siblings are important. And if we start with two boys, we have to have a girl because brothers should have a sister. But if we start with two girls, we have to go for a boy because sisters should have a brother. I always wanted a brother. A son of my father would have been able to beat the shit out of boyfriends that broke my heart. I wouldn’t have had to resort to cookie dough and it would have saved Scott a lot of money in divorce attorneys, seeing as he’d still be in a coma.” I stopped ~ Kristen Ashley,

1112:What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion? What if I told you getting you to vote Republican really wasn’t his mission? What if I told you religious right doesn’t automatically mean Christian? And just because you call some people blind, doesn’t automatically give you vision. I mean, if religion is so great, why has it started so many wars? Why does it build huge churches, but fail to feed the poor? Tell single moms God doesn’t love them, if they’ve ever had a divorce? Yet God in the Old Testament actually calls the religious people whores. ~ Jefferson Bethke,

1113:Vic nudged my elbow with his. "You and me are still friends, right? You guys get a joint custody in the divorce. Generous visitations rights." "Divorce?" Despite myself, I laughed. Only Vic could call the aftermath of a bad first date a divorce. We hadn't exactly been friends beforehand, so "still" was an exaggeration, but it would've been mean to point that out. Besides, I liked Vic. "We're still friends." "Excellent. The weirdos have to stick together around here." "Are you calling me a weirdo?" "Highest honor I can bestow. ~ Claudia Gray,

1114:And if we fail at marriage, we are lucky we don’t have to fail with the force of our whole life. I would like there to be an eighth sacrament: the sacrament of divorce. Like Communion, it is a slim white wafer on the tongue. Like confession, it is forgiveness. Forgiveness is important not so much because we’ve done wrong as because we feel we need to be forgiven. Family, friends, God, whoever loves us forgives us, takes us in again. They are thrilled by our life, our possibilities, our second chances. They weep with gladness that we did not have to die. ( ~ Ann Patchett,

1115:I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: "I am your slave!") Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

1116:Some days my mantra was I will stay in this marriage because I am a Christian and Christians stay, but other days, I thought: if the choices are Christianity or divorce then I will just have to embrace secular humanism because I am not even sure I believe any of this anymore and it is one thing to devote twenty minutes every morning to praying when you are not sure you believe anything anymore and it is another thing to organize your whole life around a marriage you don’t want to be in because a God who may or may not exist says let no man put asunder. ~ Lauren F Winner,

1117:Our human race is affected by a chronic underestimation of the possibility of the future straying from the course initially envisioned (in addition to other biases that sometimes exert a compounding effect). To take an obvious example, think about how many people divorce. Almost all of them are acquainted with the statistic that between one-third and one-half of all marriages fail, something the parties involved did not forecast while tying the knot. Of course, "not us," because "we get along so well" (as if others tying the knot got along poorly). ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,

1118:The Birth of Jesus Christ 18Now the birth of  u Jesus Christ [5] took place in this way.  v When his mother Mary had been betrothed [6] to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child  w from the Holy Spirit. 19And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling  x to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20But as he considered these things, behold,  y an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ~ Anonymous,

1119:We're in an era where they've sanitized home life in movies to such a degree that there is a certain home life that might be true if you have two perfect parents, and a nanny, and a couple babysitters, and support, and lots of money, and there's no strain at home, or whatever. But for most people, there's strain, you know? There's a lot of pressure, things can't be perfect, parents can't be perfect all the time. There's a divorce, there's money issues, whatever. People work, so you don't always have these vast reserves of patience every time your kid goes crazy. ~ Dave Eggers,

1120:What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it. ~ James C Dobson,

1121:What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you go there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it. ~ James C Dobson,

1122:If the truth affirmed by Christianity lay in something that people could intellectually grasp, then the truth of faith would be something that one could hold without ever hearing or following its demand. But Christianity, as a religion without religion, is too elusive to be held in this way. It does not allow for such a divorce between the hearing and the happening, for its saying does not occur in that which is said, but rather in the undergoing of an event. The divine Word, like that spoken of in Genesis, results in life being birthed in the depths of our being. ~ Peter Rollins,

1123:Tea is still believed, by English people of all classes, to have miraculous properties. A cup of tea can cure, or at least significantly alleviate, almost all minor physical ailments and indispositions, from a headache to a scraped knee. Tea is also an essential remedy for all social and psychological ills, from a bruised ego to the trauma of a divorce or bereavement. This magical drink can be used equally effectively as a sedative or stimulant, to calm and soothe or to revive and invigorate. Whatever your mental or physical state, what you need is ‘a nice cup of tea’. ~ Kate Fox,

1124:Ermaline has entered the room noiselessly and is whispering to Nana. When she leaves, Nana and Papa start talking about friends of Mom's who are in the middle of a scandalous divorce. Mom and Dad keep glancing at Adam, and Nana keeps asking Mom and Dad questions, pulling their attention back to the conversation. I have seen this before. It's Nana's highly effective and very annoying way of not mentioning the elephant in the living room. But why does she have to think of Adam as an elephant? Why can't he just be their son? ~ Ann M Martinpgs 40-42; Hattie on adults ~ Ann M Martin,

1125:Martyrs of a sort they were, these children, along with the town drunk, in his basketball sneakers and buttonless overcoat, draining blackberry brandy from a paper bag as he sat on his bench in Kazmierczak Square, risking nightly death by exposure; martyrs too of a sort were the men and women hastening to adulterous trysts, risking disgrace and divorce for their fix of motel love—all sacrificing the outer world to the inner, proclaiming with this priority that everything solid-seeming and substantial is in fact a dream, of less account than a merciful rush of feeling. ~ John Updike,

1126:We are sad for the hurting couples; it breaks our hearts, actually. But we are even more brokenhearted about the effect it has on the Kingdom. We are sad because godly marriages magnify God’s ingenious creation, but few marriages radiate that glory. We are sad about the victory Satan enjoys in watching couples call themselves “Christian” while living idly, living for themselves. We are devastated by how many choose divorce over obeying the King. The sad state of marriage makes the bride of Christ look dirty and unattractive. We write in hopes of changing some of this. ~ Francis Chan,

1127:Much is being said of deep crime which darkens heaven's windows. We shudder at immoralities which terrify us. We nearly panic at the divorce frequency and broken homes and delinquent children about us. But perhaps sometimes we should stop to reflect that all are not criminals, all are not bad, and all are not rebellious. . . . The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches men to live righteously, to make the family supreme, the home inviolate. It moves the characters of its adherents toward faultlessness. It is the true way. If lived rightly it will ennoble men toward Godhood ~ Spencer W Kimball,

1128:94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney "D" still looked like a backwards "G." Words like "Columbine," "Al Qaeda" and "Y2K" were not synonymous with "terror," and 9-1-1 was an emergency number instead of a date. At twelve years old, summer still mattered. Monarch caterpillars still crawled beneath every milkweed leaf. Dandelions (or "wishes" as Mara called them) were flowers instead of pests. And divorce was still considered a tragedy. Before Mara, carnivals didn't make me sick. ~ Jake Vander Ark,

1129:A major depression, these findings suggest, can be the outcome of particularly severe lessons in uncontrollability for those of us who are already vulnerable. This may explain an array of findings that show that if a child is stressed in certain ways—loss of a parent to death, divorce of parents, being a victim of abusive parenting—the child is more at risk for depression years later. What could be a more severe lesson that awful things can happen that are beyond our control than a lesson at an age when we are first forming our impressions about the nature of the world? ~ Robert M Sapolsky,

1130:My mom was a manic depressive schizophrenic who, after a year in prison, went home and shot herself. My sister, Kirsten, an amazing poet, who was raised by this woman, and was dating a guy who broke up with her for the fourth time in three weeks. And one day, she came to his house, got a gun, and blew her brains out all over his headboard. I just went through a divorce, five years in court and cost me $2 million dollars. If anyone, by law, should be forced to take antidepressants it's me... But instead, I choose to be an antidepressant. And you can take me with alcohol. ~ Christopher Titus,

1131:I've learned to become a progressive man because I have four women in my life. And their mother, who I'm not married to anymore, but who impresses me because of our relationship. Because we have a very deep and friendly relationship that is completely about who we really are now. Before it was husband, wife, mother, father. But now it's about who we are as human beings. Because we didn't give up on each other. And because we didn't hurt each other and blister each other from a divorce. We became tight. Best friends. And more than that even, because now we're best parents. ~ Giancarlo Esposito,

1132:Someone once said that the worst features of an era are accented in the children’s books of that period. Book by book our societal problems were dumped into children’s books. What editors called “realism” is really adult betrayal, violence, sexual indiscretions, alcoholism, and the Big D’s: death, divorce, disease, and drugs. Books with inconsequential plots and characters became thinly disguised “moralisms”—the kind of moralisms that come from a nonjudgmental culture urging readers to suspend judgment, to become understanding and noncondemning, and to realize their sexuality. ~ Gladys M Hunt,

1133:The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice -- all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole. ~ John Dewey,

1134:But where only a free play of our presentational powers is to be sustained, as in the case of pleasure gardens, room decoration, all sorts of useful utensils, and so on, any regularity that has an air of constraint is [to be] avoided as much as possible. That is why the English taste in gardens, or the baroque taste in furniture, carries the imagination's freedom very far, even to the verge of the grotesque, because it is precisely this divorce from any constraint of a rule that the case is posited where taste can show its greatest perfection in designs made by the imagination. ~ Immanuel Kant,

1135:I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life. ~ Raymond Chandler,

1136:Only Jesus can hold things like this in tandem. Only Jesus can simultaneously attend to the one with the broken foot and the one with stage IV cancer. Only Jesus can concurrently care about the child withering away from starvation and the child weeping over his parents’ divorce. Only Jesus can cry with the girl sobbing over a high school breakup and the wife who is widowed, left with mouths to feed and an empty bed. He is the only one who can see that all pain is real and valid, regardless of how the world would rank it. He is the only one who can validate our suffering—and he does. ~ Ann Swindell,

1137:They thought more before nine a.m. than most people thought all month. I remember once declining cherry pie at dinner, and Rand cocked his head and said, 'Ahh! Iconoclast. Disdains the easy, symbolic patriotism.' And when I tried to laugh it off and said, well, I didn't like cherry cobbler either, Marybeth touched Rand's arm: 'Because of the divorce. All those comfort foods, the desserts a family eats together, those are just bad memories for Nick.' It was silly but incredibly sweet, these people spending so much energy trying to figure me out. The answer: I don't like cherries. ~ Gillian Flynn,

1138:On any list of slam-dunk Christian classics, A Man for All Seasons would have something close to top billing. It’s the story of St. Thomas More, the great English lawyer and politician who refused to sacrifice his conscience in order to approve the divorce and remarriage of the king he served, Henry VIII. Barron has credited More’s life, and the 1966 film that captured it, with getting across three basic insights: We’re all responsible for upholding the rights of others; accepting one’s duties often leads to discomfort; and despite the second point, you don’t have to be gloomy about it. ~ Robert E Barron,

1139:The woman movement is one which is uniting by co-operating influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state. Spiritualism, free love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts men and women to avoid large families, often by sinful methods, thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor health of women, causing them to dread maternity as--what it is fast becoming--an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures. ~ Catharine Beecher,

1140:Could not interesting little experiment be tried, by possessor of unusual amount of moral courage, in the shape of suddenly producing perfectly brand new opinions: for example, to the effect that Americans have better manners than we have, or that their divorce laws are a great improvement over our own? Should much like to see the effect of these, or similar, psychological bombs, but should definitely wish Robert to be absent from the scene. Announcement of tea breaks off these intelligent speculations and I am struck, as usual, by the infinite superiority of other people's food to my own. ~ E M Delafield,

1141:Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate “relationship” involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the “married” couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other. ~ Wendell Berry,

1142:Sitting there, I remembered two things about going to mass with my father: he never took Communion because of his and my mother's divorce, and he always tapped his heart three times, with solemn insistence, after the recitation of the Apostles' Creed. I asked him about his ritual once. His eyes filled with such alarm that I instantly knew his heart tapping had something to do with a loss or devastation: his parents' early death, his divorce, his wounding in Vietnam. There was no reason for me to invade that space. Maybe that was the best simple explanation for religion: it filled our spaces. ~ Tom Bissell,

1143:I feel like I've been lucky that I've never been put in a situation where I had to keep a serious secret. But what is true of me - and has to be true of everyone who's ever been in a family - is that our idealization of reality when we're children always has to fall apart. It's the narratives we didn't know about that pop up and redraw reality. You have to be able to integrate secrets into who you are. My family does not look now like it does when I was a kid. There was divorce. There were family secrets. There was definitely a difference between what I thought was true and what was true. ~ Patrick Somerville,

1144:I’m going to let you in on a secret. People don’t grow up like you think they do. The whole grown-up thing is a myth. Whatever’s wrong with you now will probably be wrong with you in twenty years. If people really grew up there would be no crime, no divorce, no Civil War reenactors. Think about it. Was Uncle Ray a grown-up? Does Dad always behave like a grown-up? It’s all bullshit. I can’t tell you what Mom’s been doing lately, but I will say, not grown-up… It’s not like you think it will be, that one day you’ll wake up and realize that you’ve got things figured out. You never figure it out. Ever. ~ Lisa Lutz,

1145:At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we're going to become, and then when we become those people, we're not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret? ~ Dan Gilbert,

1146:I've seen any number of devastated men in therapy who tell me their wives left them out of the blue. The women, however, claim to have voiced their anger and discontent for a long time. Both are right; he hasn't listened well enough; she hasn't shared her thoughts about leaving clearly enough or early enough in the process. Often one person doesn't make a serious issue of divorce until she's finally made up her mind to leave. Any changes her partner then agrees to make are too little, too late. In the end, neither spouse has had the opportunity to test the potential for change in their marriage. ~ Harriet Lerner,

1147:Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. Red states suffer more in another highly important but little-known way, one that speaks to the very biological self-interest in health and life: industrial pollution. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild,

1148:They’ve poisoned you with this ‘love is patient, love is kind,’ bullshit since you were a kid. But love is scientific. I mean, it’s really just a chemical reaction in the brain. Sometimes that reaction lasts a lifetime, repeating itself over and over again. And sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it goes supernova and then starts to fade. We’re all just chemical hearts. Does that make love any less brilliant? I don’t think so. That’s why I don’t get why people always say ‘50% of marriages end in divorce,’ as a justification to not get married. Just because a love ends, doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. ~ Krystal Sutherland,

1149:If Catherine would just let go' had been their mantra for so long. Now Mamah understood Catherine's dilemma better. She wouldn't divorce Frank because she feared he wouldn't pay her child support and alimony. And there was revenge to be sure: By refusing to divorce after twenty years of accommodating him, Catherine was squeezing recompense from Frank for a longstanding emotional debt. But that was only part of it. Catherine held on because she still loved him, and remembered what it was like to be loved by him. Nothing else in the world compared to the incandescent joy Frank brought to his best beloved. ~ Nancy Horan,

1150:Couples who regularly practice empathy see stunning results. It is the independent variable that predicts a successful marriage, according to behaviorist John Gottman, who, post hoc criticisms notwithstanding, forecasts divorce probabilities with accuracy rates approaching 90 percent. In Gottman’s studies, if the wife felt she was being heard by her husband—to the point that he accepted her good influence on his behavior—the marriage was essentially divorce-proof. (Interestingly, whether the husband felt heard was not a factor in divorce rates.) If that empathy trafficking was absent, the marriage foundered. Research ~ John Medina,

1151:By the standards of most love stories, our own, real relationships are almost all damaged and unsatisfactory. No wonder separation and divorce so often appear inevitable. But we should be careful not to judge our relationships by the expectations imposed on us by a frequently misleading aesthetic medium. The fault lies with art, not life. Rather than split up, we may need to tell ourselves more accurate stories – stories that don’t dwell so much on the beginning, that don’t promise us complete understanding, that strive to normalise our troubles and show us a melancholy yet hopeful path through the course of love. ~ Alain de Botton,

1152:children who experience multiple transitions in family structure may fare worse developmentally than children raised in stable two-parent families and perhaps even than children raised in stable, single-parent families.” For many kids, the first impulse is escape, but people who lurch toward the exit rarely choose the right door. This is how my aunt found herself married at sixteen to an abusive husband. It’s how my mom, the salutatorian of her high school class, had both a baby and a divorce, but not a single college credit under her belt before her teenage years were over. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chaos ~ J D Vance,

1153:Alcohol, sadness, impulsive, regrettable behavior. Those were his reasons. The staples of discord. I understood. Sometimes he sends me e-mails that are so formal they seem to have been drafted by a phalanx of lawyers and sometimes he sends me e-mails that are sort of a continuation of our conversations over the years, a kind of intimate banter about nothing as though this whole divorce thing is just a game. All the recriminations and apologies and attempts at understanding and attacks… I was guilty of these things too. Dan wanted me to stay. I wanted Elf to stay. Everyone in the whole world was fighting with somebody to stay. ~ Miriam Toews,

1154:People often ask, Why is infidelity such a big deal today? Why does it hurt so much? How has it become one of the leading causes of divorce? Only by taking a brief trip back in time to look at the changes of love, sex and marriage over the last few centuries can we have an informed conversation about modern infidelity. History and culture have always set the stage for our domestic dramas. In particular, the rise of individualism, the emergence of consumer culture, and the mandate for happiness have transformed matrimony and its adulterous shadow. Affairs are not what they used to be because marriage is not what it used to be. ~ Esther Perel,

1155:The Liberals, he said, were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce, to recognize the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut the country up into a federal system that would take power away from the supreme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,

1156:Besides being blind to lots of good things, the GDP also benefits from all manner of human suffering. Gridlock, drug abuse, adultery? Goldmines for gas stations, rehab centers, and divorce attorneys. If you were the GDP, your ideal citizen would be a compulsive gambler with cancer who’s going through a drawn-out divorce that he copes with by popping fistfuls of Prozac and going berserk on Black Friday. Environmental pollution even does double duty: One company makes a mint by cutting corners while another is paid to clean up the mess. By contrast, a centuries-old tree doesn’t count until you chop it down and sell it as lumber. ~ Rutger Bregman,

1157:It was entirely possible that the parents of all the students in the institute were dealing with the most crucial life problems right now. Some might be going through a divorce. Some fighting a grave illness. Somebody might be in the middle of a custody battle, somebody else expecting a child. And all of them would prefer to think that their grown children were getting an education at a decent, albeit provincial, institution of higher learning. And no one would suspect that the success of their endeavors, their health, and even their very lives depended on the academic performance of their forgotten children, abandoned in Torpa. ~ Marina Dyachenko,

1158:He was enough older than Nicole to take pleasure in her youthful vanities and delights, the way she paused fractionally in front of the hall mirror on leaving the restaurant, so that the incorruptible quicksilver could give her back to herself. He delighted in her stretching out her hands to new octaves now that she found herself beautiful and rich. He tried honestly to divorce her from any obsession that he had stitched her together - glad to see her build up happiness and confidence apart from him; the difficulty was that, eventually, Nicole brought everything to his feet, gifts of sacrificial ambrosia, of worshipping myrtle. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,

1159:It takes an obsessive streak that borders on lunacy to go rummaging around in the past as memoirists are wont to do, particularly a fragmented or incendiary past, in which facts are sparse and stories don't match up. I don't know if memoirists as children are lied to more often as kids or only grow up to resent it more, but it does seem we often come from the ranks of orphans or half-orphans-through-divorce, trying to heal schisms inside ourselves. Like everybody, I suppose, people we loved broke our hearts because only they had access to them, and we broke our own hearts later by following their footsteps and reenacting their mistakes. ~ Mary Karr,

1160:If you are in a period of discouragement because you are going through a trial and you are asking yourself, “Why is this happening to me?” consider this: Never make a major decision when you are depressed. Often, when we get discouraged, we are tempted to say, “I’m just going to quit” or “I’m going to move” or “I’m going to change jobs” or “I’m going to file for divorce.” Never make a major decision when you are depressed, because at that time your feelings are unreliable and you cannot exercise accurate judgment. Your focus is blurry, and your perspective is distorted. Instead, face the storm head-on and don’t get involved in self-pity. ~ Rick Warren,

1161:Amos Sibley Not character, not fortitude, not patience Were mine, the which the village thought I had In bearing with my wife, while preaching on, Doing the work God chose for me. I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton. I knew of her adulteries, every one. But even so, if I divorced the woman I must forsake the ministry. Therefore to do God's work and have it crop, I bore with her! So lied I to myself! So lied I to Spoon River! Yet I tried lecturing, ran for the legislature, Canvassed for books, with just the thought in mind: If I make money thus, I will divorce her. ~ Edgar Lee Masters,

1162:She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they’d always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word. ~ Anonymous,

1163:Her eyes narrowed. “Then why did you leave me?” Her words cut deeply. “Because I knew if I stayed, if I kept coming around, you would spend so much time worrying about me that you wouldn’t stand half a chance at getting better. You never put yourself first, Lizzy. You never did, you never will. But you should. That’s why you’ve struggled with the demons inside you for so long. You always put everybody else first. You’ve taken full responsibility for your mother and father’s divorce, your sister’s problems, and your father’s inability to cope. Now you’re trying to figure out how to balance the rest of the world on your shoulders.” “Ridiculous. ~ T R Ragan,

1164:Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said. But a promise is a promise And marriage is marriage, And out of respect for my own character I refused to be drawn into a divorce By the scheme of a husband who had merely grown tired Of his marital vow and duty. ~ Edgar Lee Masters,

1165:She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they’d always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best – well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word. ~ Liane Moriarty,

1166:In the middle of a grocery store, two children were horsing around (one holding the other in a headlock) when the mother turned abruptly to give them a stern reprimand. 'You two are old enough to know better than to behave this way in public! Could you—at least for the time we’re in this store—mind your manners enough to act like an adult?' The children took less than a moment to consider their mother’s question before facing each other and engaging in the following conversation: 'I hate you.' 'I hate you too.' 'Let's get a divorce.' 'Okay.' Perhaps ‘act like an adult’ isn't such good advice anymore. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,

1167:She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they'd always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best--well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word. ~ Liane Moriarty,

1168:Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry feelings. Depression, instead, is flat,hollow and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humourless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened and frightening and you're "Not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,

1169:Yes, He was a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. If you are grieving, He can feel it with you. For the lonely one—the widow or widower, the divorced—He understands what it is to be alone, to feel that a part of yourself has been literally torn away. Studies show that the two greatest stress-producing factors to body, mind, and emotions are the death of a spouse and divorce. In some ways, divorce can be worse. The death of a spouse, though painful, can be a clean wound. Divorce often leaves a dirty, infected wound, throbbing with pain. Jesus understands when a single parent is trying to be husband and wife, mother and father, all in one. ~ David A Seamands,

1170:Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but O, to no end. Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy ; Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. ~ John Donne,

1171:I believe in yogurt because it’s creamy and a good use of milk that would otherwise go sour. Think about it: Where does all the sour milk go? That goes for people too. Not that we ferment, though I guess we do lactate, but everyone has skills and desires that go unused and unmet, and they sour. How can we make yogurt of these soured attributes? How do we make something delicious, how do we salvage them? I was like, dude, how in the world did you manage to bring human lactation into your oral report? If I ever said anything half that creative, half that unusual, my best friends would divorce my ass. How can a guy be so comfortable with being weird? ~ Bill Konigsberg,

1172:When we think of people giving up on their marriage, divorce usually comes to mind. But many people who give up on their marriage (or themselves or their partner) don’t leave; they stay in the comfort cycle—until their marriage presents the inevitable dilemma: venture into the growth cycle or face divorce, loss of integrity, or living death. Validating and soothing each other has its place in marriage—but not when you’re dependent on it. You get stuck in the comfort cycle because neither of you has the strength or motivation to break out. That’s when the other side of the process comes in: holding onto yourself (self-confrontation and self-soothing). ~ David Schnarch,

1173:Looking across the restaurant table, I could see the sadness in my mother's eyes. A good friend of hers had just gone through a bitter divorce. Suddenly, after more than three decades of marriage to a wealthy surgeon, the friend now found herself living in a tiny apartment, struggling to make ends meet as a $25,000-a-year secretary. Like many formerly well-o women, she had never paid much attention to her family's finances, and as a result her estranged husband was able to run rings around her in the settlement talks. It was a terrible thing—all the more so because it could have been prevented so easily— and it made me wonder if my mother was similarly in the dark ~ Anonymous,

1174:Napoleon pronounced, “the husband must possess the absolute power and right to say to his wife, ‘Madam, you shall not go to the theater, you shall not receive such and such a person; for the children you will bear shall be mine.’ ” Equally, every woman “must be made to realize that on leaving the tutelage of her family, she passes under that of her husband.”13 To this end, the Code Napoléon equipped every husband with extraordinary, unprecedented, indeed despotic powers. He could compel his wife either to reside in or to move to any place he decreed; everything she ever owned or earned became his; in divorce, he kept the children, the house and all the goods, ~ Rosalind Miles,

1175:What I think we as the church lack, though, is a place to talk about how things really are right now. In our desire to be an inspiration to one another we often veil what is true, because what is true is not always inspirational. It's not easy to watch or personally experience a marriage on the verge of divorce, or a child battling cancer, or a betrayal of the worst kind, or dreams lost in the dust, or overwhelming feelings of despair or emptiness. But these things are real. And hurting believers whose lives are in tatters need real help. If we were able to put aside our need for approval long enough to be authentic, then, surely, we would be living as the church. ~ Sheila Walsh,

1176:You, my child, will marry well. More than once." (...) The lady retrieved the cards and shuffled them back together into one stack in an attitude of dismissal. Taking this as a sign her fortune was complete, Preshea stood. Looking particularly pleased with life, she passed over a few coins and gave Madame Spetuna a nice curtsy. Mademoiselle Geraldine was fanning herself. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, Miss Buss. Let us hope it is widowhood and not" - she whispered the next word - "divorce that leads to your multiple marriages." Preshea sat and sipped from a china cup. "I shouldn't worry, Headmistress. I am tolerably certain it will be widowhood. ~ Gail Carriger,

1177:If they lived in Saudi Arabia, under Shari’a law, these college girls in their pretty scarves wouldn’t be free to study, to work, to drive, to walk around. In Saudi Arabia girls their age and younger are confined, are forced to marry, and if they have sex outside of marriage they are sentenced to prison and flogged. According to the Quran, their husband is permitted to beat them and decide whether they may work or even leave the house; he may marry other women without seeking their approval, and if he chooses to divorce them, they have no right to resist or to keep custody of their children. Doesn’t this matter at all to these clever young Muslim girls in America? ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

1178:I’ve had a lot of practice. The Pack contains thirty-two species in seven tribes, each with their own hang-up. Jackals and coyotes pick fights with wolves, because they have an inferiority complex and think they’ve got something to prove. Wolves believe themselves to be superior, marry the wrong people, and then refuse to divorce them because they cling to their ‘mating for life’ idiocy. Hyenas listen to nobody, screw everything, and break out in berserk rages at some perceived slight against one of their own. Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can. That’s my life. I’ve been at this for fifteen years now. You’re easy by comparison. ~ Ilona Andrews,

1179:Sometimes I think I’m too proud, too self-protective, but then I see other girls making idiots of themselves over boys and I change my mind. I’d rather be too proud than make a laughingstock of myself. I think of how my mum acted when my dad left her for the awful Sif: no matter how upset Mum was, she never threw scenes, never begged him to stay. Maybe she lavished too much attention on me after he went, kept me a little too close, but I really admired how she behaved through the separation and divorce. Dad admired her too, I know. I’ve never been prouder of her. And I want to be like her. I won’t chase after a man; I won’t seem desperate or needy. I’ll be as cool as my mum. ~ Lauren Henderson,

1180:There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over. "There is," said Father Brown dryly, "and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness today; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven. ~ G K Chesterton,

1181:CHAPTER 17 The Lie: I AM DEFINED BY MY WEIGHT When people talk about divorce, they use words like irreconcilable or messy. But those words are too light—too easy for the destruction of a family. Divorce is a book falling onto a house made of Legos. It’s a cannonball shot over the bow that crashes through the deck and sinks the other ship. Divorce is destruction that starts at the top and breaks everything apart on the way down. So, no. Messy isn’t the right adjective. Horrible, ugly, hateful, annihilating—these are closer. When I was sixteen, my parents were in the middle of a horrible, ugly, hateful, annihilating divorce that had been on again, off again since I was nine years old. ~ Rachel Hollis,

1182:Still doing divorces?” Al Garcia asked. “Here and there.” Keyes hated to admit it, but that’s what covered the rent: he’d gotten damn good at staking out nooner motels with his three-hundred-millimeter Nikon. That was another reason for Al García’s affability. Last year he had hired Brian Keyes to get the goods on his new son-in-law. García despised the kid, and was on the verge of outright murdering him when he called Keyes for help. Keyes had done a hell of a job, too. Tracked the little stud to a VD clinic in Homestead. García’s daughter wasn’t thrilled by the news, but Al was. The divorce went through in four weeks, a new Dade County record. Now Brian Keyes had a friend for life. ~ Carl Hiaasen,

1183:They don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it’s hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them: eating together, doing homework, watching Little League, driving them around endlessly, being bored with nothing to do, letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife. Through this, they see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures, and social interactions. Kids learn from whoever is around them the most. ~ Rob Lowe,

1184:Genes contribute, somehow, to just about every aspect of our personalities.13 We’re not just talking about IQ, mental illness, and basic personality traits such as shyness. We’re talking about the degree to which you like jazz, spicy foods, and abstract art; your likelihood of getting a divorce or dying in a car crash; your degree of religiosity, and your political orientation as an adult. Whether you end up on the right or the left of the political spectrum turns out to be just as heritable as most other traits: genetics explains between a third and a half of the variability among people on their political attitudes.14 Being raised in a liberal or conservative household accounts for much less. ~ Anonymous,

1185:Everything about [chance] scares the bejesus out of so many people; it's the this thing they try to avoid at all costs. Don't travel to the Middle East these days - there's a chance something could happen. Don't get involved with that new fellow on Creamery Street - I hear a lot of mud was scraped off his floor after the divorce. Don't have your baby at home - there's a a chance something could go wrong. Don't don't don't... Well, you can't live your life like that! You can't spend your entire life avoiding chance. It's out there, it's inescapable, it's a part of the soul of the world. There are no sure things in this universe, and it's absolutely ridiculous to try and live like there are! ~ Chris Bohjalian,

1186:Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,

1187:Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world. The refugee in Syria doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce. Yes, perspective is critical. But I’m a firm believer that complaining is okay as long as we piss and moan with a little perspective. Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us. 8. ~ Bren Brown,

1188:better at recognizing it in others.” He went quiet a moment. “My parents were divorced, which is a whole different thing. I’m not comparing the two—” “Because that would be insensitive.” Someone came up to me after Jesse died and told me I was lucky because death was better than an acrimonious divorce. If I hadn’t been so weak from lack of eating, I would have punched her into the following week. Sean ran a hand over his face and took off his cap. In the sunlight, his red hair caught fire, all gold and orange and copper. “I’m not doing very well with this. What I’m trying to say is that the odds are with you with this one. A kid only needs one good parent to keep him anchored. He may float off and ~ Loretta Nyhan,

1189:By far the biggest category of resistance is fear — fear of the unknown. Listen to these: I’m not ready yet. I might fail. They might reject me. What would the neighbors think? I’m afraid to tell my husband/wife. I might get hurt. I may have to change. It might cost me money. I would rather die first, or get a divorce first. I don’t want anyone to know I have a problem. I’m afraid to express my feelings. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t have the energy. Who knows where I might end up? I may lose my freedom. It’s too hard to do. I don’t have enough money now. I might hurt my back. I wouldn’t be perfect. I might lose my friends. I don’t trust anyone. It might hurt my image. I’m not good enough. ~ Louise L Hay,

1190:Books were already a familiar refuge, after all, and they still took me in without the slightest judgment. They don’t close to you the way a person can. You might feel as though you don’t belong anywhere, least of all in your own home, you might feel bound to a person whose actions you abhor yet unable to divorce yourself, struggling to individuate in their shadow—“all these feelings you wouldn’t dare articulate to another person, no matter how highly trained—but you can bring your whole untempered self to books. You can ask them anything, and though you may need to search for the resonant lines, though the answer may come at a slant, they will always speak to you, they will always let you in. ~ Carolina De Robertis,

1191:The North Americans' sense of time is very special. They are short on patience. Everything must be quick, including food and sex, which the rest of the world treats ceremoniously. Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: “snack” and “quickie,” to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up. The most popular books are manuals: how to become a millionaire in ten easy lessons, how to lose fifteen pounds a week, how to recover from your divorce, and so on. People always go around looking for shortcuts, and ways to escape anything they consider unpleasant: ugliness, old age, weight, illness, poverty, and failure in any of its aspects. ~ Isabel Allende,

1192:In my land, in the event of a divorce, the mother has the right to retain her children if they are still suckling. But in most cases, a mother maintains custody of daughters until a girl child reaches puberty. In the case of male children, the boy should be allowed to remain with his mother until he is seven. When he reaches his seventh birthday, he is supposed to have the option to choose between his mother or father. Generally it is accepted that the father have his sons at age seven. A son must go with his father at the age of puberty, regardless of the child's wishes. Often, in the case of male children, many fathers will not allow the mother to retain custody of a son, no matter what the age of the child. ~ Jean Sasson,

1193:First was a lone cyclist, in a red jersey, toiling intent and confident out of the westering sun, passing to the melody of a high chattering cheer. Then three together in a harlequinade of faded colour, legs caked yellow with dust and sweat, faces expressionless, eyes heavy and endlessly tired. Tommy faced Dick, saying: 'I think Nicole wants a divorce - I suppose you'll make no obstacles?' A troupe of fifty more swarmed after the first bicycle racers, strung out over two hundred yards; a few were smiling and self-conscious, a few obviously exhausted, most of them indifferent and weary. A retinue of small boys passed, a few defiant stragglers, a light truck carried the victims of accident and defeat. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,

1194:Recently, evolutionary psychologist have turned their sights on love and divorce. It didn´t take long to notice that when people fall in love, there´s period of up to three years during which the zeal and infatuation ride at a peak. The internal signals in the body and breain are literally a love drug. And then it beginds to decline. From this perspective, we are preprogramed to lose interest in a sexual partner after the time required to raise a child has passed – which is, on average, about 4 years. In psychologist Helen Fisher´s view, the internally generated love drug love drug is simply an efficient mechanism to get men and women to stick together long enough to increase the survival likehood of their young. ~ David Eagleman,

1195:231When you divorce women and they have reached their set time, then either keep or release them in a fair manner. Do not hold on to them with intent to harm them and commit aggression: anyone who does this wrongs himself. Do not make a mockery of God’s revelations; remember the favour He blessed you with, and the Scripture and wisdom He sent to teach you. Be mindful of God and know that He has full knowledge of everything. 232When you divorce women and they have reached their set time, do not prevent them from remarrying their husbands if they both agree to do so in a fair manner.b Let those of you who believe in God and the Last Day take this to heart: that is more wholesome and purer for you. God knows and you do not. ~ Anonymous,

1196:And the Church’s views on marriage were nothin’ short of ridiculous. It had to be celebrated in public, and the marriage was permanent, for mercy’s sake. We preferred to do things more clandestinelike, for marriage, after all, is a personal affair. And after a year, if the man was not up to his wife’s standards, she could boot him out the door. Say, “I divorce you!” and he was gone, just like that. Canon law did agree with native law in one respect. It said that a woman could own property. Nice, you say. Sure, so the woman could leave her property to the Church! Hypocrisy, pure and simple. And the feckin’ clergy—they made whores of all women who would lay with a man she lusted after. What sense is there in that? Most ~ Robin Maxwell,

1197:But why me? We haven’t spoken since the last divorce hearing.” “You know where I’m from,” he said, and she understood what he meant by this. Once we lived on an island in the ocean. Once we took the ferry to go to high school, and at night the sky was brilliant in the absence of all these city lights. Once we paddled canoes to the lighthouse to look at petroglyphs and fished for salmon and walked through deep forests, but all of this was completely unremarkable because everyone else we knew did these things too, and here in these lives we’ve built for ourselves, here in these hard and glittering cities, none of this would seem real if it wasn’t for you. And aside from that, she realized, he was currently wifeless. ~ Emily St John Mandel,

1198:has a client. Mr. Boone is working.” This was usually the case. Theo’s mother, when she wasn’t in court, spent most of her time with clients, almost all of whom were women who (1) wanted a divorce, or (2) needed a divorce, or (3) were in the process of getting a divorce, or (4) were suffering through the aftermath of a divorce. It was difficult work, but his mother was known as one of the top divorce lawyers in town. Theo was quite proud of this. He was also proud of the fact that his mother encouraged every new client to seek professional counseling in an effort to save the marriage. Sadly, though, as he’d already learned, some marriages cannot be saved. He bounced up the stairs with Judge at his heels and barged into the ~ John Grisham,

1199:But the Dashnak Hairenik Weekly was merciless. Quoting the accounts of a few escapees, it depicted Soviet Armenian as a locus not just of economic misery, but moral degradation:     Godlessness, Atheism, Immorality, Robbery and perpetual spying on one another! There is not a trace of our family sanctities left there. Having repudiated the idea of the existence of a God, the Bolshevik ignores every conception of family standards, every moral principle, every social order. Aram’s wife or watch equally can belong to Hagop, Ali, or Stalin. There is no conception of nationality. A Kurd, a Caucasian, a Georgian, or a Turk have the right to become your son-in-law when they wish it. They have the right to divorce the very next day.26 ~ Thomas de Waal,

1200:But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life lacking all of that. Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. ~ Philip K Dick,

1201:Tragedy seems to bring out all varieties of unexpected qualities in people. It was as if some folks got dunked in plastic, vacuum-sealed like backpacking dinners, and could do nothing but sweat in their private hell. And others seemed to have just the opposite problem, as if disaster had dipped them in acid instead, stripping off the outside layer of skin that once protected them from the slings and arrows of other people’s outrageous fortunes. For these sorts, just walking down the street in the wake of every stranger’s ill wind became an agony, an aching slog through this man’s fresh divorce and this woman’s throat cancer. They were in hell, too, but it was everybody’s hell, this big, shoreless, sloshing sea of toxic waste. ~ Lionel Shriver,

1202:What firsts have we already passed? The eady ones, I say. First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn't the one sleeping. Now we barely have any keft. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we're both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We're done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I'll have to divorce you and marry a wife who's twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you'll be stuck raising the kids. So you see, babe? I'm only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it'll be before I'm forced to leave you high and dry. Your logic terrifies me, I sort of don't find you attractive anymore. ~ Colleen Hoover,

1203:There’s a pizza place I want you to try, Ciccio’s. You heard of it?” “We can get good pizza on Fifth.” “No, you have to try this place, Matt. It’s phenomenal.” “What’s phenomenal, the pizza or the staff?” Since my divorce a few years ago, Scott—boss, friend, and eternal bachelor—had high hopes that I’d become his permanent wingman. It was impossible to talk him out of anything, especially when it involved women and food. “You got me. You have to see this girl. We’ll call it a work meeting. I’ll put it on the company card.” Scott was the type who talked about women a lot and about porn even more. He was severely out of touch with reality. “I’m sure this qualifies as sexual harassment somewhere. ~ Renee Carlino,

1204:We are now shocked at the current spate of alphabetic scandals — IRS, AP, NSA, VA. But why are we surprised, given that Obama never told the truth about his relationships with the old terrorist Bill Ayers and former PLO ad hoc spokesman Rashid Khalidi, or about the creepy land deal with the crook Tony Rezko? If the Obama White House demonized the Tea Party as tea-baggers, or compared the Republican House opposition to terrorists and arsonists, why should we be astonished, given how he was elected to the U.S. Senate? Quite mysteriously, his primary opponent, Blair Hull, and his general-election opponent, Jack Ryan, both of whom were favored to win, had their confidential divorce records leaked. Their campaigns subsequently imploded. ~ Anonymous,

1205:Practically speaking, when more than 90 percent of women got married and divorce was rare, discrimination in favor of men at work meant discrimination in favor of their wives at home. When workplace discrimination worked in favor of women at home, no one called it sexism. Why? It was working for women. Only when discrimination switched from working for women to working against women (because more women were working) did it get called sexism. For example: During the years I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, the most resistant audiences I ever faced in the process of doing corporate workshops on equality in the workplace were not male executives—they were the wives of male executives. ~ Warren Farrell,

1206:There is a Western phenomenon called the male midlife crisis. Very often it is heralded by divorce. What history might have done to you, you bring about on purpose: separation from woman and child. Don’t tell me that such men aren’t tasting the ancient flavors of death and defeat. In America, with divorce achieved, the midlifer can expect to be more recreational, more discretionary. He can almost design the sort of crisis he is going to have: motorbike, teenage girlfriend, vegetarianism, jogging, sports car, mature boyfriend, cocaine, crash diet, powerboat, new baby, religion, hair transplant. Over here, now, there’s no angling around for your male midlife crisis. It is brought to you and it is always the same thing. It is death. ~ Martin Amis,

1207:Always taking an adversative stance can result in avoiding situations one might really enjoy. And always accommodating can result in accepting situations one would really rather avoid. One man described to me what he and his former wife called the I-like-chicken-backs phenomenon. When his family ate a chicken for dinner, someone had to eat the back, and in his family it was always his wife, who assured the others, 'I like chicken backs.' But, as this man commented to me, nobody really likes chicken backs. She had convinced herself that she liked chicken backs—and broken egg yolks and burned toast—to be accommodating. But years of accommodating built up to mounting frustration that they both believed had contributed to their eventual divorce. ~ Deborah Tannen,

1208:October, for an instant, brings a new kind of power. Fleetingly, there is a shift towards workers’ control of production and the rights of peasants to the land. Equal rights for men and women in work and in marriage, the right to divorce, maternity support. The decriminalization of homosexuality, 100 years ago. Moves towards national self-determination. Free and universal education, the expansion of literacy. And with literacy comes cultural explosion, a thirst to learn, the mushrooming of universities and lecture series and adult schools. A change in the soul, as Lunacharsky might put it, as much as in the factory. And though those moments are snuffed out, reversed, become bleak jokes and memories all too soon, it might have been otherwise. ~ China Mi ville,

1209:I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them. I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating myself on the fact that I never had sex in an airplane with a handsome Italian businessman, or patting myself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy I endured after my divorce. If recent experience is any guide, I'll probably be lying in that hospital bed with my body full of tubes, sneaking glances at the handsome young doctor, wishing that I hadn't been such a coward. Wishing I'd taken more risks, made more mistakes, and accumulated more regrets. Just wishing I'd lived when I had the chance. ~ Tom Perrotta,

1210:Daily I walk around my small, picturesque town with a thought bubble over my head: Person Going Through A Divorce. When I look at other people, I automatically form thought bubbles over their heads. Happy Couple With Stroller. Innocent Teenage Girl With Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her. Content Grandmother And Grandfather Visiting Town Where Their Grandchildren Live With Intact Parents. Secure Housewife With Big Diamond. Undamaged Group Of Young Men On Skateboards. Good Man With Baby In BabyBjörn Who Loves His Wife. Dogs Who Never Have To Worry. Young Kids Kissing Publicly. Then every so often I see one like me, one of the shambling gaunt women without makeup, looking older than she is: Divorcing Woman Wondering How The Fuck This Happened. ~ Suzanne Finnamore,

1211:I tilt my head sideways so I can look him straight on. “What firsts have we already passed?” “The easy ones. First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn’t the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we’re both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We’re done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I’ll have to divorce you and marry a wife who’s twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you’ll be stuck raising the kids.” He cups my cheek in his hand and smiles at me. “So you see, babe? I’m only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it’ll be before I’m forced to leave you high and dry. ~ Colleen Hoover,

1212:Reasons for Joy Happy are the people whose God is the LORD. Psalm 144:15 “How’s life?” someone asks. And we who’ve been resurrected from the dead say, “Well, things could be better.” Or “Couldn’t get a parking place.” Or “My parents won’t let me move to Hawaii.” Or “People won’t leave me alone so I can finish my sermon on selfishness.” … Are you so focused on what you don’t have that you are blind to what you do? You have a ticket to heaven no thief can take, an eternal home no divorce can break. Every sin of your life has been cast to the sea. Every mistake you’ve made is nailed to the tree. You’re blood-bought and heaven-made. A child of God—forever saved. So be grateful, joyful—for isn’t it true? What you don’t have is much less than what you do. ~ Max Lucado,

1213:Consider an analogy. When people get married, they know they may divorce their spouse in the future if they choose to. At the same time, they do not enter into the marriage with a fear that the marriage will dissolve. They know that it is up to them to enter into the marriage and, if they so choose, to dissolve the marriage. But for just this reason the conditional nature of marriage does not make them insecure. Of course, if the stability of a marriage were rooted in factors outside their control, they would indeed have cause to worry. As it stands, however, it is conditioned on their own will. Hence, there are no grounds for insecurity. The same thing is true of salvation. It is conditioned on nothing other than the will of the person. Finally, ~ Gregory A Boyd,

1214:I tilt my head sideways so I can look him straight on. “What firsts have we already passed?�� “The easy ones. First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn’t the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we’re both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We’re done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I’ll have to divorce you and marry a wife who’s twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you’ll be stuck raising the kids.” He cups my cheek in his hand and smiles at me. “So you see, babe? I’m only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it’ll be before I’m forced to leave you high and dry. ~ Colleen Hoover,

1215:I tilt my head and ask “What firsts have we already passed?” “The easy ones,” he says. “First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn’t the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we’re both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We’re done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I’ll have to divorce you and marry a wife who’s twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you’ll be stuck raising the kids.” He bring his hand to my cheek and smile at me. “So you see, babe? I’m only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it’ll be before I’m forced to leave you high and dry. ~ Colleen Hoover,

1216:Why are you studying Italian? So that - just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again, and is actually successful this time - you can brag about knowing a language that’s spoken in two whole countries? But I loved it. Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. I would slosh home through the rain after class, draw a hot bath, and lie there in the bubbles reading the Italian dictionary aloud to myself, taking my mind off my divorce pressures and my heartache. The words made me laugh in delight. I started referring to my cell phone as il mio telefonino (“my teensy little telephone”) I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

1217:We have organized a social order which we cherish and look upon as sacred. Jesus, whom we recognize as God, comes and tells us that our social organization is wrong. We recognize him as God, but we are not willing to renounce our social institutions. What, then, are we to do? Add, if we can, the words "without a cause" to render void the command against anger; mutilate the sense of another law, as audacious prevaricators have done by substituting for the command absolutely forbidding divorce, phraseology which permits divorce; and if there is no possible way of deriving an equivocal meaning, as in the case of the commands, "Judge not, condemn not," and "Swear not at all," then with the utmost effrontery openly violate the rule while affirming that we obey it. ~ Leo Tolstoy,

1218:On the face of it, life was God-fearing and respectable. Almost sixty per cent of American families owned their own homes, an unprecedented figure. The divorce rate was remarkably low, at 8.9 couples per thousand all told in 1958. According to Gallup polls, in 1940 a third of American adults went to church every week; by 1955 the proportion had risen to around half. To the ‘happiness question’, more than half of all Americans answered ‘very happy’ in 1957. Never had there been so much quantifiable happiness, and never would there be so much again. Anyone wishing to be catapulted back into the America of those years should take a look on YouTube at the home movie Disneyland Dream, filmed in the summer of 1956 by enthusiastic amateur filmmaker Robbins Barstow, who ~ Geert Mak,

1219:You’re serious? You want me to go to school?” “Why not?” he challenged. “So long as you take care of shit around here, I’m fine with it. Might want to move on that whole divorce thing too while you’re at it. Club’s got a lawyer, I’ll set up an appointment for you. I can pretty much guarantee your ex won’t put up a fight.” He smiled when he said it—not a nice smile. “Okay, I’ll go check it out,” I said slowly. “This is weird, you get that? You kidnapping me, holding me hostage and then sending me to school? This isn’t how things like this usually work.” Horse grinned at me, eyes lazy and satisfied. “Just roll with it,” he whispered. “And keep doing whatever exercises you do to make your cunt squeeze like that. They got a college degree for that? ~ Joanna Wylde,

1220:Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates! All streaming into cozy hotels All going to do the same thing tonight The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen The lobby zombies they knowing what The whistling elevator man he knowing The winking bellboy knowing Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything! Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye! Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon! running rampant into those almost climatic suites yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel! O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce-- ~ Gregory Corso,

1221:Even they would think you a monster were you to orchestrate a divorce right after my confinement.” “How long do you recommend I wait, then?” “A long time. I know what happens when a divorce is granted: The woman never gets anything. And I will not be parted from my child.” “So you will contest the divorce?” “To my last penny. And then I’ll borrow from Fitz and Millie.” “So we’ll be married ’til the end of time?” “The sooner you accept it, the sooner we are all better off.” His ancestors would have appreciated her hauteur: a fit wife for a de Montfort. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must have enough rest.” He gazed at her retreating back. Foolish woman, did she not realize that he’d already accepted it from the moment he’d said “I do”? ~ Sherry Thomas,

1222:She was an old-fashioned woman. She had the calm of frequentation; she belonged to this house and it to her. Though she was a prisoner in it, she possessed it. She and it were her marriage. She was indwelling in every board and stone of it: every fold in the curtains had a meaning (perhaps they were so folded to hide a darn or stain); every room was a phial of revelation to be poured out some feverish night in the secret laboratories of her decisions, full of living cancers of insult, leprosies of disillusion, abscesses of grudge, gangrene of nevermore, quintan fevers of divorce, and all the proliferating miseries, the running sores and thick scabs, for which (and not for its heavenly joys) the flesh of marriage is so heavily veiled and conventually interned. ~ Christina Stead,

1223:Even then, retailers learned early that shoppers prefer their shopping suggestions not be too truthful. One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. ~ John Scalzi,

1224:America today is a "save yourself" society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves. ~ John Piper,

1225:Consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable, and dictated by the market. The beautiful object of consumer pornography has a built-in obsolescence, to ensure that as few men as possible will form a bond with one woman for years or for a lifetime, and to ensure that women's dissatisfaction with themselves will grow rather than diminish over time. Emotionally unstable relationships, high divorce rates, and a large population cast out into the sexual marketplace are good for business in a consumer economy. Beauty pornography is intent on making modern sex brutal and boring and only as deep as a mirror's mercury, anti-erotic for both men and women. ~ Naomi Wolf,

1226:For five years I didn't think it was possible to be this happy. But then he forgot all those promises he made. He forgot why he loved me. He simply stopped loving me. And this is how he did it: He stopped talking to me unless I spoke to him. He stopped holding my hand. He stopped kissing me good night. He stopped kissing me good morning. He stopped kissing me. He stopped smiling at me. He stopped laughing. He stopped bathing and showering with me. He stopped wanting me. He started swearing at me. He started lying to me. He started cheating on me. He hurt me. And then he told me he was in love with another woman and wanted a divorce. Oh, I forgot. He said he was sorry. I wanted to blow his fucking brains out. ~ Terry McMillan,

1227:« A bit of useful information. My name is Victoria “call me Vicki” DeVine. I used to be Mrs. Yorick Dane, but giving up my married name was one of the conditions of my receiving valuable property—aka The Jumble—as part of the divorce settlement. Apparently the second official Mrs. Dane didn’t like the idea that someone else had had the name first. Fortunately, she didn’t seem as possessive about Yorick’s Vigorous Appendage. I could have told her that a couple dozen other women had had it before she took possession. But it wasn’t likely that she would keep solo possession of the appendage for long, so let her figure things out the hard way like I did. Of course, if she had been one of those indulgences, then she already knew the signs and might be able to nip them in the bud. » ~ Anne Bishop,

1228:The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough. Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world. The refugee in Syria doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce. Yes, perspective is critical. But I’m a firm believer that complaining is okay as long as we piss and moan with a little perspective. Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us. ~ Bren Brown,

1229:Why do we eat? Why do we talk? Why do we walk? Why do we think? Why do we sing? Why do we breathe? Why do we read? Why do we watch? Why do we cry? Why do we lie? Why do we laugh? Why do we love? Why do we bath? Why do we dress? Why do we drive? Why do we drink? Why do we work? Why do we sleep? Why do we move? Why do we shout? Why do we keep silence? Why do we inspire others? Why do we marry? Why do we divorce? Why do we give? Why do we take? Why do we judge? Why do we worship? Why do we gossip? Why do we grow? Why do we suffer? Why are we on earth? Why this earth? Why many planets? Why darkness? Why light? Why this? Why that? Why are there so many why’s? ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,

1230:The New Decalogue Have but one God: thy knees were sore If bent in prayer to three or four. Adore no images save those The coinage of thy country shows. Take not the Name in vain. Direct Thy swearing unto some effect. Thy hand from Sunday work be held-Work not at all unless compelled. Honor thy parents, and perchance Their wills thy fortunes may advance. Kill not--death liberates thy foe From persecution's constant woe. Kiss not thy neighbor's wife. Of course There's no objection to divorce. To steal were folly, for 'tis plain In cheating there is greater pain. Bear not false witness. Shake your head And say that you have 'heard it said.' Who stays to covet ne'er will catch An opportunity to snatch. ~ Ambrose Bierce,

1231:Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher,

1232:One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. After history’s first recorded instance of a focus group riot, the personal shopper program was extensively rewritten. ~ John Scalzi,

1233:You know, you really don't have to kill anyone over this. I'll get an annulment. It will be like never happened" His eyes came to her, briefly meeting her gaze before dropping to her mouth. "You'll have to make that a divorce instead" "No you don't understand. An annulment will be much easier to obtain" His gaze locked with hers now. Cassie became slightly breathless with the intensity of his stare. "Not after tonight, it won't." He said in his mesmerizing drawl. "Why?" She barely got the word out. "Because i'm in the mood to play husband" "You're what?" He started toward her. She was too stunned to move, so he was there and reaching for her before she had time to think about running. "We're having a wedding night," he said as he lifted her off her feet.-- ~ Johanna Lindsey,

1234:Since Aureliano at that time had very confused notions about the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, his father in law gave him some schematic lessons. The Liberals, he said, were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce, to recognize the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut the country up into a federal system that would take power away from the supereme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,

1235:If the Pentateuch is inspired, the civilization of of our day is a mistake and crime. There should be no political liberty. Heresy should be trodden out beneath the bigot's brutal feet. Husbands should divorce their wives at will, and make the mothers of their children houseless and weeping wanderers. Polygamy ought to be practiced; women should become slaves; we should buy the sons and daughters of the heathen and make them bondmen and bondwomen forever. We should sell our own flesh and blood, and have the right to kill our slaves. Men and women should be stoned to death for laboring on the seventh day. 'Mediums,' such as have familiar spirits, should be burned with fire. Every vestige of mental liberty should be destroyed, and reason's holy torch extinguished in the martyr's blood. ~ Robert G Ingersoll,

1236:The Lost Friend The people take the thing of course, They marvel not to see This strange, unnatural divorce Betwixt delight and me. I know the face of sorrow, and I know Her voice with all its varied cadences; Which way she turns and treads; how at her ease Things fit her dreary largess to bestow. Where sorrow long abides, some be that grow To hold her dear, but I am not of these; Joy is my friend, not sorrow; by strange seas, In some far land we wandered, long ago. O faith, long tried, that knows no faltering! O vanished treasure of her hands and face!-Beloved--to whose memory I cling, Unmoved within my heart she holds her place. And never shall I hail that other "friend," Who yet shall dog my footsteps to the end. ~ Amy Levy,

1237:I was even starting to relax—a little—until he took me to his parents' house for dinner. I've never met two people more in need of a divorce. They bickered and fought all evening. Royce said that's how they express their love. I don't believe him. I mean, please. You tell me if you feel the love from this conversation (written word for word as I remember it): Linda: Elliot, be a dear and get me another drink. Elliot: Get it yourself. Linda: Get up and fix me a drink, you lazy man. Elliot: Woman, don't push me on this. I've finally gotten comfortable. Linda: (sugary sweet smile) I'll push you only when you're standing on a bridge. Elliot: If I were standing on a bridge and saw you coming, you wouldn't have to push me. I'd jump. See? Does that sound "loving" to you? ~ Gena Showalter,

1238:Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; " You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends ? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!" " But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of. " Bird lunged at jocularity... ~ Kenzabur e,

1239:The theatre is a tragic place, full of endings and partings and heartbreak. You dedicate yourself passionately to something, to a project, to people, to a family, you think of nothing else for weeks and months, then suddenly it's over, it's perpetual destruction, perpetual divorce, perpetual adieu. It's like éternel retour, it's a koan. It's like falling in love and being smashed over and over again.’ 'You do, then, fall in love.’ 'Only with fictions, I love players, but actors are so ephemeral. And then there’s waiting for the perfect part, and being offered it the day after you've committed yourself to something utterly rotten. The remorse, and the envy and the jealousy. An old actor told me if I wanted to stay in the trade I had better kill off envy and jealousy at the start. ~ Iris Murdoch,

1240:The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, colorless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears. ~ Fulton J Sheen,

1241:But in my grandmother’s generation, this changed. In the sixties, men and women began to divorce, and women who’d grown up with the expectation that they’d have partners to help them raise their children found themselves with none. They worked like men then, and raised their children the best they could, while their former husbands had relationships with other women and married them and then left them also, perhaps searching for a sense of freedom or a sense of power that being a Black man in the South denied them. If they were not called “sir” in public, at least they could be respected and feared and wanted by the women and children who loved them. They were devalued everywhere except in the home, and this is the place where they turned the paradigm on its head and devalued those in their thrall. ~ Jesmyn Ward,

1242:I hazarded to your mother that tragedy seems to bring out all varieties of unexpected qualities in people. I said it was as if some folks (I was thinking of Mary) got dunked in plastic, vacuum-sealed like backpacking dinners, and could do nothing but sweat in their private hell. And others seemed to have just the opposite problem, as if disaster had dipped them in acid instead, stripping off the outside layer of skin that once protected them from the slings and arrows of other people's outrageous fortunes. For these sorts, just walking down the street in the wake of every stranger's ill wind became an agony, an aching slog through the man's fresh divorce and that woman's terminal throat cancer. They were in hell, too, but it was everybody's hell, this big, shoreless, sloshing sea of toxic waste. ~ Lionel Shriver,

1243:Rosie: Well we’re not exactly 20 years old are we? Ruby: No thank god for that because if that was the case I would have to go through a shit marriage and a divorce all over again. We would have to go out and look for jobs, be all uncertain about our lives, care about dating and how we look and what car we’re driving, what music we’re playing in it, what we wear, whether we’ll get into certain clubs or not bla bla bla bla. What’s so good about being 20? I call them the materialistic years. The years we get distracted by all the bullshit. Then we cop on when we hit our 30s and spend those years trying to make up for the 20s. But your 40s? Those years are for enjoying it. Rosie: Hmmm good point. What are the 50s for? Ruby: Fixing what you fucked up on in your 40s. Rosie: Great. Looking forward to it. ~ Cecelia Ahern,

1244:She reflected on the way things like juices were these days tasting exactly the way they were supposed to. No variation in gradations of sweet and tart, not like in the olden days, the olden days being those years when she was in primary and secondary school in Nigeria. Here and now, no matter the season, the time of year, the place you bought it, many things always tasted the same. The power of science. Sometimes she thought how one day even love might become like a science. Everyone saying exactly the same right words. Everyone reacting the same exact ways. Love feeling and tasting and looking exactly the way some scientists in some laboratory determined that it should. Perhaps a development like that would solve many romantic disputes, maybe even bring down divorce rates to a cool zero percent. ~ Chinelo Okparanta,

1245:progressive enrichment of children’s intuitions, leaning heavily on their precocious understanding of quantitative manipulations and of counting. One should first arouse their curiosity with some amusing numerical puzzles and problems. Then, little by little, one may introduce them to the power of symbolic mathematical notation and the shortcuts it provides — but at this stage, great care should be taken never to divorce such symbolic knowledge from the child’s quantitative intuitions. Eventually, formal axiomatic systems may be introduced. Even then, they should never be imposed on the child, but rather they should always be justified by a demand for greater simplicity and effectiveness. Ideally, each pupil should mentally, in condensed form, retrace the history of mathematics and its motivations. ~ Stanislas Dehaene,

1246:Only years later did I realize that I had a choice. I didn’t have to sacrifice myself; there was no point waiting for someone to change who had no intention of changing because he had never questioned his own opinions.Today I enjoy being able to really talk with people, my husband, Mark, above all, and some good friends. Unfortunately, the divorce was not the end of the story of my marriage. It repeated itself in my relationship with my oldest daughter Carla.With her I kept on relapsing into that old childhood pattern, those constant feelings of inadequacy, guilt, helplessness. Luckily I have managed to establish an affectionate relationship with my two younger daughters.With them I feel relatively free. And I know of many cases where very close contact with the children has been possible despite divorce. ~ Alice Miller,

1247:Cranmer says, ‘We will try again with More. At least, if he refuses, he should give his reasons.’ He swears under his breath, turns from the window. ‘We know his reasons. All Europe knows them. He is against the divorce. He does not believe the king can be head of the church. But will he say that? Not he. I know him. Do you know what I hate? I hate to be part of this play, which is entirely devised by him. I hate the time it will take that could be better spent, I hate it that minds could be better employed, I hate to see our lives going by, because depend upon it, we will all be feeling our age before this pageant is played out. And what I hate most of all is that Master More sits in the audience and sniggers when I trip over my lines, for he has written all the parts. And written them these many years. ~ Hilary Mantel,

1248:Domestic pain can be searing, and it is usually what does us in. It’s almost indigestible: death, divorce, old age, drugs; brain-damaged children, violence, senility, unfaithfulness. Good luck with figuring it out. It unfolds, and you experience it, and it is so horrible and endless that you could almost give up a dozen times. But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on. Through the most ordinary things, books, for instance, or a postcard, or eyes or hands, life is transformed. Hands that for decades reached out to hurt us, to drag us down, to control us, or to wave us away in dismissal now reach for us differently. They become instruments of tenderness, buoyancy, exploration, hope. ~ Anne Lamott,

1249:September 29 I will fear no evil: for thou art with me . . . — Psalm 23:4 No matter what is happening in your relationships, fear nothing and no one. When you walk with the consciousness of the Creator, there is nothing to fear. Do not fear that people will harm you or leave you. Do not fear people who threaten you. Do not fear obstacles that confront you. Have no fear of harm to your body or possessions, you are walking with the strong arm of the law. Do not fear disapproval. Do not fear criticism. Do not fear judgment. Know that the only energy that has any power in your life is the gift of breath from God. Do not fear places. Do not fear darkness. Do not fear separation or divorce. Do not fear being alone. Do not fear being east aside. When you walk with the Master, you are in the best company available. ~ Iyanla Vanzant,

1250:And he had a couple of Bibles in need of customized repair, and those were an easy fifty dollars apiece – just brace the page against a piece of plywood in a frame and scorch out the verses the customers found intolerable, with a wood-burning stylus; a plain old razor wouldn’t have the authority that hot iron did. And then of course drench the defaced book in holy water to validate the edited text. Matthew 19:5-6 and Mark 10:7-12 were bits he was often asked to burn out, since they condemned re-marriage after divorce, but he also got a lot of requests to lose Matthew 25:41 through 46, with Jesus’s promise of Hell to stingy people. And he offered a special deal to eradicate all thirty or so mentions of adultery. Some of these customized Bibles ended up after a few years with hardly any weight besides the binding. ~ Tim Powers,

1251:The 'instructions' received by our military and political leaders for contriving atomic, bacterial, and chemical means of total human extermination have the same psychological status as the messages recorded by the Xosa girl: they are self-induced hallucinations that wantonly defy all the historic precepts of human experience. The fact that these dreams have been put forward under the pseudo-rational garb of advanced theoretic science and justified as a measure for national 'survival' does not disguise their bottomless malignity and irrationality, with its complete divorce from even an animal's instinct for self-preservation. But unlike the pitiable mistake of the Xosa, the colossal kind of error, or 'accident,' that the Pentagon and the Kremlin have already neatly set the fuse for, would be beyond redemption. ~ Lewis Mumford,

1252:to order and that whole inner debate one usually has when ordering food at a restaurant would be vocalized and performed for the express purpose of filling space, of jamming the silence so full of meaningless idle chitchat that they’d never get around to talking about the thing they never talked about but were always thinking: that if they had been born into a generation that found divorce more acceptable, they would have left each other so long ago. For decades they had avoided this subject. It was like they’d come to an agreement—they were who they were, they were born when they were born, they were taught that divorce was wrong, and they openly disapproved of other couples, younger couples, who divorced, while secretly feeling bolts of envy at these couples’ ability to split and remarry and become happy again. ~ Nathan Hill,

1253:Roscoe Purkapile She loved me. Oh! how she loved me! I never had a chance to escape From the day she first saw me. But then after we were married I thought She might prove her mortality and let me out, Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. But she never complained. She said all would be well, That I would return. And I did return. I told her that while taking a row in a boat I had been captured near Van Buren Street By pirates on Lake Michigan, And kept in chains, so I could not write her. She cried and kissed me, and said it was cruel, Outrageous, inhuman! I then concluded our marriage Was a divine dispensation And could not be dissolved, Except by death. I was right. ~ Edgar Lee Masters,

1254:So this summer, this first summer when he was allowed to have “visitation rights” with his father, with the divorce only one month old, Brian was heading north. His father was a mechanical engineer who had designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling, a self-cleaning, self-sharpening bit. He was working in the oil fields of Canada, up on the tree line where the tundra started and the forests ended. Brian was riding up from New York with some drilling equipment—it was lashed down in the rear of the plane next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack, which had emergency supplies in case they had to make an emergency landing—that had to be specially made in the city, riding in the bushplane with the pilot named Jim or Jake or something who had turned out to be an all right guy, letting him fly and all. ~ Gary Paulsen,

1255:Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, decided to leave her clergy position in part because of the church’s failure to administer that grace: One thing that had always troubled me was the way people disappeared from church when their lives were breaking down. Separation and divorce were the most common explanations for long absences, but so were depression, alcoholism, job loss, and mortal illness. One new widow told me that she could not come to church because she started crying the moment she sat down in a pew. A young man freshly diagnosed with AIDS said that he stayed away because he was too frightened to answer questions and too angry to sing hymns. I understood their reasoning, but I was sorry that church did not strike these wounded souls as a place they could bring the dark fruits of their equally dark nights. ~ Philip Yancey,

1256:Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” 4And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, 5and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? 6So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” 7They *said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?” 8He *said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery. ~ Anonymous,

1257:The human brain comprises 70% water, which means it's a similar consistency to tofu. Picture that for a second - a blob of tofu the size and shape of a brain. Now imagine taking that piece of tofu, and forcing your thumbs into it hard. It would burst wouldn't it? Okay, now imagine those thumbs weren't thumbs but thumb-shaped pieces of bad news. And there weren't two of them, they were about half a dozen. Imagine you were forcing all six pieces of bad news - a divorce, multiple career snubs, accusations from the family of a dead celebrity, estranged kids, borderline homelessness, that kind of thing - into a piece of tofu. With me? Good. Now imagine it's not tofu, but a human brain. And they're not pieces of bad news but six human thumbs. That's what happened to me. In 2001, my brain had half a dozen thumbs pushed into it. ~ Alan Partridge,

1258:Sheriff Goodman was dog tired. And he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to take Delfuenso’s daughter out of school for the day. Or for a couple of days, or a week, or a month, or whatever Special Agent Sorenson might have in mind. His attitude was the opposite. He felt work and structure and familiarity were useful crutches in stressful times. He encouraged his own people to come in as normal no matter what had happened. Bereavement, divorce, illness in the family, whatever. In his experience routine helped people cope. Obviously he had to go through the compassionate motions, telling people to take all the time they needed, stuff like that, but he always added that no one would think less of them if they stuck to their tasks. And most of them seemed grateful for it. Most of them worked on as usual, and they seemed to benefit in the long term. ~ Lee Child,

1259:This had to be Finn Dalton’s mother. It simply had to be. From the moment Nash had given Carrie what seemed like the impossible assignment of interviewing Finn, she’d looked for out-of-the-box ways to locate him. Her mother’s mention of work on the Alaskan pipeline and that many of those employed came from Washington State had led to a breakthrough. At least she hoped so. The search led Carrie to the birth record for a Finnegan Paul Dalton, not in Alaska but in her own birth state of Washington. That record revealed his mother’s name—Joan Finnegan Dalton—which then led to a divorce decree, along with a license for a second marriage several years later. Tax records indicated that Joan, whose married name was now Reese, continued to reside in Washington State. Her hope was that Joan Dalton Reese would be willing to help Carrie find Finn. ~ Debbie Macomber,

1260:I tilt my head sideways so I can look him straight on. “What firsts have we already passed?” “The easy ones. First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn’t the one sleeping . Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we’re both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We’re done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I’ll have to divorce you and marry a wife who’s twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you’ll be stuck raising the kids.” He cups my cheek in his hand and smiles at me. “So you see, babe? I’m only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it’ll be before I’m forced to leave you high and dry.” Hoover, Colleen (2012-12-18). Hopeless (pp. 165-166). Colleen Hoover. Kindle Edition. ~ Colleen Hoover,

1261:You want to sit here all night and grill me about every word I’ve ever said to you? What’s your endgame? You want to split up? Walk away? If I crossed some kind of line with you, let’s talk about how you react when I tell you things. Because you’re pushy. You’re stubborn. You don’t do what you’re fucking told, and you have no regard for me as a separate person. I only exist as I relate to you.” Anger is always a partner to righteousness, and I was fucking right. She was an impossible woman to deal with. A life-sucker. A divorce waiting to happen. Standing there looking at the floor between us, as still as a predator waiting for an opening. Not to kill me. No, an opening to love me to fucking death. And yet… I wanted her, and I wanted her to want me. And I wanted her to move the damned line for the lies the way she moved it for everything else. ~ C D Reiss,

1262:First, you're sorry for invading my privacy for years, years before I even knew you existed. Second, you're sorry for kidnapping me, isolating, controlling me, and manipulating me. Third, you're sorry for lying to me, pretending you cared and oh yearh, marrying me. Fourth, listen carefully Tony, this is the big one...you're sorry for framing me for attempted murder, resulting in incarceration in a federal penitentiary." "I am deeply sorry for one and four. I did provide you with an alternative destination for number four. I am not proud of two, but three would never have happened without it. I am not, and never will be sorry for three. And, for the record, I never lied about or pretended to love you. I didn't realize it at first, but I have loved you since before you knew my name. And, you forgot our divorce. I am sincerely sorry for that also. ~ Aleatha Romig,

1263:EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him. As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it. And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up—through distance, differences, divorce, or death. ~ Mitch Albom,

1264:Boone looked Theo squarely in the eyes and said, “Okay, let’s have it. There’s something else to the story.” Theo was constantly amazed at how easily his mother could do this. He could tell only half of a story, and she immediately looked for the other half. He could offer up a little fib, nothing serious, maybe something just for fun, and she instinctively pounced on it and ripped it to shreds. He could duck a direct question, and she would fire back with three more. Theo suspected she had acquired this skill after years as a divorce lawyer. She often said that she never expected her clients to tell her the truth. “I agree,” said Mr. Boone. Theo couldn’t tell if he really agreed, or whether he was just tag-teaming with his wife, which he often did. Mr. Boone was a real estate lawyer who never went to court, and, while he missed little, he was usually ~ John Grisham,

1265:I once told someone not to go into business with someone, and a year later, after he didn't listen, he was bankrupt and near divorce. I once told a popular actress, who everyone constantly praised, to not join a certain group. A few years later, that group was accused of heinous acts, and that actress told me she wished she had listened to my advice. Her career tanked. I once told a popular musician to choose relationship over her career for this one person. She didn't, and now 10 years later, she is still single, but her career tank. Her ex had moved on. I believe that I would be an oracle or seer if I lived during the Greek and Roman times. But then again, I believe my insights come from experience, clarity, and the understanding of humankind. And sometimes from a strong sense of knowing. - Strong by Kailin Gow on Following Your Guts, Strong Intuition ~ Kailin Gow,

1266:I fear for the world the Internet is creating. Before the advent of the web, if you wanted to sustain a belief in far-fetched ideas, you had to go out into the desert, or live on a compound in the mountains, or move from one badly furnished room to another in a series of safe houses. Physical reality—the discomfort and difficulty of abandoning one’s normal life—put a natural break on the formation of cults, separatist colonies, underground groups, apocalyptic churches, and extreme political parties. But now, without leaving home, from the comfort of your easy chair, you can divorce yourself from the consensus on what constitutes “truth.” Each person can live in a private thought bubble, reading only those websites that reinforce his or her desired beliefs, joining only those online groups that give sustenance when the believer’s courage flags. ~ Ellen Ullman,

1267:But his own mother had once said to him, in the period after his first marriage had ended when he was deeply concerned about the effect the divorce was having on the children, that family life was bittersweet no matter what you did. If it wasn’t divorce it would be something else, she said. There was no such thing as an unblemished childhood, though people will do everything they can to convince you otherwise. There was no such thing as a life without pain. And as for divorce, even if you lived like a saint you would still experience all the same losses, however much you tried to explain them away. I could weep just to think that I’ll never see you again as you were at the age of six – I would give anything, she said, to meet that six-year-old one more time. But everything falls away, try as you might to stop it. And for whatever returns to you, be grateful ~ Rachel Cusk,

1268:The first two days without a phone, my insides are jumpy and nauseated, a true withdrawal. My veins ache for information from the Internet, distractions from thought. I’m lonely. My neck, lungs, blood hurt like I’m getting a cold. The world happens without me because I’m exiled with no Wi-Fi. I wonder if my shoes have arrived yet. Maybe Lord is trying to reach me with news of his divorce. I have a parade of grotesque urges. I want to push little buttons quickly. I want information immediately. I want to post pictures of Ruth and me smiling into the sun. I want people to like me, like me, like me. I want to buy things without trying them on. I want to look at photos of drunk kids I knew back in high school. And I want it all in my hand. But my cyborg parts have been ripped out. What’s the temperature? I don’t know. What’s the capital of Hawaii? I don’t know anything. I ~ Samantha Hunt,

1269:Rapid attempts at reforming society and culture were met with great resistance and fury aimed at the government for again issuing decrees to ban child marriage and the lucrative trading of women and girls, and for stating that no women should be sold for marriage, or married against her will. Once more tribal men saw the risk of losing both cash and influence. If women were to be educated and work outside the home, they would “dishonor” their families by being seen in public and potentially develop other, even more subversive ideas. And who would care for the children if women took over the tasks of men? Society would undoubtedly fall apart. Worst of all, another proposed decree would allow women to initiate divorce more easily. Clearly, foreign influence brought decadence and subverted Afghan traditions. The reforms were declared un-Islamic by many religious mullahs. ~ Jenny Nordberg,

1270:My dad once told me that Winstone Churchill said that Russia was riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. According to my dad, Churchill had been talking about my mother. This was before the divorce, and he said it half-bitterly, half-respectfully. Because even when he hated her, he admired her. I think he would have stayed with her forever, trying to figure out the mystery. He was a puzzle solver, the kind of person who likes theorems, theories. X always had to equal something. It couldn't just be X. To me, my mother wasn't that mysterious. She was my mother. Always reasonable, always sure of herself. To me, she was about as mysterious as a glass fo water. She knew what she wanted; she knew what she didn't want. And that was to be married to my father. I wasn't sure if it was that she fell our of love or if it was that she just never was. in love, I mean. ~ Jenny Han,

1271:If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer. A study of people who exaggerate their expected life span beyond actuarial predictions showed that they work longer hours, are more optimistic about their future income, are more likely to remarry after divorce (the classic “triumph of hope over experience”), and are more prone to bet on individual stocks. Of course, the blessings of optimism are offered only to individuals who are only mildly biased and who are able to “accentuate the positive” without losing track of reality. ~ Anonymous,

1272:Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too. ~ Sarah Waters,

1273:If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer. A study of people who exaggerate their expected life span beyond actuarial predictions showed that they work longer hours, are more optimistic about their future income, are more likely to remarry after divorce (the classic “triumph of hope over experience”), and are more prone to bet on individual stocks. Of course, the blessings of optimism are offered only to individuals who are only mildly biased and who are able to “accentuate the positive” without losing track of reality. ~ Daniel Kahneman,

1274:I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

1275:The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is quite the different question—how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christian and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the church with rules enforced by her on her own members. ~ C S Lewis,

1276:The bulk of the population of every country is persuaded that all marriage customs other than its own are immoral, and that those who combat this view do so only in order to justify their own loose lives. In India, the remarriage of widows is traditionally regarded as a thing too horrible to contemplate. In Catholic countries divorce is thought very wicked, but some failure of conjugal fidelity is tolerated, at least in men. In America divorce is easy, but extra-conjugal relations are condemned with the utmost severity. Mohammedans believe in polygamy, which we think degrading. All these differing opinions are held with extreme vehemence, and very cruel persecutions are inflicted upon those who contravene them. Yet no one in any of the various countries makes the slightest attempt to show that the custom of his own country contributes more to human happiness than the custom of others. ~ Bertrand Russell,

1277:Thirty- eight years old and he was finished. He sipped at the coffee and remembered where he had gone wrong -- or right. He'd simply gotten tired -- of the insurance game, of the small offices and high glass partitions, the clients; he'd simply gotten tired of cheating on his wife, of squeezing secretaries in the elevator and in the halls; he'd gotten tired of Christmas parties and New Year's parties and birthdays, and payments on new cars and furniture payments -- light, gas, water -- the whole bleeding complex of necessities. He'd gotten tired and quit, that's all. The divorce came soon enough and the drinking came soon enough, and suddenly he was out of it. He had nothing, and he found out that having nothing was difficult too. It was another type of burden. If only there were some gentler road in between. It seemed a man only had two choices -- get in on the hustle or be a bum. ~ Charles Bukowski,

1278:For all I know,” said Gargravarr’s ethereal voice, “I’m probably at one. My body that is. It goes to a lot of parties without me. Says I only get in the way. Hey ho.” “What is all this with your body?” said Zaphod, anxious to delay whatever it was that was going to happen to him. “Well, it’s … it’s busy you know,” said Gargravarr hesitantly. “You mean it’s got a mind of its own?” said Zaphod. There was a long and slightly chilly pause before Gargravarr spoke again. “I have to say,” he replied eventually, “that I find that remark in rather poor taste.” Zaphod muttered a bewildered and embarrassed apology. “No matter,” said Gargravarr, “you weren’t to know.” The voice fluttered unhappily. “The truth is,” it continued in tones which suggested he was trying very hard to keep it under control, “the truth is that we are currently undergoing a period of legal trial separation. I suspect it will end in divorce. ~ Douglas Adams,

1279:...the novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance. In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely. What would it matter whom Emma married if she could file for separation later? How would Isabel Archer’s marriage to Gilbert Osmond have been affected by the existence of a prenup? As far as Saunders was concerned, marriage didn’t mean much anymore, and neither did the novel. Where could you find the marriage plot nowadays? You couldn’t. You had to read historical fiction. You had to read non-Western novels involving traditional societies. Afghani novels, Indian novels. You had to go, literarily speaking, back in time. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides,

1280:Jenny and I cannot imagine a relationship based on anything but our own choices. It’s safe to say that both of us would have preferred to live our lives searching for love than to have our parents find it for us in a database. But a proponent of arranged marriage would wonder why we’d leave such an important decision to the whims of mere emotion, without a dispassionate examination of the potential spouse’s career trajectory, religious compatibility and family background. The odds of finding true love are actually seen to be better in an arranged system because they seek the ideal spouse scientifically; we just stumble through life, hoping that our perfect match just happens to be sitting on that bar stool over there. What could be a more irrational way to make the most important decision of our lives? No wonder that in America, forty-five percent of marriages end in divorce; in India, that number is around one percent. ~ Anonymous,

1281:A great paradox...red states are poorere and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment....The gap in life expectancey between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the U.S. and Nicaragua....And the problem transcends race; an average black in Maryland lives four years longer, earns twice as much, and is twice as likely to have a college degree as a black in Louisiana. And whites in Louisiana are wrose off than whites in Maryland or anywhere else outside Mississippi. Louisiana has suffered many environmental problems too: there are nearly 400 miles of low, flat, subsiding coastline, adn the state loses a football field-size patch of wetland every hour. It is threatened by rising sea levels and severe hurricanes, which the world's top scientists connect to climate change. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild,

1282:For just a moment, I thought about it. I pictured how it would be, dusting off the rusty Romance Lindsey, long hidden in some box in the back closet of my mind, under piles of more important boxes filled with Work Lindsey, and Mommy Lindsey, Divorce Court Lindsey, and now Shared Custody Lindsey, and Depressed Insane Lindsey. Was Romance Lindsey even there anymore? Probably not. She had sat forgotten for so long that, like the Skin Horse and the Velveteen Rabbit, she had ceased to be real. I never even thought about her anymore. Until now. Which was a bad sign that the boxes were getting jumbled up and Control Freak Lindsey needed to get to work. .... He grinned wickedly, and my stomach fluttered like a firecracker the instant the chain reaction starts inside the casing. Romance Lindsey and Tomboy Lindsey grabbed Mommy Lindsey, shoved her into a box, and sat down on the lid. Control Freak Lindsey ran away screaming. ~ Lisa Wingate,

1283:Under Muslim law, a man's freedom to divorce his wife is justified in the Koran. This system of the threat of divorce looming over a woman's security is most unsettling to women in my land. It is intolerable that many men stretch this ruling to the utmost of its flexibility, demanding divorce for the most trivial causes, ending with the continuous social degradation of their women. Women do not have the same options, since a divorce in a woman's favour is given only after a thorough investigation into her life. More often than not, women will not be allowed to divorce, even when there is just cause. This female lack of freedom so enjoyed by males creates onesided, often cruel methods of male control and power over their women. The words of divorce slip most easily off the tongue of a man who wishes to punish his wife, 'I divorce thee', or 'I dismiss thee', sending the woman into exile from her married home, often without her children. ~ Jean Sasson,

1284:I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women’s bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel’s annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe’s gout and her one—no, make that two—car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena’s divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn’t really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes. I ~ Penny Reid,

1285:I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce. Beth went a little nuts. I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured she'd get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person who noticed. May 14 was 'Fun and Fit Day" at Surry Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us to not end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn't fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders' program on physical fitness. ~ Katie Alender,

1286:...our job sometimes is to divorce ourselves from the fact that I've got to constantly be gifting young people with tools and equip them with - I'm imparting lessons upon them. Sometimes it about, look you hate reading, my job is to figure out how to help you not hate reading. The rest of it we can get to, but I got to figure out how to get you engaged. In order to do that sometimes you got to pull back. Right. You got to put a little grease in the pot. Right. So if that means you've got to have them reading rap lyrics in your class, then that's what it is. If that means you got to have them reading comic books or the athletes reading Sports Illustrated and the sports section in ESPN Magazine, then that's what it is. Our job is not just - it's not to just promote literature, which is what we all do. Our job is to promote literacy and there's a difference. Right. There's a difference. Literacy is what will help them way more than what literature will do. ~ Jason Reynolds,

1287:Hostage? She’s holding me hostage. She has my guts in her hands. I don’t care about the company, I care about her. She’s my life, do you understand? Have you ever loved a woman? Have you ever held her at night so tight because you couldn’t sleep thinking something might happen to her? Have you ever built a future around a woman? Ever thought of every tomorrow, every year, every decade with her? Dreamed of your old age holding her hand? I can only function with her in my life. I can only breathe if I know she’s there. I gave her my fucking soul and she threw it away. Months ago, maybe years ago. She made a decision to throw me away. She’s prepared for this divorce, and I’m swinging in the wind. Raw. With nothing. No defenses. Now what am I supposed to do?” I stood and threw my coat over my shoulders. “This is not about money. It’s not about some publishing company. Not for me. If I don’t do this, I have no chance of recovery. I’m as good as dead.” ~ C D ReissAdam ~ C D Reiss,

1288:She was struck by the selfish thought that this was not fair to her. That she’d been in the middle of a different story, one that had nothing to do with this. She was a person who was finding her daughter, making things right with her daughter, and there was no room in that story for the idiocy of extreme religion, the violence of men she’d never met. Just as she’d been in the middle of a story about divorce when the towers fell in New York City, throwing everyone’s careful plans to shit. Just as she’d once been in a story about raising her own brother, growing up with her brother in the city on their own, making it in the world, when the virus and the indifference of greedy men had steamrolled through. She thought of Nora, whose art and love were interrupted by assassination and war. Stupid men and their stupid violence, tearing apart everything good that was ever built. Why couldn’t you ever just go after your life without tripping over some idiot’s dick? ~ Rebecca Makkai,

1289:Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. ~ Charlie Kaufman,

1290:In former days Bob Arctor had run his affairs differently: there had been a wife much like other wives, two small daughters, a stable household that got swept and cleaned and emptied out daily, the dead newspapers not even opened carried from the front walk to the garbage pail, on even, sometimes, read. But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It lashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that. ~ Philip K Dick,

1291:She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I'd been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I'd sought her out that day--I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I'd spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy: I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can't pretend to love you, I can't do the anniversary thing--it would actually be more wring than cheating on you in the first place (I know: debatable.) But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and--the catch-22---I craved Andie to make me feel better, But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite. The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed. ~ Gillian Flynn,

1292:In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of surrender, but she ought to remember that she was originally loved for herself; she ought to hang on to herself and not find herself nagging, helpless, irritable and trapped. Perhaps I am not old enough yet to promise that the self-reliant woman is always loved, but she cannot be lonely as long as there are people in the world who need her joy and her strength, but certainly in my experience it has always been so. Lovers who are free to go when they are restless always come back; lovers who are free to change remain interesting. The bitter animosity and obscenity of divorce is unknown where individuals have not become Siamese twins. A lover who comes to your bed of his own accord is more likely to sleep with his arms around you all night than a lover who has nowhere else to sleep. ~ Germaine Greer,

1293:Child marriage The Qur’an takes child marriage for granted in its directives about divorce. Discussing the waiting period required in order to determine if the woman is pregnant, it says: “If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (Qur’an 65:4, emphasis added). In other words, Allah is here envisioning a scenario in which a prepubescent woman is not only married, but is being divorced by her husband. One reason why such a verse might have been “revealed” to Muhammad is that he himself had a child bride: The Prophet “married ‘Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old.”10 Child marriages were common in seventh-century Arabia—and here again the Qur’an has taken a practice that should have been abandoned long ago and given it the sanction of divine revelation. ~ Robert Spencer,

1294:It is Difficult to Speak of the Night" It is difficult to speak of the night. It is the other time. Not an absence of day. But where there are no flowers to turn away into. There is only this dark and the familiar place of my body. And the voices calling out of me for love. This is not the night of the young: their simple midnight of fear. Nor the later place to employ. This dark is a major nation. I turn to it at forty and find the night in flood. Find the dark deployed in process. Clotted A parts, in parts flowing with lights. The voices still keen of the divorce we are born into. But they are farther off, and do not interest me. I am forty, and it is different. Suddenly A midpassage I come into myself. I leaf gigantically. An empire yields unexpectedly: cities, summer forests, satrapies, horses. A solitude: an enormity. Thank god. Poetry Magazine (January 1965) ~ Jack Gilbert,

1295:what the specifics of that loan were, but she had always assumed that it was done out of generosity. Staring up at him now, she couldn’t believe her own naïveté. Sandro did nothing out of sheer generosity, and that loan was merely another weapon for him to use against her. “You wouldn’t,” she responded. “Lisa has done nothing to deserve this.” “Cara, I will do whatever it takes to get what I want from you.” “I have money too, I can help her…” she began desperately. “No, you have a rich father, and he had the opportunity to help Lisa, but he made his contempt of the idea more than obvious to everyone at the time, and you know that he would never support you through a messy divorce, Theresa.” “I still don’t believe you would do it! You have a reputation to uphold. You’re an honest businessman, and you wouldn’t destroy a small business just to prove a point. What kind of message would that send?” she asked. “That I’m not to be trifled with.” He shrugged. “Do you honestly think I ~ Natasha Anders,

1296:Well,” he sighed, squeezing my hand back. “I guess we were both running away in different ways.” “What do you mean?” Dad shook his head. “Your mother took a Mustang. I took a whiskey bottle.” He reached up and readjusted his glasses, an unconscious habit-he always did it when he was making a point. “I was so devastated by what your mother did to me that I forgot how horrible drinking is. I forgot to look on the bright side.” “Dad,” I said, “I don’t think there is a bright side to divorce. It’s a pretty sucky thing all around.” He nodded. “Maybe that’s true, but there are a lot of bright sides to my life. I have a job I like, a nice house in a good neighborhood, and a wonderful daughter.” I rolled my eyes. “Oh God,” I muttered. “Don’t go all Lifetime movie on me. Seriously.” “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling. “But I mean it. A lot of people would kill for my life, but I didn’t even consider that. I took it-and you-for granted. I’m so, so sorry for that, Bumblebee. ~ Kody Keplinger,

1297:I see that both her parents are here. I'm pleased that they are, because I'd like to take the opportunity, early in what I fear will be a long and bitter battle, to tell them what I think of what they're doing to their child. I'm not spearking here about their fight for custody of her. I'm speaking here about their decision to get divorced. Let's not fool ourselves about what divorce is. Divorice is a failure of parenting. It does more damage to children than just About anything else that might happen to them in the years before they become adults. It takes from them the only things they hold dear. It breaks up their home. It destroys their sense of family. It removes them from the comfort of having one bed, in one safe, secure, familiar house, where they go to sleep every night of the week. It fills them with sadness and, probably, guilt. They can't help but think that they must somehow be to blame. It sets them up for a world in which nothing is certain and nobody can be trusted. ~ Caroline Overington,

1298: I have got out of my own control, I have fallen into unconsciousness; in my utter unconsciousness how joyful I am with myself! The darling sewed up my eyes so that I might not see other than him, so that suddenly I opened my eyes on his face. My soul fought with me saying, Do not pain me; I said, Take your divorce. She said, Grant it; I granted it. When my mother saw on my cheek the brand of your love she cut my umbilical cord on that, the moment I was born. If I travel to heaven and read the Tablet of the Unseen, O you who are my souls salvation, without you how I am ruined! When you cast aside the veil the dead become alive; the light of your face reminded me of the Covenant of Alast. When I became lost, O soul, through love of the king of the peris, hidden from self and creatures, I am as if peri-born myself. I said to the Tabriz of Shams-e Din, O body, what are you? Body said, Earth; Soul said, I am distraught like the wind. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, I Have Fallen Into Unconsciousness ,

1299:Is D looking out for you?” he wanted to know. “Making sure you don’t get into trouble?” “What do you mean?” “You always had your own rules about things. Like that boy you ran around with when I first met you.” “Kibii?” “That’s right.” He tipped his cocktail glass back and pulled the whisky along the rim through his teeth. “You were always a bit of a savage here, weren’t you?” “I can’t think what you’re implying. And anyway, you seemed to admire my hunting with Kibii when we first met. Now I’m a savage?” “I’m only saying that what you do reflects on me. The way you were brought up out here, running around with God knows who doing God knows what…and now you’re off at D’s, a woman alone surrounded by men. It smacks of trouble.” “I’m working, not taking dozens of lovers.” “I’d hear of it in an instant if you were,” he said flatly. His eyes flicked away and returned. “You’ve already put me in quite a position.” “I’ve put you in a position? Just give me the damned divorce and let’s have done with it.” Before ~ Paula McLain,

1300:Middle Aged Lovers, Ii You open to me a little, then grow afraid and close again, a small boy fearing to be hurt, a toe stubbed in the dark, a finger cut on paper. I think I am free of fears, enraptured, abandoned to the call of the Bacchae, my own siren, tied to my own mast, both Circe and her swine. But I too am afraid: I know where life leads. The impulse to join, to confess all, is followed by the impulse to renounce, and love-imperishable love-must die, in order to be reborn. 126 We come to each other tentatively, veterans of other wars, divorce warrants in our hands which we would beat into blossoms. But blossoms will not withstand our beatings. We come to each other with hope in our hands-the very thing Pandora kept in her casket when all the ills and woes of the world escaped. ~ Erica Jong,

1301:I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, 'I’m going to pee.' hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together ~ Charles Bukowski,

1302:He turns around, and when he sees me standing there, he looks scared. That’s something useful. Because I’m not going to let him go. He may think he was lying when he said all those nice things to lure me home. But I know different. I know Nick can’t lie like that. I know that as he recited those words, he realized the truth. Ping! Because you can’t be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it’s always waiting to return. Like the world’s sweetest cancer... "We’re a sick, fucking toxic Möbius strip, Amy. We weren’t ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves – surprise! – we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way. You don’t really love me, Amy. You don’t even like me. Divorce me. Divorce me, and let’s try to be happy.’ ‘I won’t divorce you, Nick. I won’t. And I swear to you, if you try to leave, I will devote my life to making your life as awful as I can. And you know I can make it awful. ~ Gillian Flynn,

1303:I believe that the very act of believing in something causes us to distance ourselves from that thing, thus a duality is created: oneself and the thing in which one believes. Now since we all know that in order to fully understand a thing one must be that thing -- walk a mile in its shoes so to speak -- it seems obvious that the state of believing in something inevitably causes us to not truly understand that thing in which we believe. This noncomprehension leads to all sorts of difficulties. "I believe in love" has a better than even chance of leading to divorce, while "I believe in God" seems to end in variations on the Spanish Inquisition. But -- and it's a big but -- if one were love, one couldn't help but be affectionate and caring towards oneself and others. If one were God, one would act toward all beings and all things as if they were one's own creations. And that, my friends, is the secret of life in a two-second vanity card. Of course, the secret could also be "Sit, Ubu, sit." We have to keep an open mind ~ Chuck Lorre,

1304:Our propensity to overvalue what we own is a basic human bias, and it reflects a more general tendency to fall in love with, and be overly optimistic about, anything that has to do with ourselves. Think about it - don't you feel that you are a better-than-average driver, are more likely to be able to afford retirement, and are less likely to suffer from high cholesterol, get a divorce, or get a parking ticket if you overstay your meter by a few minutes? This positivity bias, as psychologists call it, has another name: "The Lake Wobegone Effect", named after the fictional town in Garrison Keillor's popular radio series 'A Prairie Home Companion', In Lake Wobegone, according to Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." I don't think we can become more accurate and objective in the way we think about our children and houses, but maybe we can realize that we have such biases and listen more carefully to the advice and feedback we get from the others. ~ Dan Ariely,

1305:I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuse of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. I can't understand why more intelligent people don't take it as a career--learn to do it well and reap its benefits. A good servant has absolute security, not because of his master's kindness, but because of habit and indolence...He'll keep a bad servant rather than change. But a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will...My master will defend me, protect me. You have to work and worry. I work less and worry less. And I am a good servant. A bad one does not work and does no worrying, and he still is fed, clothed, and protected. I don't know any profession where the field is so cluttered with incompetents and where excellence is so rare. ~ John Steinbeck,

1306:If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person—you already feel fortunate. An optimistic attitude is largely inherited, and it is part of a general disposition for well-being, which may also include a preference for seeing the bright side of everything. If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer. A study of people who exaggerate their expected life span beyond actuarial predictions showed that they work longer hours, are more optimistic about their future income, are more likely to remarry after divorce (the classic “triumph of hope over experience”), and are more prone to bet on individual stocks. Of ~ Daniel Kahneman,

1307:Permit me. Permit me, Engineer, to say to you, and to bring it home to you, that the only sane, noble—and I will expressly add, the only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and with the emotions, as the inviolable condition of life. It is the very opposite of sane, noble, reasonable, or religious to divorce it in any way from life, or to play it off against it. The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage, as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis. Severed from life, it becomes a spectre, a distortion, and worse. For death, as an independent power, is a lustful power, whose vicious attraction is strong indeed; to feel drawn to it, to feel sympathy with it, is without any doubt at all the most ghastly aberration to which the spirit of man is prone. ~ Thomas Mann,

1308:[...] the governor of the Hijaz sent an order to the district governor of Mecca prohibiting the trade in slaves. The district governor was instructed to read the order aloud at the Shari a court of Mecca in the presence of the ulema and the sharifs. This took place on October 30, 1855 [...] This was the moment for which the sharif had been waiting. On his instructions, Shaykh Jamal issued a fatwa denouncing the ban on the slave trade as contrary to the holy law of Islam. Because of this anti-Islamic act, he said, together with such other anti-Islamic actions as allowing women to initiate divorce proceedings and to move around unveiled, the [Ottomon] Turks had become apostates and heathens. It was lawful to kill them without incurring criminal penalties or bloodwit, and to enslave their children. "The Turks have become renegades. It is obligatory to make war against them and against those who follow them. Those who are with us are for heaven and those who are with them are for hell. Their blood is lawful and their goods are licit. ~ Bernard Lewis,

1309:I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I’ve done it so many times. First, there’s a kind of shock at the comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about, depending on their views: the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign born, the President, or the entire US government. It is a level of contempt that is usually reserved for enemies in wartime except that now it is applied to our fellow citizens. Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. ~ Sebastian Junger,

1310:I’ve read science fiction and fantasy all my life – though when you’re a child, they just call that “books.” The first book I ever read on my own was The Neverending Story. I studied classics at university, and in ancient literature, monsters, witches, magic, curses, and impossible machines aren’t genre, they’re just Tuesday afternoon. I had no idea that I was writing fantasy at first, because I was so saturated in Greek literature that it never occurred to me that my talking animals and sentient mazes were anything but realism. Our instinct toward folklore and magical stories, parables and imagining the future, are as much a part of the human experiences as divorce, grief, falling in love, politics, or raising children. I’ve always read fantastic literature, because it’s always seemed truest to me. It makes the metaphorical literal and is all the more powerful for that immediacy and directness. I love genre fiction for the infinite expanse of stories it can tell – and it’s been my constant companion since I was a very small child. ~ Catherynne M Valente,

1311:We need to talk about the hierarchy of grief. You hear it all the time—no grief is worse than any other. I don’t think that’s one bit true. There is a hierarchy of grief. Divorce is not the same as the death of a partner. Death of a grandparent is not the same as the death of a child. Losing your job is not the same as losing a limb. Here’s the thing: every loss is valid. And every loss is not the same. You can’t flatten the landscape of grief and say that everything is equal. It isn’t. It’s easier to see when we take it out of the intensely personal: stubbing your toe hurts. It totally hurts. For a moment, the pain can be all-consuming. You might even hobble for a while. Having your foot ripped off by a passing freight train hurts, too. Differently. The pain lasts longer. The injury needs recovery time, which may be uncertain or complicated. It affects and impacts your life moving forward. You can’t go back to the life you had before you became a one-footed person. No one would say these two injuries are exactly the same. ~ Megan Devine,

1312:Hans?” Thomas asked. “You still can’t find him?” “I am here,” Boris said. “Oh. Why do you have Hans’s phone?” “He gave it to me in exchange for a blow job.” Hans gasped. “I did not!” Thomas laughed. “What’s going on?” “Hans tells me I will get sunburned,” Boris said, “so I should put on this nasty-smelling coconut shit. But I cannot reach my back—I am not a comic book character—and he will not put it on me.” “You’re sunbathing? Since when do you sunbathe?” Boris made a rude noise. “That is beside the point. I need you to tell Hans you won’t divorce me and come after him with a butcher knife if he rubs coconut shit on my back.” “You two will be the death of me,” Thomas muttered, but there was a note of affection in his voice. Hans assumed that was for Boris, but the way Thomas had said “you two” sounded as if they were all somehow together. Hans was surprised by how much he liked that. “Hans, I won’t divorce Boris and come after you with a butcher knife if you rub coconut shit on his back.” “Thank you,” Boris told him ~ Jamie Fessenden,

1313:Here’s the thing. My one piece of advice to you. You have to let yourself be fully present in every moment. Just be awake for it, do you know what I mean? Go all in and wring every last drop out of the experience.” “So do you not have any regrets, then? Because you always went all in?” I’m thinking of her divorce, how it was the talk of the neighborhood. “Oh God, no. I have regrets.” She laughs a husky laugh, the sexy kind that only smokers or people with colds get to have. “I don’t know why I’m sitting here trying to give you advice. I’m a single divorcée and I’m forty. Two. Forty-two. What do I know about anything? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.” She lets out a sigh filled with longing. “I miss cigarettes so much.” “Kitty will check your breath,” I warn, and she laughs that husky laugh again. “I’m afraid to cross that girl.” “‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’” I intone. “You’re wise to be afraid, Ms. Rothschild.” “Oh my God, Lara Jean, will you please just call me Trina? I mean, I know I’m old, but I’m not that old. ~ Jenny Han,

1314:I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I've done it so many times. First there is a kind of shock at the level of comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about - depending on their views - the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president, or the entire US government. It's a level of contempt that is usually reserved for enemies in wartime, except that now it's applied to our fellow citizens. Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. ~ Sebastian Junger,

1315:Marrying young—very young The Koran takes child marriage for granted in its directives about divorce. Discussing the waiting period required in order to determine if a woman is pregnant, it says, “If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4, emphasis added). Allah thus gives instructions for a situation in which a pre-pubescent woman is not only married, but is being divorced by her husband. Such a verse might have made its way into the Koran because of the notorious fact that Muhammad himself had a child bride. According to Sahih Bukhari, the hadith collection that Muslims consider most reliable, “The Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).” Another tradition recalls that at the age of nine, she was playing on a swing with some of her friends when Muhammad came for her.20 ~ Robert Spencer,

1316:I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question--how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself, you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. This distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not. ~ C S Lewis,

1317:My trip to the former Yugoslavia had opened the world for me, and my hunger for the world. In doing so, it undid the contained, safe borders of my existence. Suddenly a woman weeping over her lost son in an image on the front page of The New York Times was no longer a theoretical entity. She was real, a woman I might have met, might have known. I was connected to her. I could no longer divorce myself from her pain, her suffering. Initially this was overwhelming. I had nightmares. I felt restless and wrong in my comforting life in America. Everything seemed absurd and pointless. I came to understand why we block out the pain and atrocities of others. That pain, if we allow it to enter us, makes our lives impossible. It forces us to examine our own values and reality. It insists that we be responsible for others. It thrusts us into the messy world where there are no easy solutions or reasons, only struggles and questions. It creates great fissures in the landscape of our insulated, so-called safe reality. Fissures that, once split open, can never close again. It compels us to act. ~ Eve Ensler,

1318:yourself.” “Maybe we should analyze it. Maybe a little discovery is in order.” “Maybe a little getting under the covers is in order. Baby?” “Yes?” “Are you going to take off your overcoat? Feels like making it with a flasher.” “Good point. Jesus, Pep,” he sighed soulfully. “Keep taking off the coat. That’s it. Now how about the jacket? There you go. . . .” “Six months ago I was happily married.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Married, okay. Happily? Let’s look at it. But could we maybe be in the now instead of the then?” “Sorry, I’m so damned awkward sometimes. Do you like the top or the bottom?” Pepper stared. “This ain’t summer camp, and I ain’t a bunk bed. Now look here, Chiefy, we are two grown adults, we are colleagues, we have discovered a mutual attraction. We are neither of us cheating on anyone, inasmuch as our spouses filed for divorce. We are both heterosexual—” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It’s a statement of fact intended to differentiate myself from your prior partner for the purpose of putting you at ease so as to . . . oh, c’mere . . . initiate foreplay . . . ~ Christopher Buckley,

1319:The forsaking of all others is a keeping of faith, not just with the chosen one, but with the ones forsaken. The marriage vow unites not just a woman and a man with each other; it unites each of them with the community in a vow of sexual responsibility toward all others. The whole community is married, realizes its essential unity, in each of its marriages... Marital fidelity, that is, involves the public or institutional as well as the private aspect of marriage. One is married to marriage as well as to one's spouse. But one is married also to something vital of one's own that does not exist before the marriage: one's given word. It now seems to me that the modern misunderstanding of marriage involves a gross misunderstanding and underestimation of the seriousness of giving one's word, and of the dangers of breaking it once it is given. Adultery and divorce now must be looked upon as instances of that disease of word-breaking, which our age justifies as "realistic" or "practical" or "necessary," but which is tattering the invariably single fabric of speech and trust. (pg.117, "The Body and the Earth") ~ Wendell Berry,

1320:The war for love is fought by saying: You’re the one I want, you’re the one I need, you’re the one I’ll fight to keep. Neither of us fought. When you’re cheated on, you build a house around yourself. You build it strong. The walls are made of Never Again. The bricks—all the things you did right, the mortar—your anger. Divorce makes you live in a tall house because you put more effort into your grieving than you ever put into your marriage. That’s what we do as humans, we grieve harder than we ever tried and we build a magnificent fortress of hurt and self-righteous indignation. In front of this fortress is a garden where you grow your shortcomings. It’s a magnificent garden because that’s where you put all of your effort now. A garden of well-tended self-abuse. You water the shit out of your garden and it grows and grows. I grew a variety of things in my garden: bitterness, self-hate, numbness, self-pity, resentment, and defeat. I tended that garden with such detail, trimming and nurturing my personal hell until I couldn’t find my way out. And let me tell you, it’s a full-time job to hate yourself that much. ~ Tarryn Fisher,

1321:So many of us fail: we divorce our wives and husbands, we leave the roofs of our lovers, go once again into the lonely march, mustering our courage with work, friends, half pleasures which are not whole because they are not shared. Yet still I believe in love's possibility, in its presence on the earth; as I believe I can approach the altar on any morning of any day which may be the last and receive the touch that does not, for me, say: There is no death; but does say: In this instant I recognize, with you, that you must die. And I believe I can do this in an ordinary kitchen with an ordinary woman and five eggs. The woman sets the table She watches me beat the eggs. I scramble them in a saucepan, as my now-dead friend taught me; they stand deeper and cook softer, he said. I take our plates, spoon eggs on them, we sit and eat. She and I and the kitchen have become extraordinary; we are not simply eating; we are pausing in the march to perform an act together, we are in love; and the meal offered and received is a sacrament which says: I know you will die; I am sharing food with you; it is all I can do, and it is everything. ~ Andre Dubus,

1322:It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around US. Because "they" (the powers that be) have never been entirely able to stop "us" (two people) from connecting our lives together and creating a secret world of our own. And so "they" eventually have no choice but to legally permit "us" to marry, in some shape or form, no matter how restrictive their ordinaces may appear. (...) So perhaps I've had this story deliciously backwards the whole time. To somehow suggest that society invented marriage, and then forced human beings to bond with each other, is perhaps absurd. It's like suggesting that society invented dentists, and then forced people to grow teeth. WE invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce, mind you. And we invented infidelity, too, as well as romantic misery. In fact, we invented the whole damn sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

1323:But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married. ~ Sue Johnson,

1324:As long as it’s BYOB, I’m cool,” Tuck answers. “And if Danny is coming then you better lock up the liquor cabinet.” “We can move the hooch to G’s room,” Logan says with a snort. “God knows he won’t drink a drop of it.” Tuck glances over at me with a grin. “Poor baby. When are you gonna learn to handle your liquor like a man?” “Hey, I handle the drinking part just fine. It’s the morning after that does me in.” I smirk at my teammates. “Besides, I’m your captain. Somebody has to stay sober to keep your crazy asses in line.” “Thanks, Mom.” Logan pauses, then shakes his head. “Actually, no, you’re the mom,” he tells Tucker, grinning at Tuck’s apron before turning back at me. “Guess that makes you the dad. You two are positively domestic.” We both flip him the finger. “Aw, are Mommy and Daddy mad at me?” He gives a mock gasp. “Are you guys gonna get a divorce?” “Fuck off,” Tuck says, but he’s laughing. The microwave beeps, and Tucker pulls out the defrosted chicken, then proceeds to cook our dinner while I do my homework at the counter. And damned if the whole thing isn’t domestic as hell. ~ Elle Kennedy,

1325:could not even manage to reply. “It’s because I think it of vital importance that such scenes should be avoided in the future that I suggest we separate permanently with a view to seeking a divorce when it becomes possible for us to do so. I have no grounds for divorcing you, as I’m sure you realize, but if I leave you now and insist on remaining at Allengate without your consent you will eventually be able to seek a divorce on the grounds of adultery coupled with desertion. I believe the period of desertion has to be at least two years, so we would have to wait before commencing proceedings, but unfortunately since you cannot divorce me for adultery alone there’s no other alternative open to us. Now, I know divorce will mean a considerable amount of scandal and I’m sure a great many people will disapprove and be shocked, but I dare say most of the criticism will fall upon me and frankly I’m willing to endure a great deal to terminate this situation in the most expedient way available. You know and I know that our marriage is irrevocably finished. My one concern now is that we act in a way most beneficial to the children, and in my opinion ~ Susan Howatch,

1326:The legal structure of Islamic marriage is predicated on a gender-differentiated allocation of interdependent claims, which would be thrown into chaos by a same-sex union. In the standard contractual understanding of marriage, the husband holds milk al-nikah, control of the marriage tie, and the wife has a claim to dower and the obligation of sexual exclusivity and availability. Several early jurists considered the possibility of whether these rights and duties could be reallocated – whether a woman could pay a man a dower, for example, and retain control over sex and divorce – and agreed unanimously that such a reallocation is not permitted. Not only are husbands’ and wives’ rights distinct, but each role is fundamentally linked to the sex/gender of the person exercising it. A woman cannot wield control of the marriage tie; a man cannot be contractually bound to sexual availability to his wife. Thus, following that logic, it would not be possible for one woman to adopt the “husband” role and the other to adopt the “wife” role in the marriage of two women. The self-contained logic of the jurisprudential framework does not permit such an outcome. ~ Kecia Ali,

1327:A faithful husband isn’t something you should have to want for; it should just be when you commit to someone and say vows.” “One would think. He tried, but in the end, it’s just not who he is. It’s taken some time to get to the point where I can look back and know I didn’t push him out the door. He had one foot out the whole time.” “What finally made you walk away?” “I’d been thinking of leaving for a few months. I wanted kids, and judging by the age of the girl who showed up at my house demanding I give my husband the divorce he told her he wanted, so did he.” Owen laughed, but tried to smother it in the end. “Sorry. That’s funny.” “Didn’t seem like it at the time, but yeah, it’s funny.” “He’s a dick who doesn’t deserve you. Anyone stupid enough to lose a great woman like you should be shot just for being an idiot.” “You barely know me, how do you know I’m not some shrew of a wife?” “Your shop and the way you are with the kids who come in there. You love what you do. You put your whole heart into it. I have no doubt you did the same with your marriage. Any man who’d give that up doesn’t deserve to live.” -Owen & Claire ~ Jennifer Ryan,

1328:one of his frequent trips worried about the political situation in the country. The Liberals were determined to go to war. Since Aureliano at that time had very confused notions about the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, his father-in-law gave him some schematic lessons. The Liberals, he said, were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce, to recognize the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut the country up into a federal system that would take power away from the supreme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities. Because of his humanitarian feelings Aureliano sympathized with the Liberal attitude with respect to the rights of natural children, but in any case, he could not understand how people arrived at the extreme of waging war over things that could not be touched with the hand. ~ Anonymous,

1329:There will be no funeral homes, no hospitals, no abortion clinics, no divorce courts, no brothels, no bankruptcy courts, no psychiatric wards, and no treatment centers. There will be no pornography, dial-a-porn, no teen suicide, no AIDS, no cancer, no talks shows, no rape, no missing children . . . no drug problems, no drive-by shootings, no racial tension, and no prejudice. There will be no misunderstandings, no injustice, no depression, no hurtful words, no gossip, no hurt feelings, no worry, no emptiness, and no child abuse. There will be no wars, no financial worries, no emotional heartaches, no physical pain, no spiritual flatness, no relational divisions, no murders, and no casseroles. There will be no tears, no suffering, no separations, no starvation, no arguments, no accidents, no emergency departments, no doctors, no nurses, no heart monitors, no rust, no perplexing questions, no false teachers, no financial shortages, no hurricanes, no bad habits, no decay, and no locks. We will never need to confess sin. Never need to apologize again. Never need to straighten out a strained relationship. Never have to resist Satan again. Never have to resist temptation. Never! ~ Mark Hitchcock,

1330:Expectations about divorce are partly self-fulfilling because a higher expected probability of divorce reduces investments in specific capital and thereby raises the actual probability. 7 For example, consensual and trial marriages are less stable than legal marriages, and marriages between persons of different religions or races are less stable than those within a religion or race, partly because mixed marriages have fewer children. At the same time, as indicated, mixed marriages have fewer children partly because they are expected to be less stable. Specific investment and imperfect information can explain why homosexual unions are much less stable than heterosexual marriages (Saghir and Robins, 1973, pp. 56-58, 226-227). Homosexual unions do not result in children, and generally they have a less extensive division of labor and less marital-specific capital than heterosexual marriages. Moreover, the opprobrium attached to homosexuality has raised the cost of search to homosexuals and thereby has reduced the information available to them. Furthermore, homosexual unions, like trial marriages, can dissolve without legal adversary proceedings, alimony, or child support payments. ~ Gary S Becker,

1331:he was crying, but then she realized that he was probably trying to regain his composure so that Andy wouldn’t be even more worried when she saw him. She had seen Gordon cry once, and only once, before. It was at the beginning of her parents’ divorce. He hadn’t let go and sobbed or anything. What he had done was so much worse. Tears had rolled down his cheeks, one long drip after another, like condensation on the side of a glass. He’d kept sniffing, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He had left for work one morning assuming his fourteen-year marriage was solid, then before lunchtime had been served with divorce papers. “I don’t understand,” he had told Andy between sniffles. “I just don’t understand.” Andy couldn’t remember the man who was her real father, and even thinking the words real father felt like a betrayal to Gordon. Sperm donor felt too overtly feminist. Not that Andy wasn’t a feminist, but she didn’t want to be the kind of feminist that men hated. Her birth father—which sounded strange but kind of made sense because adopted kids said birth mother—was an optometrist whom Laura had met at a Sandals resort. Which was weird, because her mother hated to travel anywhere ~ Karin Slaughter,

1332:Should the girls decide to go for a walk, they would need to change into a different outfit, a light woollen tweed suit and sturdier boots - but on simpler days, such as for the garden party, they make mercifully few changes. Cora, like many married ladies in her position, takes the opportunity on quiet afternoons to take off her corset and wear a teagown for an hour or two before getting into her evening dress. Its huge advantage was that it was always ornately decorated but simply cut, meaning it was the only garment a woman could conceivably get in and out of alone, as it could be worn without a corset underneath. Worn between five and seven o'clock, it gave rise to the French phrase 'cinq a sept'. This referred to the hours when lovers were received, the only time of day when a maid wouldn't need to be there to help you undress and therefore discover your secret. Lady Colin Campbell's divorce had hinged on the fact that her clothes had clearly been fastened by a man who didn't know what he was doing; when her lady's maid saw her for the next change, the fastenings were higgledy-piggledy. But for Cora, the teagown is not for any illicit behaviour, just for respite from her underpinnings. ~ Jessica Fellowes,

1333:According to that splendid education I received out at the U., it was Rousseau who began in Western culture the worship of the child, innocent and perfect in nature. Anyone who has raised a human from scratch knows this is a lie. Children are savages—egocentric little brutes who by the age of three master every form of human misconduct, including violence, fraud, and bribery, in order to get what they want. The one who lived in my house never improved. Last fall it turned out that the community college, for which I’d dutifully given him a tuition check at the beginning of each quarter, did not have the bastard registered. A month ago I took him out to dinner and caught him trying to pocket the waitress’s tip. About three times a week I threaten to throw him out, but his mother has told him the divorce decree provides that I will support him until he’s twenty-one—Brushy and I had assumed that meant paying for college—and Nora, who thinks the boy needs understanding, especially since she doesn’t have to provide much, would doubtless find this an occasion for yet another principled disagreement and probably seek an order requiring Lyle and me to get some counseling—another five hundred bucks a month. ~ Scott Turow,

1334:Okay, let’s pretend to be friends. Just two friends having dinner.” “That doesn’t work in the South. A male friend cannot have dinner with a female friend if the male friend has a wife. It just doesn’t work down here.” “Why not?” “Because men don’t have female friends. No way. I don’t know of a single man in the entire South who is married and has a female friend. I think it goes back to the Civil War.” “I think it goes back to the Dark Ages. Why are Southern women so jealous?” “Because that’s the way we’ve trained them. They learned from us. If my wife met a male friend for lunch or dinner, I’d tear his head off and file for divorce. She learned it from me.” “That makes absolutely no sense.” “Of course it doesn’t.” “Your wife has no male friends?” “None that I know of. If you learn of any, let me know.” “And you have no female friends?” “Why would I want female friends? They can’t talk about football, or duck hunting, or politics, or lawsuits, or anything that I want to talk about. They talk about kids, clothes, recipes, coupons, furniture, stuff I know nothing about. No, I don’t have any female friends. Don’t want any.” “That’s what I love about the South. The people are so tolerant.” “Thank you. ~ John Grisham,

1335:Naive people tend to generalize people as—-good, bad, kind, or evil based on their actions. However, even the smartest person in the world is not the wisest or the most spiritual, in all matters. We are all flawed. Maybe, you didn’t know a few of these things about Einstein, but it puts the notion of perfection to rest. Perfection doesn’t exist in anyone. Nor, does a person’s mistakes make them less valuable to the world. 1. He divorced the mother of his children, which caused Mileva, his wife, to have a break down and be hospitalized. 2.He was a ladies man and was known to have had several affairs; infidelity was listed as a reason for his divorce. 3.He married his cousin. 4.He had an estranged relationship with his son. 5. He had his first child out of wedlock. 6. He urged the FDR to build the Atom bomb, which killed thousands of people. 7. He was Jewish, yet he made many arguments for the possibility of God. Yet, hypocritically he did not believe in the Jewish God or Christianity. He stated, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. ~ Shannon L Alder,

1336:I look at the marks of my past family every day, the visible ones, the ones that live on my skin. They’ve long since healed over; they no longer open me to anything. But they’re a part of me, of my experience, as much a record of what has come before as any of the others and in some ways more so since I took them on purposefully. They’re choices I made. Even if it is true that we’re counselled to pack away our love letters and our old photos of our lost loves if we want to truly heal from breakups or divorce, my wearing the tokens I couldn’t just pack away ensured that I have struggled and mourned until I healed. That’s worth something. It’s also worth something to remember that even if things ended (and not even all that well), I loved and was loved, risked and was safely caught. In the end, I don’t want to cover that or erase it—I want to celebrate it and carry it forward. The tattoo of Stanley’s left foot on my right thigh is a centimetre at most from the constellation on the same thigh. Like an old tree, I wear every year that I’ve lived inside me, drought or flood, long winter or warm fall, all of them legible in my rings and—like on any old tree—once they become part of the whole, they’re beautiful. ~ S Bear Bergman,

1337:Give life all you’ve got I have a friend who went through a divorce after twenty-six years of marriage. His wife left him a note saying she had found someone else. He was once an outgoing, fun, and energetic person. But after his wife left him, he was solemn, discouraged, and he had no joy, no life. I told him what I’m telling you: “This is not the end. God has a new beginning. But you’ve got to do your part and tell your heart to beat again.” Little by little, he recovered his joy, his vision, and his passion. Then God brought a beautiful lady into his life and they married. He told me a while back that he’s happier than he’s ever been. You may have suffered a setback, too, but don’t sit around in self-pity. Tell your heart to beat again. Tell your heart to love again. Someone may have done you wrong, but don’t let it poison you. Tell your heart to forgive again. Maybe a dream didn’t work out, but nothing will change if you just expect more of the same. Tell your heart to dream again. You may have let the pressures of life weigh you down, and you’re all solemn and serious. You need to tell your heart to laugh again. Tell your heart to smile again. Get back your joy. Get back your enthusiasm. ~ Joel Osteen,

1338:Each of us has a different life puzzle to assemble. The choices you make in the midst of your life journey do have eternal consequences. Yes, you can throw the pieces at God in anger and say, “I do not like the life You have given me, and I refuse to live within these limitations with a humble heart. You have made me a victim. You have ruined my life. I will choose to live in darkness.” If that is your choice, the puzzle of your life will remain fragmented and separated, with holes in the picture. However, if you choose to bow your knee and submit to the varied circumstances of your life, God will do miracles. If you choose to trust and develop your integrity and an inner standard of holiness that isn’t dependent on cultural standards, the puzzle pieces will begin to come together. No matter what your limitations are—health issues, financial problems, a difficult marriage or divorce, a loss of friendship, death of a dream—your life is meant to be filled to the brim with the potential of God’s blessings. But in order to thrive and heal, you must accept any limitations by faith, trust in His faithfulness each step of the way, and wait for His grace so you can live a faithful story right in the place you find yourself. ~ Sally Clarkson,

1339:Well,' she said, adjusting a pot lid, 'I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jaime's family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I'll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jaimie.' Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie's gaffe. 'You will,' I said. She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. 'I hope so. But that's just the thing, right? Family isn't something that's supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else. even that picture of Jamie's family was only the true representation for that one day. But the next , someone had probably changed. It had to.' ... Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn't actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves. ~ Sarah Dessen,

1340:The Illusory Self I am composed of body and soul, I seem to have mind, reason, sense, yet I find none of them my own. For where was my body prior to my birth, and whither will it go when I have departed? Where are the various states produced by the life stages of an illusory self? Where is the newborn babe, the child, the boy, the pubescent, the stripling, the bearded youth, the lad, the full-grown man? Whence came the soul, whither will it go, how long will it be our mate? Can we tell its essential nature? When did we acquire it? Prior to our birth? But we were not then in existence. What of it after death? But then we who are embodied, compounds endowed with quality, shall be no more, but shall hasten to our rebirth, to be with the unbodied, without composition and without quality. But now, inasmuch as we are alive, we are the dominated rather than the rulers, known rather than knowing. The soul knows us, though unknown by us, and imposes commands we are obliged to obey as wervants their mistress. And when it will, it will transact its divorce in court and depart, leaving our home desolate of life. If we press it to remain, it will dissolve our relationship. So subtle is its nature that it furnishes no handle to the body. ~ Philo of Alexandria,

1341:Life! I Know Not What Thou Art LIFE! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me 's a secret yet. But this I know, when thou art fled, Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, No clod so valueless shall be As all that then remains of me. O whither, whither dost thou fly? Where bend unseen thy trackless course? And in this strange divorce, Ah, tell where I must seek this compound I? To the vast ocean of empyreal flame From whence thy essence came Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed From matter's base encumbering weed? Or dost thou, hid from sight, Wait, like some spell-bound knight, Through blank oblivious years th' appointed hour To break thy trance and reassume thy power? Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be? O say, what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee? Life! we have been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good-morning! ~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,

1342:I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Was it Mom and Dad's fault?( Was it just temporal, a 'bad time' in my life? (When the divorce ends will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful alienting urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

1343:teacher in class. “The Divorce Fantasy will never happen,” I mumble finally, staring at my fingernails. “The Divorce Fantasy will never happen,” he repeats with emphasis. “The judge will never read a two-hundred-page dossier on Daniel’s shortcomings aloud in court, while a crowd jeers at your ex-husband. He will never start his summing up, ‘Ms. Graveney, you are a saint to have put up with such an evil scumbag and I thus award you everything you want.’ ” I can’t help coloring. That is pretty much my Divorce Fantasy. Except in my version, the crowd throws bottles at Daniel too. “Daniel will never admit to being wrong,” Barnaby presses on relentlessly. “He’ll never stand in front of the judge, weeping and saying, ‘Fliss, please forgive me.’ The papers will never report your divorce with the headline: TOTAL SHIT ADMITS FULL SHITTINESS IN COURT.” I can’t help half-snorting with laughter. “I do know that.” “Do you, Fliss?” Barnaby sounds skeptical. “Are you sure about that? Or are you still expecting him to wake up one day and realize all the bad things he’s done? Because you have to understand, Daniel will never realize anything. He’ll never confess to being a terrible human being. I could spend a thousand hours on this case, it would still never happen. ~ Sophie Kinsella,

1344:But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that. Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe. All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected. It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all. But in this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing. ~ Philip K Dick,

1345:Unfortunately long enurement to the Czarist megamachine had trained the Russians in forms of docile conformity that could hardly be distinguished from willing cooperation. Here and there a minority discovered little niches and hideouts where, silently, some portion of untrammelled life could be maintained. But woe to prouder souls, who dared open defiance. The writer Isaak Babel, who demanded the privilege of writing 'badly'-that is, not in conformity with the party line-and who proclaimed that silence, too, might be an effective mode of expression, was soon put out of the way and executed. Even silence could be provocative. Because this revolution, like its bloody predecessor, devoured its children in a methodical saturnalia of violence, it was long before the megamachine could produce in sufficient numbers the new elite, whose views and whose way of life conformed to its requirements: the technicians, the bureaucrats, the scientists. Fortunately the indispensable scientists, aided by orthodox science's methodical divorce from moral and social issues, continued to provide the system with the quotas of new knowledge necessary to accelerate the operations of the megamachine and effect the transition, via nuclear energy, from the archaic to the modern form. ~ Lewis Mumford,

1346:Family life, which constitutes the smallest and most basic form of association, has deteriorated markedly since the 1960s with a sharp increase in rates of divorce and single-parent families. Beyond the family, too, there has been a steady breakdown of older communities like neighborhoods, churches, and workplaces. At the same time, there has been a vast increase in the general level of distrust, as measured by the wariness that Americans have for their fellow citizens due to the rise of crime, or in the massive increases in litigation as a means of settling disputes. In recent years the state, often in the guise of the court system, has supported a rapidly expanding set of individual rights that have undermined the ability of larger communities to set standards for the behavior of their members. Thus, the United States today presents a contradictory picture of a society living off a great fund of previously accumulated social capital that gives it a rich and dynamic associational life, while at the same time manifesting extremes of distrust and asocial individualism that tend to isolate and atomize its members. This type of individualism always existed in a potential form, yet through most of America’s existence it had been kept in check by strong communal currents.6 ~ Francis Fukuyama,

1347:Merripen,” Harry said pleasantly. “Did you enjoy the breakfast?” The Rom was in no mood for small talk. He stared at Harry with a gaze promising death. “Something is wrong,” he said. “If you’ve done something to harm Poppy, I will find you and rip your head from your—” “Merripen!” came a cheerful exclamation as Leo suddenly appeared beside them. Harry didn’t miss the way Leo jabbed a warning elbow against the Gypsy’s ribs. “All charm and lightness, as usual. You’re supposed to congratulate the bridegroom, phral. Not threaten to dismember him.” “It’s not a threat,” the Rom muttered. “It’s a promise.” Harry met Merripen’s gaze directly. “I appreciate your concern for her. I assure you, I’ll do everything in my power to make her happy. Poppy will have anything she wants.” “I believe a divorce would top the list,” Leo mused aloud. Harry leveled a cool stare at Merripen. “I’d like to point out that your sister married me voluntarily. Michael Bayning should have had the bollocks to come to the church and carry her out bodily if necessary. But he didn’t. And if he wasn’t willing to fight for her, he didn’t deserve her.” He saw from Merripen’s quick blink that he had scored a point. “Moreover, after going through these exertions to marry Poppy, the last thing I would do is mistreat her. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1348:I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, wich of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this dispair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcholisme.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that come after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it Karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

1349:It was as if the wars they were conducting were to be symbolized in their own relationships. I thought how contention makes us human. How every form of it is practiced religiously, from gentlemanly debate to rape and pillage, from dirty political attacks to assassinations. Our nighttime street fights outside of bars, our slapping arguments in plush bedrooms, our murderous mutterings in the divorce courts. We had parents who beat their children, schoolyard bullies, career-climbing killers in ties and suits, drivers cutting one another off, people pushing one another through the subway doors, nations making war, dropping bombs, swarming onto beaches, the daily military coups, the endless disappearances, the dispossessed dying in their tent camps, the ethnic cleansing crusades, drug wars, terrorist murders, and all violence in every form countenanced somewhere by some religion or other … and for its entertainment politicidal, genocidal, suicidal humanity attending its beloved kick-boxing matches, and cockfights, or losing its paychecks on the blackjack felt and then going back to work undercutting the competition, scamming, ponzi-ing, poisoning … and the impassioned lovers of their times contending in their own little universe of sex, one turgidly wanting it, the other wincingly refusing it. ~ E L Doctorow,

1350:They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word "dude" is no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not always peddlers or pants-makers. "Where does she get all them theories?" marveled Uncle Whittier Smail; while Aunt Bessie inquired, "Do you suppose there's many folks got notions like hers? My! If there are," and her tone settled the fact that there were not, "I just don't know what the world's coming to! ~ Sinclair Lewis,

1351:Sometimes it was exhilaratingly easy to be happy again. Other times they found that they did have to “try,” and the trying seemed stupid and pointless and Alice would wake up in the middle of the night thinking of all the times Nick had hurt her and wondering why she hadn’t stayed with Dominick. But then there were the other times, unexpected quiet moments, where they’d catch each other’s eyes, and all the years of hurt and joy, bad times and good times, seemed to fuse into a feeling that she knew was so much stronger, more complex and real, than any of those fledgling feelings for Dominick, or even the love she’d first felt for Nick in those early years. She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they’d always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word. ~ Liane Moriarty,

1352:It is a well-worn saying but one nonetheless true and nonetheless worthy of repetition, inasmuch as it expresses peculiarly the situation now widely prevalent, that "where there is no vision the people perish. " Mankind as a whole, or more particularly the Western element, has lost in some incomprehensible way its spiritual vision. An heretical barrier has been erected separating itself from that current of life and vitality which even now, despite willful impediment and obstacle, pulses and vibrates passionately in the blood, pervading the whole of universal form and structure. The anomalies presented today are due to this rank absurdity. Mankind is slowly accomplishing its own suicide. A self-strangulation is being effected through a suppression of all individuality, in the spiritual sense, and all that made it human. It continues to withhold the spiritual atmosphere from its lungs, so to speak. And having severed itself from the eternal and never-ceasing sources of light and life and inspiration, it has deliberately blinded itself to the fact— than which no other could compare in importance—that there is a dynamic principle both within and without from which it has accomplished a divorce. The result is inner lethargy, chaos, and the disintegration of all that formerly was held to be ideal and sacred. ~ Israel Regardie,

1353:And in the background, the constant, high, whining mewl of local disapproval. Within the first few months of her return, to her parents' home, Ammy quickly learned to recognize and despise the ugly face of sympathy. Old female relations with incipient beards and several wobbling chins made overnight trips to Ayemenem to commiserate with her about her divorce. They squeezed her knee and gloated. She fought off the urge to slap them. Or twiddle their nipples. With a spanner. Like Chaplin in Modern Times. When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs, Ammu felt the woman that looked back at her was someone else. A foolish jeweled bride. Her silk sunset-colored sari shot with gold. Rings on very finger. White dots of sandalwood paste over her arched eye-brows. Looking at herself like this, Ammu's soft mouths would twist into a small, bitter, smile at the memory - not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed so absurd. So futile. Like polishing firewood. ....... Ammu knew that weddings were not something that could be avoided altogether. At least not practically speaking. But for the rest of her life she advocated small weddings in ordinary clothes. it made them less ghoulish, she thought. ~ Arundhati Roy,

1354:THERE HAS BEEN A SILENT DIVORCE IN THE CHURCH, SPEAKING generally, between the Word and the Spirit. When there is a divorce, sometimes the children stay with the mother, sometimes with the father. In this divorce you have those on the Word side and those on the Spirit side. What is the difference? Those on the Word side stress earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, expository preaching, sound theology, rediscovering the doctrines of the Reformation—justification by faith, sovereignty of God. Until we get back to the Word, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. Those on the Spirit side stress getting back to the Book of Acts, signs, wonders, and miracles, gifts of the Holy Spirit—with places being shaken at prayer meetings, get in Peter’s shadow and you are healed, lie to the Holy Spirit and you are struck dead. Until we recover the power of the Spirit, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. The problem is, neither will learn from the other. But if these two would come together, the simultaneous combination would mean spontaneous combustion. And if Smith Wigglesworth’s prophecy got it right, the world will be turned upside down again. ~ R T Kendall,

1355:Cleopatra moreover came of age in a country that entertained a singular definition of women’s roles. Well before her and centuries before the arrival of the Ptolemies, Egyptian women enjoyed the right to make their own marriages. Over time their liberties had increased, to levels unprecedented in the ancient world. They inherited equally and held property independently. Married women did not submit to their husbands’ control. They enjoyed the right to divorce and to be supported after a divorce. Until the time an ex-wife’s dowry was returned, she was entitled to be lodged in the house of her choice. Her property remained hers; it was not to be squandered by a wastrel husband. The law sided with the wife and children if a husband acted against their interests. Romans marveled that in Egypt female children were not left to die; a Roman was obligated to raise only his first-born daughter. Egyptian women married later than did their neighbors as well, only about half of them by Cleopatra’s age. They loaned money and operated barges. They served as priests in the native temples. They initiated lawsuits and hired flute players. As wives, widows, or divorcées, they owned vineyards, wineries, papyrus marshes, ships, perfume businesses, milling equipment, slaves, homes, camels. As much as one third of Ptolemaic Egypt may have been in female hands. ~ Stacy Schiff,

1356:I have just reread The Age of Innocence. Poor Countess Olenska, so much more alive than everyone in New York. She was better than Newland Archer, to whom she couldn’t give herself because she was married. It didn’t matter to society that she had been wronged by her husband. They felt her life was over. Thanks to the modern age of divorce, my life is not. I am coming to see that as a blessing and not something to be ashamed of. I am starting to think that my life is a good thing to have. I do not believe that there were more happy marriages before divorce became socially acceptable, that people tried harder, got through their rough times, and were better off. I believe that more people suffered. Divorce is in the machine now, like love and birth and death. Its possibility informs us, even when it goes untouched. And if we fail at marriage, we are lucky we don’t have to fail with the force of our whole life. I would like there to be an eighth sacrament: the sacrament of divorce. Like Communion, it is a slim white wafer on the tongue. Like confession, it is forgiveness. Forgiveness is important not so much because we’ve done wrong as because we feel we need to be forgiven. Family, friends, God, whoever loves us forgives us, takes us in again. They are thrilled by our life, our possibilities, our second chances. They weep with gladness that we did not have to die. ~ Ann Patchett,

1357:The dawn! The dawn, I repeated. Henry thought it was the dawn itself which was a new experience. I could not explain what I felt. It was the first time I had not felt the compulsion to escape; it was the first time I had abandoned myself to fraternity, exchange, confessions, without feeling suddenly the need to take flight. All night I had stayed there, without experiencing that abrupt end to fusion, that sudden and painful consciousness of separation, of reaching ultimately and always the need of my own world, the inability to remain outside, estranged, at some moment or other, from everyone. This had not happened, this dawn had come as the first break in the compulsion and tyranny of inadaptation. (The way I once concealed from myself this drama of perpetual divorce was to blame the clock. It was time to go, in place of now I must go, because relationship is so difficult for me, so strained, so laborious, its continuance, its flow.) I never knew what happened. At a party, at a visit, at a play, a film, came a moment of anguish. I cannot sustain the role, the pretense that I am at one with others, synchronized. Where was the exit? Flight. The imperative need of flight. Was it the failure to remove the obstacles, the walls, the barriers, the effort? Dawn had come quietly, and found me sitting at ease with Henry and Fred, and it was the dawn of freedom from a nameless enemy. ~ Ana s Nin,

1358:Your pain, your sorrow, your desperate seeking, it is energy, only energy. Sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, sometimes even volcanic, but energy nonetheless. Strip away the secondhand words and concepts—fear, anger, depression, loneliness—and contact what is wordlessly alive in your body, not yesterday, not tomorrow, but now. Feel “sadness” before it is named. Feel the tightness in the chest, the tension in the throat. Feel “anger” before it is defined. Feel the burning in the belly, the pounding of the passionate heart. Feel the throb and pull of life, the vibration of it. Make space for all bodily sensations, the raw energy, the power, the electricity, the sound and the fury. It is life, only life, always life. Don’t judge the energy, or try to push it away, or ignore it, because then you split yourself into “good me” and “bad me,” “sick me” and “healthy me,” “spiritual me” and “ignorant me,” and the war begins. Go beyond the entire “me” story, and honor what is alive in your body, here and now, even if what is alive is intense, uncomfortable, or simply too unfamiliar to be named. Let the intensity of bodily sensation focus you. Let attention drop into the moment. Non-resistance to life, the absolute surrender to the living moment, no matter how much the moment deviates from our “perfect” image—this is the beginning of true healing. Divorce the dream and marry reality. ~ Jeff Foster,

1359:There must always remain, however, from the standpoint of normal waking consciousness, a certain baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world. Hence the common divorce of opportunism from virtue and the resultant degeneration of human existence. Martyrdom is for saints, but the common people have their institutions, and these cannot be left to grow like lilies of the field; Peter keeps drawing his sword, as in the garden, to defend the creator and sustainer of the world. The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word. How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. How render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? How represent on a two-dimensional surface a three-dimensional form, or in a three-dimensional image a multi-dimensional meaning? How translate into terms of “yes” and “no” revelations that shatter into meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of opposites? How communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void? ~ Joseph Campbell,

1360:Jesus’ interpretation of the OT law As the promised Messiah who is in the process of inaugurating a spiritual kingdom, Jesus next provides an amplified explanation of the role of the OT law in the messianic kingdom. As Moses received God’s law on Mount Sinai, Jesus as the second Moses here delivers the law on a mountain. Overall, Jesus clarifies the meaning of the OT law and intensifies its application. First Jesus declares the principle that he himself is the fulfillment of the law (vv. 17–19). Then, in a preview of the rest of his remarks on the law, Jesus states that his followers must apply the law much more fully than the Pharisees do (v. 20). With this principle as the foundation, Jesus then applies the principle of exceeding the righteousness of the Pharisees in the areas of murder and anger (vv. 21–26), lust (vv. 27–30), divorce (vv. 31–32), oaths (vv. 33–37), retaliation (vv. 38–42), and relating to enemies (vv. 43–48). The rhetorical pattern revolves around “you have heard that it was said . . . but I say to you . . .” In each case, Jesus extends true obedience beyond an external or legalistic level to a spiritual principle, in effect contrasting the letter of the law as it was conventionally understood and the spirit of the law as God intended it. The last verse summarizes the thrust of what Jesus demands: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48). ~ Anonymous,

1361:Would you take a chance on me? Let me make promises that I swear by the Virgin I can keep?” She laughed at him. “Do you really want to get the Virgin involved in this?” “Before the babies come, mija,” he said. “Because there will be babies.” “There is that talk about the water in Virgin River….” He covered her lips in a steaming kiss, pulling her hard against him. “It’s not about the water with us, mi amor,” he said. “If we disappeared for a while, would we be missed?” “Yes,” she answered, laughing. “When I woke up in the hospital, I thought to myself, why did I make it? When I was discharged and struggling for every step, unable to lift a glass from the cupboard, my constant thought was that I had misspent my life—carousing, living in the moment, acting carelessly. What every man wants, what my friends had found—that one woman they would give up everything for—had eluded me completely. And when you came along…angry over your divorce and determined never to give a man, especially a man like me, a chance, I knew I’d been cast into hell for sure, because I was feeling that for you.” He gave her a kiss. “How did this happen? I know I don’t deserve this.” “It started with a promise to break your heart,” she said. “Somehow I got distracted.” “Will you marry me, Brie? I want you to be my wife. I want to be your husband, your partner for life. Can you trust me with that?” “Sí, Miguel. I trust you with everything.” * ~ Robyn Carr,

1362:The first is what some psychologists call “hot hate,” based on anger. Imagine yourself yelling at the television, and you get the picture. Most Americans would be ashamed to say “I hate Republicans” or “I hate Democrats.” But our market preferences tell the true story. We reward professional political pundits who say or write that the other side is evil or stupid or both. For some haters, the hot variety is a little too crude. They prefer “cool hate,” based on contempt, and express disgust for another person through sarcasm, dismissal or mockery. Cool hate can be every bit as damaging as hot hate. The social psychologist and relationship expert John Gottman was famously able to predict with up to 94 percent accuracy whether couples would divorce just by observing a brief snippet of conversation. The biggest warning signs of all were indications of contempt, such as sarcasm, sneering and hostile humor. Want to see if a couple will end up in divorce court? Watch them discuss a contentious topic — which Mr. Gottman has done thousands of times — and see if either partner rolls his or her eyes. Disagreement is normal, but dismissiveness can be deadly. As it is in love, so it is in politics. With just an ironic smile, one can dismiss an entire class of citizens as uncultured rubes or mindless theocrats. Feigning shock and dismay at the resulting indignation simply adds insult to injury. The last variety is anonymous hate. ~ Anonymous,

1363:Modern art is a waste of time. When the zombies show up, you can't worry about art. Art is for people who aren't worried about zombies. Besides zombies and icebergs, there are other things that Soap has been thinking about. Tsunamis, earthquakes, Nazi dentists, killer bees, army ants, black plague, old people, divorce lawyers, sorority girls, Jimmy Carter, giant quids, rabid foxes, strange dogs, new anchors, child actors, fascists, narcissists, psychologists, ax murderers, unrequited love, footnotes, zeppelins, the Holy Ghost, Catholic priests, John Lennon, chemistry teachers, redheaded men with British accents, librarians, spiders, nature books with photographs of spiders in them, darkness, teachers, swimming pools, smart girls, pretty girls, rich girls, angry girls, tall girls, nice girls, girls with superpowers, giant lizards, blind dates who turn out to have narcolepsy, angry monkeys, feminine hygiene commercials, sitcoms about aliens, things under the bed, contact lenses, ninjas, performances artists, mummies, spontaneous combustion, Soap has been afraid of all of these things at one time or another, Ever since he went to prison, he's realized that he doesn't have to be afraid. All he has to do is come up with a plan. Be prepared. It's just like the Boy Scouts, except you have to be even more prepared. You have to prepare for everything that the Boy Scouts didn't prepare you for, which is pretty much everything. ~ Kelly Link,

1364:Rien n'est jamais acquis à l'homme Ni sa force Ni sa faiblesse ni son coeur Et quand il croit Ouvrir ses bras son ombre est celle d'une croix Et quand il croit serrer son bonheur il le broie Sa vie est un étrange et douloureux divorce Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux Sa vie Elle ressemble à ces soldats sans armes Qu'on avait habillés pour un autre destin A quoi peut leur servir de se lever matin Eux qu'on retrouve au soir désoeuvrés incertains Dites ces mots Ma vie Et retenez vos larmes Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux Mon bel amour mon cher amour ma déchirure Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer Répétant après moi les mots que j'ai tressés Et qui pour tes grands yeux tout aussitôt moururent Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux Le temps d'apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard Que pleurent dans la nuit nos coeurs à l'unisson Ce qu'il faut de malheur pour la moindre chanson Ce qu'il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson Ce qu'il faut de sanglots pour un air de guitare Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne soit à douleur Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit meurtri Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit flétri Et pas plus que de toi l'amour de la patrie Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne vive de pleurs Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux Mais c'est notre amour à tous les deux ~ Louis Aragon,

1365:A Word Before All Is Grace was written in a certain frame of mind—that of a ragamuffin. Therefore, This book is by the one who thought he’d be farther along by now, but he’s not. It is by the inmate who promised the parole board he’d be good, but he wasn’t. It is by the dim-eyed who showed the path to others but kept losing his way. It is by the wet-brained who believed if a little wine is good for the stomach, then a lot is great. It is by the liar, tramp, and thief; otherwise known as the priest, speaker, and author. It is by the disciple whose cheese slid off his cracker so many times he said “to hell with cheese ’n’ crackers.” It is by the young at heart but old of bone who is led these days in a way he’d rather not go. But, This book is also for the gentle ones who’ve lived among wolves. It is for those who’ve broken free of collar to romp in fields of love and marriage and divorce. It is for those who mourn, who’ve been mourning most of their lives, yet they hang on to shall be comforted. It is for those who’ve dreamed of entertaining angels but found instead a few friends of great price. It is for the younger and elder prodigals who’ve come to their senses again, and again, and again, and again. It is for those who strain at pious piffle because they’ve been swallowed by Mercy itself. This book is for myself and those who have been around the block enough times that we dare to whisper the ragamuffin’s rumor— all is grace. ~ Brennan Manning,

1366:It is not difficult to imagine the Catholic Church adopting, after a Tychonic transition, the Copernican cosmology some 200 years earlier than she eventually did. The Galileo affair was an isolated episode in the history of relations between science and theology. But its dramatic circumstances, magnified out of all proportion, created a popular belief that science stood for freedom, the Church for oppression of thought. Some historians wish to make us believe that the decline of science in Italy was due to the "terror" caused by the trial of Galileo. But the next generation saw the rise of Toricelli, Cavallieri, Borelli, whose contributions to science were more substantial than those of any generation before or during Galileo's lifetime. The contemporary divorce between faith and reason is not the result of a contest for power or intellectual monopoly, but of a progressive estrangement. This becomes evident if we shift our attention from Italy to the Protestant countries of Europe, and to France. Kepler, Descartes, Barrow, Leibniz, Gilbert, Boyle and Newton himself, the generation of pioneers contemporary with and succeeding Galileo, were all deeply and genuinely religious thinkers. The pioneers of the new cosmology, from Kepler to Newton and beyond, based their search into nature on the mystic conviction that there must exist laws behind the confusing phenomena; that the world was a completely rational, ordered, harmonic creation. ~ Arthur Koestler,

1367:I wish you’d stop acting as if-as if everything is normal!” “What would you have me do?” he replied, getting up and walking over to the tray of liquor. He poured some Scotch into two glasses and handed one to Jordan. “If you’re waiting for me to rant and weep, you’re wasting your time.” “No, at the moment I’m glad you’re not given to the masculine version of hysterics. I have news, as I said, and though you aren’t going to find it pleasant from a personal viewpoint, it’s the best possible news from the standpoint of your trial next week. Ian,” he said uneasily, “our investigators-yours, I mean-have finally picked up Elizabeth’s trail.” Ian’s voice was cool, his expression unmoved. “Where is she?” “We don’t know yet, but we do know she was seen traveling in company of a man on the Bernam Road two nights after she disappeared. They put up at the inn about fifteen miles north of Lister. They”-he hesitated and expelled his breath in a rush-“they were traveling as man and wife, Ian.” Other than the merest tightening of Ian’s hand upon the glass of Scotch, there was no visible reaction to this staggering news, or to all its heartbreaking and unsavory implications. “There’s more news, and it’s as good-I mean as valuable-to us.” Ian tossed down the contents of his glass and said with icy finality, “I can’t see how any news could be better. She has now proven that I didn’t kill her, and at the same time she’s given me irrefutable grounds for divorce. ~ Judith McNaught,

1368:To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found to be swarming with numberless allusions to the popular character called a Cave-Man. He seems to be quite familiar to us, not only as a public character but as a private character. His psychology is seriously taken into account in psychological fiction and psychological medicine. So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about, or treating women in general with what is, I believe, known in the world of the film as 'rough stuff.' I have never happeend to come upon the evidence for this idea; and I do not know on what primitive diaries or prehistoric divorce-reports it is founded. Nor, as I have explained elsewhere, have I ever been able to see the probability of it, even considered a priori. We are always told without any explanation or authority that primitive man waved a club and knocked the woman down before he carried her off. But on every animal analogy, it would seem an almost morbid modesty and reluctance, on the part of the lady, always to insist on being knocked down before consenting to be carried off. And I repeat that I can never comprehend why, when the male was so very rude, the female should have been so very refined. The cave-man may have been a brute, but there is no reason why he should have been more brutal than the brutes. And the loves of the giraffes and the river romances of the hippopotami are affected without any of this preliminary fracas or shindy. ~ G K Chesterton,

1369:A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not ‘die to itself’ that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of ‘adjustment’ or ‘mental cruelty.’ It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the Kingdom of God. This is expressed in the sentiment that one would ‘do anything’ for his family, even steal. The family has here ceased to be for the glory of God; it has ceased to be a sacramental entrance into his presence. It is not the lack of respect for the family, it is the idolization of the family that breaks the modern family so easily, making divorce its almost natural shadow. It is the identification of marriage with happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it. In a Christian marriage, in fact, three are married; and the united loyalty of the two toward the third, who is God, keeps the two in an active unity with each other as well as with God. Yet it is the presence of God which is the death of the marriage as something only ‘natural.’ It is the cross of Christ that brings the self-sufficiency of nature to its end. But ‘by the cross, joy entered the whole world.’ Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage. It is the joyful certitude that the marriage vow, in the perspective of the eternal Kingdom, is not taken ‘until death parts,’ but until death unites us completely. ~ Alexander Schmemann,

1370:The late Francis Schaeffer, one of the wisest and most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, warned of this exact trend just a few months before his death in 1984. In his book The Great Evangelical Disaster he included a section called “The Feminist Subversion,” in which he wrote: There is one final area that I would mention where evangelicals have, with tragic results, accommodated to the world spirit of this age. This has to do with the whole area of marriage, family, sexual morality, feminism, homosexuality, and divorce. . . . The key to understanding extreme feminism centers around the idea of total equality, or more properly the idea of equality without distinction. . . . the world spirit in our day would have us aspire to autonomous absolute freedom in the area of male and female relationships—to throw off all form and boundaries in these relationships and especially those boundaries taught in the Scriptures. . . . Some evangelical leaders, in fact, have changed their views about inerrancy as a direct consequence of trying to come to terms with feminism. There is no other word for this than accommodation. It is a direct and deliberate bending of the Bible to conform to the world spirit of our age at the point where the modern spirit conflicts with what the Bible teaches.2 My argument in the following pages demonstrates that what Schaeffer predicted so clearly twenty-two years ago is increasingly coming true in evangelicalism today. It is a deeply troubling trend. ~ Wayne Grudem,

1371:How should we, as Christians, react to this hour of transition? First of all, surely, by the entirely human reaction to which it summons us: by using this time of reflection to gain distance, perspective, inner freedom, and a patient readiness to move on. An ancient philosopher once commented that the essential difference between man and the animal is that the always has his head, as it were, above the waters of time. Like a swimming fish, on the other hand, the animal is carried along by the current of time; only man can see above it and so be master of it. But do we really do that? Are not we, too, like fish in the waters of the sea of time, carried along by its currents without seeing whence or whither? Are we not so submerged, from one day to the next, from one task to the next, in the details of daily living, in its endless demands and difficulties, that we have no time even for ourselves? If that is so, then this should be the hour when we rise above these things, the hour when we try for a moment to see the heavens above the waters and the stars that shine upon us, in order, at the same time, to comprehend ourselves. We should try to review and evaluate the way we have traveled. We should try to see where we have gone wrong, what has obstructed for us the way that leads to ourselves and to others. We should try to know this so that we can divorce ourselves interiorly from these obstacles, so that the way into the new year may truly be for us a way of progress, may truly be a step forward. ~ Benedict XVI,

1372:Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes. Reduce it. A boy is trained as a student up to age twenty-five, restricting sex life. Brahmacārī. So, some of the boys remain naiṣṭhika-brahmacārī [celibate for life]. Because they are given an education and they become fully conversant with spiritual knowledge, they don’t want to marry. And even if they do marry, sex life is restricted. But the basic principle is that one cannot have sex life without being married. Therefore in human society there is marriage, not in animal society. But people are gradually descending from human society to animal society. They are forgetting marriage. That is also predicted in the śāstras [scriptures]. Dāmpatye ’bhirucir hetuḥ: in the Kali-yuga [the present age of quarrel], eventually there will be no marriage; the boy and the girl will simply agree to live together, and their relationship will exist on sexual power. If the man or the woman is deficient in sex life, then there is divorce. So, for this philosophy there are many Western philosophers like Freud and others who have written so many books. But according to Vedic culture, we are interested in sex only for begetting children, that’s all. Not to study the psychology of sex life. There is already natural psychology for that. Even if one does not read any philosophy, he is sexually inclined. Nobody is taught it in the schools and colleges. Everyone already knows how to do it. [He laughs.] That is the general tendency. But education should be given to stop it. That is real education. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup da,

1373:There are two basic coping mechanisms. One consists of dreading the chaos, fighting it and abusing oneself after losing, building a structured life of work/marriage/gym/reunions/children/depression/affair/divorce/alcoholism/recovery/heart attack, in which every decision is a reaction against the fear of the worst (make children to avoid being forgotten, fuck someone at the reunion in case the opportunity never comes again, and the Holy Grail of paradoxes: marry to combat loneliness, then plunge into that constant marital desire to be alone). This is the life that cannot be won, but it does offer the comforts of battle—the human heart is content when distracted by war. “The second mechanism is an across-the-board acceptance of the absurd all around us. Everything that exists, from consciousness to the digestive workings of the human body to sound waves and bladeless fans, is magnificently unlikely. It seems so much likelier that things would not exist at all and yet the world shows up to class every morning as the cosmos takes attendance. Why combat the unlikeliness? This is the way to survive in this world, to wake up in the morning and receive a cancer diagnosis, discover that a man has murdered forty children, discover that the milk has gone sour, and exclaim, 'How unlikely! Yet here we are,' and have a laugh, and swim in the chaos, swim without fear, swim without expectation but always with an appreciation of every whim, the beauty of screwball twists and jerks that pump blood through our emaciated veins. ~ Jaroslav Kalfar,

1374:The discovery of nonlocality has shaken our notions of reality and the Cartesian divorce of mind from matter to their very foundations. “Many regard [the discovery of nonlocality] as the most momentous in the history of science,” the science historian Robert Nadeau and the physicist Menas Kafatos wrote in their wonderful 1999 book The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind. The reason, in large part, is that nonlocality overturns classical ontology. In both classical physics and (as you will recall from Chapter 1) Cartesian dualism, the inner realm of the human mind and the outer realm of the physical world lie on opposite sides of an unbridgeable chasm, leaving mind and physical reality entirely separate and no more capable of meaningful and coherent interactions than different species of salamander on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. In a nonlocal universe, however, the separation between mind and world meets its ultimate challenge. As Nadeau and Kafatos put it, “The stark division between mind and world sanctioned by classical physics is not in accord with our scientific worldview. When non-locality is factored into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.” An emergent phenomenon is one whose characteristics or behaviors cannot be explained in terms of the sum of its parts; if mind is emergent, then it cannot be wholly explained by brain. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,

1375:Comparative suffering is a function of fear and scarcity. Falling down, screwing up, and facing hurt often lead to bouts of second-guessing our judgment, our self-trust, and even our worthiness. I am enough can slowly turn into Am I really enough? If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past decade, it’s that fear and scarcity immediately trigger comparison, and even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked. My husband died and that grief is worse than your grief over an empty nest. I’m not allowed to feel disappointed about being passed over for promotion when my friend just found out that his wife has cancer. You’re feeling shame for forgetting your son’s school play? Please—that’s a first-world problem; there are people dying of starvation every minute. The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough. Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world. The refugee in Syria doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce. Yes, perspective is critical. But I’m a firm believer that complaining is okay as long as we piss and moan with a little perspective. Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us. ~ Bren Brown,

1376:already put me in quite a position. ‘I’ve put you in a position? Just give me the damned divorce and let’s have done with it.’ Before he could answer there was a rustling just inside the house, and our houseboy, Barasa, came onto the veranda, ducking his head to show us he’d not meant to disturb us. ‘Does bwana want the evening meal served here?’ ‘No, in the house, Barasa. We’ll be in directly.’ When the boy had gone, Jock looked at me pointedly. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘The servants won’t tell tales.’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘Usually not. But they always know the score, don’t they?’ ‘I don’t care what anyone knows.’ ‘Maybe not, but you should.’ We ate our meal in strained silence, all of the furniture seeming to lean heavily in from the walls. The servants were very quiet as they came and went, and it was awful to sit there, wanting to scream but saying nothing. Jock was terrified I was going to embarrass him – or embarrass him further. That was all he seemed to think of now as he flexed and cautioned me, running thick strands of wire around the charade of our life together. He’d always been good at fences. I had known that from the beginning, but I hadn’t guessed how desperate I could feel bound up inside one. When I could finally excuse myself to the small guest bedroom where I was sleeping, I felt chapped and raw and prodded at. I barely slept at all that night, and the next morning, though I generally stayed for lunch, I bolted for the wagon at first light.   Back at Soysambu, Jock’s warnings and expectations continued to wear on me, but only in weak moments, when I let myself think of him. ~ Paula McLain,

1377:I’m sipping cranberry-and-ginger-ale punch and talking to Aunt D. about her divorce when Peter Kavinsky walks in wearing a hunter-green sweater with a button-down shirt underneath, carrying a Christmas tin. I almost choke on my punch. Kitty spots him when I do. “You came!” she cries. She runs right into his arms, and he puts down the cookie tin and picks her up and throws her around. When he sets her down, she takes him by the hand and over to the buffet table, where I’m busying myself rearranging the cookie plate. “Look what Peter brought,” she says, pushing him forward. He hands me the cookie tin. “Here. Fruitcake cookies my mom made.” “What are you doing here?” I whisper accusingly. “The kid invited me.” He jerks his head toward Kitty, who has conveniently run back over to the puppy. Josh is standing up now, looking over at us with a frown on his face. “We need to talk.” So now he wants to talk. Well, too late. “We don’t have anything to talk about.” Peter takes me by the elbow and I try to shake him off, but he won’t let go. He steers me into the kitchen. “I want you to make up an excuse to Kitty and leave,” I say. “And you can take your fruitcake cookies with you.” “First tell me why you’re so pissed at me.” “Because!” I burst out. “Everyone is saying how we had sex in the hot tub and I’m a slut and you don’t even care!” “I told the guys we didn’t!” “Did you? Did you tell them that all we did was kiss and that’s all we’ve ever done?” Peter hesitates, and I go on. “Or did you say, ‘Guys, we didn’t have sex in the hot tub,’ wink wink, nudge nudge. ~ Jenny Han,

1378:But because divorce was so unheard of in middle-class Indian society, people looked at divorcées with a sort of incredulous shock and wonder, as if they were somehow criminals. They were ostracized from everyday life because of an invisible scarlet D hovering over them. Meanwhile, Second Wave feminism in the United States was changing attitudes about how women were treated in the workplace and in society, and how unmarried women were perceived in particular. Women were challenging age-old notions of their place in the world. Western media was full of unafraid, smart American women who published magazines, were marching in DC, and were generally making a lot of noise. No such phenomenon had reached our Indian shores. I’m sure my mother had read about the ERA movement, Roe v. Wade, and bra burnings. She, too, wanted the freedom to earn a living in a country where she wouldn’t be a pariah because of her marital status. We could have a fighting chance at surviving independently in the United States, versus being dependent on her father or a future husband in India. Conservative as he was, my grandfather K. C. Krishnamurti, or “Tha-Tha,” as I called him in Tamil, had encouraged her to leave my father after he witnessed how she had been treated. He respected women and loved his daughter and it must have broken his heart to see the situation she had married into. He, too, wanted us to have a second chance at happiness. America, devoid of an obvious caste system and outright misogyny, seemed to value hard work and the use of one’s mind; even a woman could succeed there. My grandfather was a closet feminist. ~ Padma Lakshmi,

1379:Leigh said that to be your life mate I’d have to be turned.” “Yes.” His voice was husky. Clearing it, he added, “Though not necessarily right away. Sam didn’t turn right away after agreeing to be Mortimer’s life mate.” “Leigh told me that too, but said that Mortimer was a mess, constantly worried that Sam would be killed in an accident or something before she agreed to the turn.” “But she wasn’t,” Anders said. “And I’d be willing to go through that if you needed me to.” Valerie smiled faintly and shook her head. She didn’t really want to make him suffer, but she was having trouble with this situation. She hadn’t considered that she would have to become a vampire to be with one. Stupid, she supposed. He had told her that Leigh used to be mortal. He’d also told her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. The rest of his life could be a hell of a long time. Certainly, it was longer than the fifty or so years she had left in her. But she hadn’t considered that his wanting her to be his life mate included turning her into an immortal until her talk with Leigh. Now the decision to be his life mate was that much bigger. It wasn’t like just saying, “Ah heck, let’s give it a go,” and then moving in with him, knowing she could always move out. It wasn’t even like taking a risk and marrying him. That could be reversed through divorce if it was a mistake. But this was not reversible. She would have to become one of them. And from her talk with Leigh, Valerie knew that wasn’t reversible. She had a decision to make that would affect the rest of her life. Did she want to become a vampire and spend forever with this man? ~ Lynsay Sands,

1380:They kept the prophecy hidden. They emphasized the levirate nature of the marriage in order to stress its legal side. It would be hard for the scribes to argue with the Torah, the revealed law of Yahweh. The first order of business was business. Caleb signed a contract, called a ketubbah, with Rahab’s father. This was the transfer of authority from father to husband and was the legal foundation of the marriage. Caleb then paid a dowry to her father of fifty shekels, according to their law. This was the customary money held in faith by the father should a wife’s husband forsake her through divorce or death. The next order of business was for the wife to give an inventory accounting of her assets that would be transferred to her husband’s estate. Since Rahab had left everything behind but her family when Jericho was destroyed, she had nothing. To Caleb that sacrifice was more than he could ever offer her. The next stage in a normal wedding with a virgin was not the celebration, but consummation. The husband and wife would go to the father’s home and consummate their union in the marriage bed. A white cloth would be placed beneath the virgin so that there would be a discharge of blood with her first carnal knowledge of a man. The cloth would then be taken to the celebration feast to prove her virginity and a priest would pronounce a benediction over them. But this was not a normal wedding with a virgin. Because of the shame of this lack of virginity, Rahab requested that they perform the ceremony and celebration before they would leave to consummate. This way, attention would not be drawn to her shame. Caleb graciously agreed. ~ Brian Godawa,

1381:The only dream I ever had was the dream of New York itself, and for me, from the minute I touched down in this city, that was enough. It became the best teacher I ever had. If your mother is anything like mine, after all, there are a lot of important things she probably didn't teach you: how to use a vibrator; how to go to a loan shark and pull a loan at 17 percent that's due in thirty days; how to hire your first divorce attorney; what to look for in a doula (a birth coach) should you find yourself alone and pregnant. My mother never taught me how to date three people at the same time or how to interview a nanny or what to wear in an ashram in India or how to meditate. She also failed to mention crotchless underwear, how to make my first down payment on an apartment, the benefits of renting verses owning, and the difference between a slant-6 engine and a V-8 (in case I wanted to get a muscle car), not to mention how to employ a team of people to help me with my life, from trainers to hair colorists to nutritionists to shrinks. (Luckily, New York became one of many other moms I am to have in my lifetime.) So many mothers say they want their daughters to be independent, but what they really hope is that they'll find a well-compensated banker or lawyer and settle down between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-eight in Greenwich, Darien, or That Town, USA, to raise babies, do the grocery shopping, and work out in relative comfort for the rest of their lives. I know this because I employ their daughters. They raise us to think they want us to have careers, and they send us to college, but even they don't really believe women can be autonomous and take care of themselves. ~ Kelly Cutrone,

1382:What does it take to make you stop?” Elizabeth flinched from the hatred in the voice she loved and drew a shaking breath, praying she could finish without starting to cry. “I’ve hurt you terribly, my love, and I’ll hurt you again during the next fifty years. And you are going to hurt me, Ian-never, I hope, as much as you are hurting me now. But if that’s the way it has to be, then I’ll endure it, because the only alternative is to live without you, and that is no life at all. The difference is that I know it, and you don’t-not yet.” “Are you finished now?” “Not quite,” she said, straightening at the sound of footsteps in the hall. “There’s one more thing,” she informed him, lifting her quivering chin. “I am not a Labrador retriever! You cannot put me out of your life, because I won’t stay.” When she left, Ian stared at the empty room that had been alive with her presence but moments before, wondering what in hell she meant by her last comment. He glanced toward the door as Larimore walked in, then he nodded curtly toward the chairs in front of his desk, silently ordering the solicitor to sit down. “I gathered from your message,” Larimore said quietly, opening his legal case, “that you now wish to proceed with the divorce?” Ian hesitated a moment while Elizabeth’s heartbroken words whirled through his mind, juxtaposed with the lies and omissions that had begun on the night they met and continued right up to their last night together. He recalled the torment of the first weeks after she’d left him and compared it to the cold, blessed numbness that had now taken its place. He looked at the solicitor, who was waiting for his answer. And he nodded. ~ Judith McNaught,

1383:All the solitary hours a writer pours into a novel would avail little if not for the solitary hours poured into it by many unseen others. Anyway I assume those others also do their work in solitude; maybe they work in pairs or crews or tag teams, but I’d rather imagine them slaving over my words in a poorly lit and otherwise unoccupied room, just as I do. Maybe they will have a little music for company, but nothing too upbeat, something along the lines of Mozart’s Requiem, for example, because as everybody who has ever worked on a book knows, this work can be as grueling in its way as crawling on your knees through ten acres of ground-hugging plants to pick potato beetles off one at a time and flick them into a galvanized bucket filled with soapy water. But it can also be as transcendent as the Requiem—or as picking potato beetles when you are in the right frame of mind for it. Knowing other people are engaged in the same underappreciated labor and squeezing a perverse kind of joy out of it is what keeps me writing, especially if it’s my field of potatoes they are picking over. Sometimes I like to picture each of my collaborators working their way down a row, their backs aching, hands filthy with beetle juice, fingernails broken, eyes going cross-eyed in the faltering light. It’s inspirational. Thirty years ago, I would have written (and did) a dull-as-dirt acknowledgment to thank each of my collaborators. It would have had all the excitement of a divorce decree. Back then I had no idea how difficult and precarious a job it is to turn out a novel every couple of years. It gets more difficult and precarious every year. So does living. To me, they’re pretty much the same thing. ~ Randall Silvis,

1384:Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate 'relationship' involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the 'married' couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other. The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere. There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, 'mine' is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as 'ours.' This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a household economy that involves the work of both wife and husband, that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-employment, a measure of freedom, as well as a common ground and a common satisfaction. (From "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine") ~ Wendell Berry,

1385:So for most of the late twentieth century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents or the TV programs they watched. Some political scientists even said that most people were so confused about political issues that they had no real ideology at all. But then came the studies of twins. In the 1980s, when scientists began analyzing large databases that allowed them to compare identical twins (who share all of their genes, plus, usually, their prenatal and childhood environments) to same-sex fraternal twins (who share half of their genes, plus their prenatal and childhood environments), they found that the identical twins were more similar on just about everything. And what’s more, identical twins reared in separate households (because of adoption) usually turn out to be very similar, whereas unrelated children reared together (because of adoption) rarely turn out similar to each other, or to their adoptive parents; they tend to be more similar to their genetic parents. Genes contribute, somehow, to just about every aspect of our personalities. We’re not just talking about IQ, mental illness, and basic personality traits such as shyness. We’re talking about the degree to which you like jazz, spicy foods, and abstract art; your likelihood of getting a divorce or dying in a car crash; your degree of religiosity, and your political orientation as an adult. Whether you end up on the right or the left of the political spectrum turns out to be just as heritable as most other traits: genetics explains between a third and a half of the variability among people on their political attitudes. Being raised in a liberal or conservative household accounts for much less. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

1386:Many people find it hard to understand what it is about a mountain that draws men and women to risk their lives on her freezing, icy faces--all for a chance at that single, solitary moment on the top. It can be hard to explain. But I also relate to the quote that says: “If you have to ask, you will never understand.” I just felt that maybe this was it: my first real, and possibly only, chance to follow that dream of one day standing on the summit of Mount Everest. Deep down, I knew that I should take it. Neil agreed to my joining his Everest team on the basis of how I’d perform on an expedition that October to the Himalayas. As I got off the phone from speaking to Neil, I had a sinking feeling that I had just made a commitment that was going to change my life forever--either for the better or for the worse. But I had wanted a fresh start--this was it, and I felt alive. A few days later I announced the news to my family. My parents--and especially my sister, Lara--called me selfish, unkind, and then stupid. Their eventual acceptance of the idea came with the condition that if I died then my mother would divorce my father, as he had been the man who had planted the “stupid idea” in my head in the first place, all those years earlier. Dad just smiled. Time eventually won through, even with my sister, and all their initial resistance then turned into a determination to help me--predominantly motivated by the goal of trying to keep me alive. As for me, all I had to ensure was that I kept my promise to be okay. As it happened, four people tragically died on Everest while we were there: four talented, strong climbers. It wasn’t within my capability to make these promises to my family. My father knew that. ~ Bear Grylls,

1387:It was around the time of the divorce that all traces of decency vanished, and his dream of being the next great Southern writer was replaced by his desire to be the next published writer. So he started writing these novels set in Small Town Georgia about folks with Good American Values who Fall in Love and then contract Life-Threatening Diseases and Die. I'm serious. And it totally depresses me, but the ladies eat it up. They love my father's books and they love his cable-knit sweaters and they love his bleachy smile and orangey tan. And they have turned him into a bestseller and a total dick. Two of his books have been made into movies and three more are in production, which is where his real money comes from. Hollywood. And, somehow, this extra cash and pseudo-prestige have warped his brain into thinking that I should live in France. For a year.Alone.I don't understand why he couldn't send me to Australia or Ireland or anywhere else where English is the native language.The only French word I know is oui, which means "yes," and only recently did I learn it's spelled o-u-i and not w-e-e. At least the people in my new school speak English.It was founded for pretentious Americans who don't like the company of their own children. I mean, really. Who sends their kid to boarding school? It's so Hogwarts. Only mine doesn't have cute boy wizards or magic candy or flying lessons. Instead,I'm stuck with ninety-nine other students. There are twenty-five people in my entire senior class, as opposed to the six hundred I had back in Atlanta. And I'm studying the same things I studied at Clairemont High except now I'm registered in beginning French. Oh,yeah.Beginning French. No doubt with the freshman.I totally rock. ~ Stephanie Perkins,

1388:In so many places, however, these issues were worked on with either spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, Bible study, and repentance, or in workshops that focused on the practical aspects of solving those problems. The spiritual and the practical were addressed, but not linked together with a biblical understanding. We decided to address our concerns in three ways. First, John and I wanted those responsible for helping people grow to know how the spiritual and the practical are linked. We wanted pastors to know, for example, how a small-group ministry that addresses people’s emotional problems is an important application of the doctrine of the church, not just a good idea from secular humanism. And we wanted those who were leading divorce recovery workshops, for example, to know the theology behind those practices, not only so they could defend them, but also so they could make sure that what they were doing was truly biblical. Second, we wanted those who were working with people to be aware of the things that deeply change people’s lives. We wanted them to know the processes involved and be able to gain skills in all of them, not just a few. Many do a great job in working with people in the things they have been exposed to, but, like us, have a longing to know more of what the Bible teaches about what makes people grow. Third, we wanted people who were growing to know not only how to grow, but that their growth was biblical growth. We wanted them to understand that “if you are getting better, it is because you are growing spiritually. You are doing what the Bible says to do.” People need not only to grow, but also to understand where that growth fits in to a larger picture of God’s plan for them and his plan of redemption. It is good to know that their growth is from him. ~ Henry Cloud,

1389:When you are walking down the road in Bali and your pass a stranger, the very first question he or she will ask you is, "Where are you going?" The second question is, "Where are you coming from?" To a Westerner, this can seem like a rather invasive inquiry from a perfect stranger, but they're just trying to get an orientation on you, trying to insert you into the grid for the purposes of security and comfort. If you tell them that you don't know where you're going, or that you're just wandering about randomly, you might instigate a bit of distress in the heart of your new Balinese friend. It's far better to pick some kind of specific direction -- anywhere -- just so everybody feels better. The third question a Balinese will almost certainly ask you is, "Are you married?" Again, it's a positioning and orienting inquiry. It's necessary for them to know this, to make sure that you are completely in order in your life. They really want you to say yes. it's such a relief to them when you say yes. If you're single, it's better not to say so directly. And I really recommend that you not mention your divorce at all, if you happen to have had one. It just makes the Balinese so worried. The only thing your solitude proves to them is your perilous dislocation from the grid. If you are a single woman traveling through Bali and somebody asks you, "Are you married?" the best possible answer is: "Not yet." This is a polite way of saying, "No," while indicating your optimistic intentions to get that taken care of just as soon as you can. Even if you are eighty years old, or a lesbian, or a strident feminist, or a nun, or an eighty-year-old strident feminist lesbian nun who has never been married and never intends to get married, the politest possible answer is still: "Not yet. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

1390:The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is Christ. Each has awaited new partners who will pick them up in a kind of second and adulterous union. Communism comes along and picks up the meaningless Cross; Western post-Christian civilization chooses the unscarred Christ. Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings. The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, feminized, colourless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears. ~ Fulton J Sheen,

1391:I have often been asked why I maintained such a non-compromising antagonism to government and in what way I have found myself oppressed by it. In my opinion every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange. It stands ever for the status quo and traditional conduct and belief. It comes into private lives and into most intimate personal relations, enabling the superstitious, puritanical, and distorted ones to impose their ignorant prejudice and moral servitudes upon the sensitive, the imaginative, and the free spirits. Government does this by its divorce laws, its moral censorships, and by a thousand petty persecutions of those who are too honest to wear the moral mask of respectability. In addition, government protects the strong at the expense of the weak, provides courts and laws which the rich may scorn and the poor must obey. It enables the predatory rich to make wars to provide foreign markets for the favored ones, with prosperity for the rulers and wholesale death for the ruled. However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles life. It is the superstition, myth, pretense, evasions, and subservience which support authority and institutional domination. It is the reverence for these institutions instilled in the school, the church and the home in order that man may believe and obey without protest. Such a process of devitalizing and distorting personalities of the individual and of whole communities may have been a part of historical evolution; but it should be strenuously combated by every honest and independent mind in an age which has any pretense to enlightenment. ~ Emma Goldman,

1392:While the exact changes Muhammad made to this tradition are far too complex to discuss in detail here, it is sufficient to note that women in the Ummah were, for the first time, given the right both to inherit the property of their husbands and to keep their dowries as their own personal property throughout their marriage. Muhammad also forbade a husband to touch his wife’s dowry, forcing him instead to provide for his family from his own wealth. If the husband died, his wife would inherit a portion of his property; if he divorced her, the entire dowry was hers to take back to her family. As one would expect, Muhammad’s innovations did not sit well with the male members of his community. If women could no longer be considered property, men complained, not only would their wealth be drastically reduced, but their own meager inheritances would now have to be split with their sisters and daughters—members of the community who, they argued, did not share an equal burden with the men. Al-Tabari recounts how some of these men brought their grievances to Muhammad, asking, “How can one give the right of inheritance to women and children, who do not work and do not earn their living? Are they now going to inherit just like men who have worked to earn that money?” Muhammad’s response to these complaints was both unsympathetic and shockingly unyielding. “Those who disobey God and His Messenger, and who try to overstep the boundaries of this [inheritance] law will be thrown into Hell, where they will dwell forever, suffering the most shameful punishment” (4:14). If Muhammad’s male followers were disgruntled about the new inheritance laws, they must have been furious when, in a single revolutionary move, he both limited how many wives a man could marry and granted women the right to divorce their husbands. ~ Reza Aslan,

1393:Mark is a walking dilemma, one of those people who’s hard to figure out. He is an unmarried Christian professional man with no “horrible” problems like drugs, sex, or compulsive addictions. He’s intelligent, athletic, and good-looking. He’s responsible and loves God. Mark is forty-five years old. And he has no friends, safe or otherwise. He is very, very alone. How does that picture come together? On the outside, it doesn’t make sense. A guy with Mark’s qualities should have a rich, active relational life. But when you understand the power of perfectionism, it makes “perfect” sense. For Mark is a perfectionist and has only recently seen the devastating consequences of this trait. Sometimes we make jokes about our perfectionism: “I looked in the mirror and got depressed about being three pounds overweight.” The genuine article, however, can be much more serious. Perfectionism can be a major cause of depression, destructive behaviors, and divorce. What is perfectionism? Simply put, it’s an inability to tolerate faults. Perfectionists have a phobia about imperfections and blemishes in themselves, in other people, and in the world. They spend enormous amounts of time trying to create a perfect world, running in futility from the realities of sin, age, loss, and cellulite. The perfectionist tries to live in the land of ideals. He sees life the way “it should be.” People should treat each other right. I should be a productive, successful person. Fairness and equality should rule. Then he sees the huge chasm between the land of ideals and the land of the real. For example, he cannot live up to his expectations of himself. Or he is let down by someone important to him. And he has great difficulty accepting where he lives—the land of the real. So he tries to change his permanent address to ideal-land again. ~ Henry Cloud,

1394:9. Your Photo Album Many people have a photo album. In it they keep memories of the happiest of times. There may be a photo of them playing by the beach when they were very young. There may be the picture with their proud parents at their graduation ceremony. There will be many shots of their wedding that captures their love at one of its highest points. And there will be holiday snapshots too. But you will never find in your album any photographs of miserable moments of your life. Absent is the photo of you outside the principal’s office at school. Missing is any photo of you studying hard late into the night for your exams. No one that I know has a picture of their divorce in their album, nor one of them in a hospital bed terribly sick, nor stuck in busy traffic on the way to work on a Monday morning! Such depressing shots never find their way into anyone’s photo album. Yet there is another photo album that we keep in our heads called our memory. In that album, we include so many negative photographs. There you find so many snapshots of insulting arguments, many pictures of the times when you were so badly let down, and several montages of the occasions where you were treated cruelly. There are surprisingly few photos in that album of happy moments. This is crazy! So let’s do a purge of the photo album in our head. Delete the uninspiring memories. Trash them. They do not belong in this album. In their place, put the same sort of memories that you have in a real photo album. Paste in the happiness of when you made up with your partner, when there was that unexpected moment of real kindness, or whenever the clouds parted and the sun shone with extraordinary beauty. Keep those photos in your memory. Then when you have a few spare moments, you will find yourself turning its pages with a smile, or even with laughter. ~ Ajahn Brahm,

1395:Collect the positives in your past In the Old Testament, God commanded His people to have certain feasts and certain celebrations. One of the main reasons was so they would remember what He had done. Several times a year they would stop what they were doing so everybody could take off. They would celebrate how God brought them out of slavery and how God defeated their enemies and how He protected them. They were required to remember. In another place it talks about how they put down what they called “memorial stones.” These were big stones. Today, we would call them historical markers. The stones reminded them of specific victories. Every time they would go by certain stones they would recall an event. “This stone was for when we were brought out of slavery. This stone is for when our child was healed. This stone is for how God provided for our needs.” Having these memorial stones helped them to keep God’s deeds fresh in their memories. In the same way, you should have your own memorial stones. When you look back over your life, you should remember not when you failed, no when you went through a divorce, not when your business went down, not when you lost that loved one, not when the boss did you wrong. That’s remembering what you’re supposed to forget. You need to switch over to the other channel. Remember when you met the love of your life, remember when your child was born, remember when you got that new position, remember when the problem suddenly turned around, remember the peace you felt when you lost a loved one. Remember the strength you had in that difficult time. It looked dark. You didn’t think you’d see another happy day again, but God turned it around and gave you joy for mourning, beauty for ashes, and today you’re happy, healthy, strong. We should all have our own memorial stones. ~ Joel Osteen,

1396:Merripen,” Harry said pleasantly. “Did you enjoy the breakfast?” The Rom was in no mood for small talk. He stared at Harry with a gaze promising death. “Something is wrong,” he said. “If you’ve done something to harm Poppy, I will find you and rip your head from your—” “Merripen!” came a cheerful exclamation as Leo suddenly appeared beside them. Harry didn’t miss the way Leo jabbed a warning elbow against the Gypsy’s ribs. “All charm and lightness, as usual. You’re supposed to congratulate the bridegroom, phral. Not threaten to dismember him.” “It’s not a threat,” the Rom muttered. “It’s a promise.” Harry met Merripen’s gaze directly. “I appreciate your concern for her. I assure you, I’ll do everything in my power to make her happy. Poppy will have anything she wants.” “I believe a divorce would top the list,” Leo mused aloud. Harry leveled a cool stare at Merripen. “I’d like to point out that your sister married me voluntarily. Michael Bayning should have had the bollocks to come to the church and carry her out bodily if necessary. But he didn’t. And if he wasn’t willing to fight for her, he didn’t deserve her.” He saw from Merripen’s quick blink that he had scored a point. “Moreover, after going through these exertions to marry Poppy, the last thing I would do is mistreat her.” “What exertions?” the Rom asked suspiciously, and Harry realized that he hadn’t yet been told the entire story. “Never mind that,” Leo told Merripen. “If I told you now, you’d only make an embarrassing scene at Poppy’s wedding. And that’s supposed to be my job.” They exchanged a glance, and Merripen muttered something in Romany. Leo smiled faintly. “I have no idea what you just said. But I suspect it’s something about battering Poppy’s new husband into forest mulch.” He paused. “Later, old fellow,” he said. A look of grim understanding passed between them. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1397:There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian’s right to live luxuriantly “as a child of the King” in this atmosphere sounds hollow—especially since the King Himself is stripped for battle. It is more helpful to think of a wartime lifestyle than a merely simple lifestyle. Simplicity can be very inwardly directed and may benefit no one else. A wartime lifestyle implies that there is a great and worthy cause for which to spend and be spent (2 Corinthians 12:15). Winter continues: America today is a “save yourself” society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves. How hard have we tried to save others? Consider the fact that the U.S. evangelical slogan, “Pray, give or go” allows people merely to pray, if that is their choice! By contrast the Friends Missionary Prayer Band of South India numbers 8,000 people in their prayer bands and supports 80 full-time missionaries in North India. If my denomination (with its unbelievably greater wealth per person) were to do that well, we would not be sending 500 missionaries, but 26,000. In spite of their true poverty, those poor people in South India are sending 50 times as many cross-cultural missionaries as we are!11 ~ John Piper,

1398:Ditch the baggage If you stay focused on the past, then you’ll get stuck where you are. That’s the reason some people don’t have any joy. They’ve lost their enthusiasm. They’re dragging around all this baggage from the past. Someone offended them last week, and they’ve got that stuffed in their resentment bags. They lost their tempers or said some things they shouldn’t have. Now, they’ve put those mistakes in their bags of guilt and condemnation. Ten years ago their loved one died and they still don’t understand why; their hurt and pain is packed in their disappointment bag. Growing up they weren’t treated right--there’s another suitcase full of bitterness. They’ve got their regret bags, containing all the things they wish they’d done differently. Maybe there is another bag with their divorce in it, and they are still mad at their former spouse, so they’ve been carrying resentment around for years. If they went to take an airline flight, they couldn’t afford it. They’ve got twenty-seven bags to drag around with them everywhere they go. Life is too short to live that way. learn to travel light. Every morning when you get up, forgive those who hurt you. Forgive your spouse for what was said. Forgive your boss for being rude. Forgive yourself for mistakes you’ve made. At the start of the day, let go of the setbacks and the disappointments from yesterday. Start every morning afresh and anew. God did not create you to carry around all that baggage. You may have been holding on to it for years. It’s not going to change until you do something about it. Put your foot down and say, “That’s it. I’m not living in regrets. I’m not staying focused on my disappointments. I’m not dwelling on relationships that didn’t work out, or on those who hurt me, or how unfairly I was treated. I’m letting go of the past and moving forward with my life. ~ Joel Osteen,

1399:There are many causes for a suicide, and generally the most obvious ones were not the most powerful. Rarely is suicide committed (yet the hypothesis is not excluded) through reflection. What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of "personal sorrows" or of "incurable illness." These explanations are plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one. For that is enough to precipitate all the rancors and all the boredom still in suspension. But if it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step when the mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itself the consequences it implies. In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. Let's not go too far in such analogies, however, but rather return to everyday words. It is merely confessing that that "is not worth the trouble." Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. ~ Albert Camus,

1400:Judd sat alone in the chapel. They’d let him in for a handful of minutes to look down on Christabel’s white, drawn little face. If he’d been able to get to a bar, he could have gone through a fifth of whisky afterward. It was shocking to see her like that. She was hooked up to half a dozen monitoring machines with a needle in her arm feeding her nutrients and apparently a narcotic for pain. There was a tube coming out of her side to drain her chest. Perhaps it was the same tube they’d used to reinflate the lung as well. Not since she was sixteen had she been so badly hurt, and even then it wasn’t this serious. There hadn’t been the risk that she could die from her father’s brutal beating. This was different. She looked fragile and helpless and so alone. Her big dark eyes were closed. There were dark circles under them. When she breathed, he heard the slow rasp of fluid in her chest. Her lips were blue. She looked as if she’d already died. He’d touched her small hand with his big one and remembered the last thing she’d said to him before Clark showed up. Tippy had told her that he’d been disgusted with her, that he hadn’t wanted her hanging on him, running after him with her heart on her sleeve. His eyes had closed with a shudder. If she didn’t make it, her last memory of him would be one of pain and betrayal. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t disgusted. He lay awake nights remembering the passion they’d shared. He missed her. It was like being without an arm or a leg. He’d told her he didn’t want anything permanent. Now the choice might not be his anymore. He might be left alone, as he’d thought he wanted to be when he told her he was getting the divorce. Somewhere he remembered an old adage. Be careful what you want; you might get it. He looked at Christabel’s still body and saw the end of everything he loved. ~ Diana Palmer,

1401:My “Best Woman” speech Good evening everyone, my name is Rosie and as you can see Alex has decided to go down the non-traditional route of asking me to be his best woman for the day. Except we all know that today that title does not belong to me. It belongs to Sally, for she is clearly his best woman. I could call myself the “best friend” but I think we all know that today that title no longer refers to me either. That title too belongs to Sally. But what doesn’t belong to Sally is a lifetime of memories of Alex the child, Alex the teenager, and Alex the almost-a-man that I’m sure he would rather forget but that I will now fill you all in on. (Hopefully they all will laugh.) I have known Alex since he was five years old. I arrived on my first day of school teary-eyed and red-nosed and a half an hour late. (I am almost sure Alex will shout out “What’s new?”) I was ordered to sit down at the back of the class beside a smelly, snotty-nosed, messy-haired little boy who had the biggest sulk on his face and who refused to look at me or talk to me. I hated this little boy. I know that he hated me too, him kicking me in the shins under the table and telling the teacher that I was copying his schoolwork was a telltale sign. We sat beside each other every day for twelve years moaning about school, moaning about girlfriends and boyfriends, wishing we were older and wiser and out of school, dreaming for a life where we wouldn’t have double maths on a Monday morning. Now Alex has that life and I’m so proud of him. I’m so happy that he’s found his best woman and his best friend in perfect little brainy and annoying Sally. I ask you all to raise your glasses and toast my best friend Alex and his new best friend, best woman, and wife, Sally, and to wish them luck and happiness and divorce in the future. To Alex and Sally! ~ Cecelia Ahern,

1402:She had grown. Kate's vicious friend, once so elevated, was taller by little more than a head. She drew her brows together, and studied the circles under his eyes. He said lightly, 'My dear girl; it's Almoner's Saturday. With six frails of figs and a sackful of almonds, I am offering you my name.' Philippa's lips parted. The smith in her chest, changing a wooden mallet for a small charge of gunpowder, pulverized brain, lungs and stomach and left her standing, wan as a blown egg. She said shakily, 'How would that help?' Round his mouth, the curled lines deepened, and his eyes, very blue, lit suddenly with something like the flame she had seen struck in them at other times, by other things and other people. 'Stout Philippa,' he said. 'Sit down and hear... There is no guarantee for you now except marriage. Do it now, and you go home a respectable matron of fifteen...sixteen--' 'Nearly seventeen,' said Philippa. 'Yes. Well: with no money but a good many friends and enough property to keep a roof over your head and Kuzum's. Then, as you choose, you may divorce me.' She cleared her throat. 'On what grounds?' He looked at her directly, his voice level. 'On very obvious grounds. We shall find another Kislar Agha, if you like, to give you a guarantee... You must have no fears that this will be anything but a marriage on paper. But I want it done now. Tomorrow, if the Embassy's chaplain can do it.' Philippa's gaze was also direct. 'You think there is a chance we may not all get home?' 'There is a chance some of us may not,' he said quietly. 'I want to do this very much. I have very little to offer you... an irresponsible past, and a name which is .... in some places questionable. But it will shelter you until you can do better.' 'And you?' said Philippa. 'With a fifteen- ... sixteen- ... seventeen-year-old titular wife? What will Sybilla say? It isn't a practical methos of founding a dynasty. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,

1403:There had been a time, once, when he had not lived like this, a .32 under his pillow, a lunatic in the back yard firing off a pistol for God knew what purpose, some other nut or perhaps the same one imposing a brain-print of his own shorted-out upstairs on an incredibly expensive and valued cephscope that everyone in the house, plus all their friends, loved and enjoyed. In former days Bob Arctor had run his affairs differently: there had been a wife much like other wives, two small daughters, a stable household that got swept and cleaned and emptied out daily, the dead newspapers not even opened carried from the front walk to the garbage pail, or even, sometimes, read. But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that. Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe. All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected. It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all. But in this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing. ~ Philip K Dick,

1404:There had been a time, once, when he had not lived like this, a .32 under his pillow, a lunatic in the back yard firing off a pistol for God knew what purpose, some other nut or perhaps the same one imposing a brain-print of his own shorted-out upstairs on an incredibly expensive and valued cephscope that everyone in the house, plus all their friends, loved and enjoyed. In former days Bob Arctor had run his affairs differently: there had been a wife much like other wives, two small daughters, a stable household that got swept and cleaned and emptied out daily, the dead newspapers not even opened carried from the front walk to the garbage pail, or even, sometimes, read. But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that. Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe. All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected. It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all. But in this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing. ~ Philip K Dick,

1405:Koranic polygamy has also come to the United States. In November 2007, a Muslim woman sent a letter to Board of Directors of the Islamic Center of New England complaining that her husband “was able to marry illegally and secretly and without my knowledge three [A]merican [M]uslim women, and because of that my self and my children have suffered and still suffering tremendously.” She laid some of the responsibility at the feet of the leaders of the Islamic Center: “Because of the failure of the Islamic center as well the Imams to prevent such misconduct, I had no choice but to file for divorce.” She threatened to “expose this misconduct to the court and media if I have to, I also hope through this letter that you will make sure that this victimizations [sic] doesn’t happen to any other sisters.”38 This was no isolated case. According to researcher David Rusin, “estimates for the United States typically run into the tens of thousands of polygamous unions.”39 In May 2008 researchers estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 Muslims were living in polygamous arrangements in the United States.40 And Muslim imams don’t seem concerned about U.S. laws forbidding the practice: Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations asserted that a “minority” of Muslims in America were polygamous, and that “Islamic scholars would differ on whether one could do so while living in the United States.”41 He didn’t say anything about the necessity of obeying U.S. laws in this regard. Toronto imam Aly Hindy explained that such laws would have no force for Muslims: “This is in our religion and nobody can force us to do anything against our religion. If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that.”42 The Koran has further gifts for men as well. As we have seen, it stipulates that if a man cannot deal justly with multiples wives, then he should marry only one, or resort to “the captives that your right hands possess”—that is, slave girls (4:3). ~ Robert Spencer,

1406:The members of the board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folk would never have discovered - the poor people like it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all year round; a brick and mortar elysium where it was all play and no work. "Oho!" said the board, looking very knowing; "we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all in no time." So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the waterworks to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel per day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat; undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctor's Commons; and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no saying how many applicants for relief under these two heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people. For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the system was in full operation. It was rather expensive at first, in consequence to the increase in the undertaker's bill, and the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two's gruel. ~ Charles Dickens,

1407:Divorced women should wait for three menstrual cycles; it is unlawful for them, if they believe in God and the Last Day, to hide what God has created in their wombs. Their husbands have the right to take them back within that time, if they desire to be reconciled. The wives have rights corresponding to those which the husbands have, according to what is recognized to be fair, but men have a rank above them. God is almighty and all wise. 229 Divorce may be pronounced twice, and then a woman must be retained honourably or released with kindness. It is not lawful for you to take away anything of what you have given your wives, unless both fear that they would not be able to observe the bounds set by God. In such a case it shall be no sin for either of them if the woman opts to give something for her release. These are the bounds set by God; do not transgress them. Those who transgress the bounds of God are wrongdoers. 230 And if man finally divorces his wife, he cannot remarry her until she has married another man. Then if the next husband divorces her, there will be no blame on either of them if the former husband and wife return to one another, provided they think that they can keep within the bounds set by God. These are the bounds prescribed by God, which He makes clear to men of understanding. 231 Once you divorce women, and they have reached the end of their waiting period, then either retain them in all decency or part from them decently. Do not retain them in order to harm them or to wrong them. Whoever does this, wrongs his own soul. Do not make a mockery of God’s revelations. Remember the favours God has bestowed upon you, and the Book and the wisdom He has revealed to exhort you. Fear God and know that God is aware of everything. 232 When you divorce women and they reach the end of their waiting period, do not prevent them from marrying other men, if they have come to an honourable agreement. This is enjoined on every one of you who believes in God and the Last Day; it is more wholesome and purer for you. God knows, but you do not know. ~ Maulana Wahiduddin Khan,

1408:For instance, have you ever been going about your business, enjoying your life, when all of sudden you made a stupid choice or series of small choices that ultimately sabotaged your hard work and momentum, all for no apparent reason? You didn’t intend to sabotage yourself, but by not thinking about your decisions—weighing the risks and potential outcomes—you found yourself facing unintended consequences. Nobody intends to become obese, go through bankruptcy, or get a divorce, but often (if not always) those consequences are the result of a series of small, poor choices. Elephants Don’t Bite Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito? It’s the little things in life that will bite you. Occasionally, we see big mistakes threaten to destroy a career or reputation in an instant—the famous comedian who rants racial slurs during a stand-up routine, the drunken anti-Semitic antics of a once-celebrated humanitarian, the anti-gay-rights senator caught soliciting gay sex in a restroom, the admired female tennis player who uncharacteristically threatens an official with a tirade of expletives. Clearly, these types of poor choices have major repercussions. But even if you’ve pulled such a whopper in your past, it’s not extraordinary massive steps backward or the tragic single moments that we’re concerned with here. For most of us, it’s the frequent, small, and seemingly inconsequential choices that are of grave concern. I’m talking about the decisions you think don’t make any difference at all. It’s the little things that inevitably and predictably derail your success. Whether they’re bone-headed maneuvers, no-biggie behaviors, or are disguised as positive choices (those are especially insidious), these seemingly insignificant decisions can completely throw you off course because you’re not mindful of them. You get overwhelmed, space out, and are unaware of the little actions that take you way off course. The Compound Effect works, all right. It always works, remember? But in this case it works against you because you’re doing… you’re sleepwalking. ~ Darren Hardy,

1409: I walk away, feeling Brody’s gaze on me. There’s no doubt that as soon as we get back in the car, I’m going to get it—good. Instead, Brody stays quiet while I assemble the paperwork. He may not be speaking, but he’s saying a whole lot in the silence. “Just say it,” I mumble and finally look over. “I’m not saying a word.” He raises his hands. “Clearly, you two know each other, and it ain’t from growing up here. You tell me everything, so there is no way you wouldn’t have told me you know him,” Brody pauses and leans back. “I’m not saying a word about who you may or may not have slept with recently. Even though, it’s pretty obvious.” “You know, you not saying a word took you a long time.” “It’s not like you’ve had a five-year drought since your divorce. Or that you slept with a singer/actor. Nope. I have nothing to say about that. Not a thing.” I groan. “Could you not say anything for real this time?” “Sure thing, boss. I’ll just be over here, watching Hell start to thaw.” This is not going to get any better. I’d almost rather hear the questions. This is Brody Webber. My partner, my friend, and the one person who I have enough dirt on to make his life hell if he repeats this. “Okay, fine. Yes, I slept with Eli Walsh. I was crazy and dumb. I also had about six beers, which is two over my threshold, and I was trying to be in the moment for once. Fucking Nicole and her pep talks.” Brody coughs a laugh and then recovers. “Sorry, go on.” “I swear, you better keep this to yourself. If you tell anyone . . .” I give him my best threatening face. “I mean anyone, I’ll make your life a living nightmare.” He shakes his head and laughs again. “I won’t say a word, but you had a one-night stand with one of the most famous men in the boy band atmosphere. You’re too cool for me, Heather. I don’t think we can be friends. I’m sure you and the band will be happy without me.” I huff and grab the papers. “I’m getting a new partner.” I walk back over to the car, praying this will be painless ~ Corinne Michaels,

1410:Dark Thesis (i) The ocean is the oldest cliché. When we came home there was a dead bee on the windowsill – its body a perfect death’s head question mark, its elements, sodium calcium & potassium curled halfway to the sea. (ii) This afternoon was as hot as Greece. We missed the bee’s last do-se-do distant arthropodic cousin in shell-shock miniature. Dead from time’s comical Acme weight. Imprinted on our layers of human memory & recorded thus. 15 Filed: insect sedimentary. (iii) A new home was sluiced on land. Through the meniscus of coast, pods stuck. The amphibians, neither here nor there kept genetic ‘get out of jail free’ cards. Some larger, more aggressive marine exiles (pre-Cuban) returned to the aquatic fray. Made use of their bulk, heavyweights who outclassed all comers. This primeval Bay of Pigs, & pre-Darwinian back flip. (iv) It is the deep sea where everything stops. Philosophy & sex coexist; a dark thesis writ. 16 Light mostly extinguished, but for some slight phosphorescence, evades touch, as sight demystified, reveals nothing. In the ether of unlight, feeling is everything. First racial memories – trilobites’ dodgem car head-on into an armoured scorpions grin. Cambrian sideshow alley adrenaline. (v) But we regress. Our new home is closer to that first ocean. Pre-salt, pre-water, more tanning salon than 2 brd flat. The ants & their artery/vein routine we notice, shift their long march, include the kitchen sink. The Silk Road to our bin is Semtex lined. We’ve thrown in an oasis for fun. Will they find the bee? Our small deposit of platinum, alloyed by the alchemical sun. 17 (vi) Do they remember a mother, these full stops fossilised into the lining of our Westinghouse’s air-tight door? What good, hindsight? After the Earth & Ocean lodged their divorce papers & freezing had begun. (vii) On St Georges’ Rd the stream of life poured on. ~ B. R. Dionysius,

1411:The flat tire that threw Julio into a temporary panic and the divorce that almost killed Jim don’t act directly as physical causes producing a physical effect—as, for instance, one billiard ball hitting another and making it carom in a predictable direction. The outside event appears in consciousness purely as information, without necessarily having a positive or negative value attached to it. It is the self that interprets that raw information in the context of its own interests, and determines whether it is harmful or not. For instance, if Julio had had more money or some credit, his problem would have been perfectly innocuous. If in the past he had invested more psychic energy in making friends on the job, the flat tire would not have created panic, because he could have always asked one of his co-workers to give him a ride for a few days. And if he had had a stronger sense of self-confidence, the temporary setback would not have affected him as much because he would have trusted his ability to overcome it eventually. Similarly, if Jim had been more independent, the divorce would not have affected him as deeply. But at his age his goals must have still been bound up too closely with those of his mother and father, so that the split between them also split his sense of self. Had he had closer friends or a longer record of goals successfully achieved, his self would have had the strength to maintain its integrity. He was lucky that after the breakdown his parents realized the predicament and sought help for themselves and their son, reestablishing a stable enough relationship with Jim to allow him to go on with the task of building a sturdy self. Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral? News of the fall of the stock market will upset the banker, but it might reinforce the sense of self of the political activist. A new piece of information will either create disorder in consciousness, by getting us all worked up to face the threat, or it will reinforce our goals, thereby freeing up psychic energy. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

1412:She shifted gears as they left Worth Avenue, hurtling them along the beach at just sublight speed. “Jesus, Addison, you are so blind,” she finally exploded. “She comes in playing the damsel in distress, and you buy all of it.” “She did n—” “‘Oh, Richard, I need your help,’” she mimicked, doing a startlingly good impression of Patricia’s soft, cultured Brit—especially since the two women had barely spoken a total of five words to one another. “’I’ve left Peter, and I so badly want to make a new start, but I just don’t know how to do it on my own. You’re so big and strong and successful, can’t you see it in your heart to help me?’” Samantha canted her eyes at him. “Did it go a little like that?” Christ. “Maybe,” he hedged. “But—” “See? She wants you back.” “Well, she can’t have me. I’m taken. But she asked for my help, and I’m partially the reason she’s in this position.” “No, she put herself on her back and then you put her in the next position.” “Even so—” “You can’t resist putting on your shining armor, can you?” she said more calmly, blowing out her breath. “And if I know it, then she knows it, too.” “Honestly, Samantha, I think it’s more a matter of Patricia actually being helpless than her acting that way to gain my assistance. I doubt she could find a grocery store on her own, much less the toothpaste aisle.” “But she’s not after toothpaste.” As they stopped at a light, Richard leaned over and grabbed Samantha’s face, kissing her hard on her surprised mouth. “Don’t worry about this. You won’t have to deal with her.” “Maybe not, but you will. And keep in mind that she’s got a subscriber website where she gives advice about how not to get screwed in a divorce.” “She does?” “Yes. Interesting stuff. You really need to spend more time surfing the ’net.” “Shit.” Before Samantha could follow up her smug look with more commentary, he took a breath. “I’ll make dumping the website a condition of my helping her.” “Great. She won’t need the site, anyway, because she’ll be busy screwing you over in person, instead.” “No one screws me over, Samantha. Ever.” “Yet, smart guy. Yet. ~ Suzanne Enoch,

1413:Have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it? That night he had answered no. Tonight he would have said yes. Among other things, he wanted to know where she was; a month ago he’d told himself it was because he wanted the divorce petition served. Tonight he was too exhausted from his long internal battle to bother lying to himself anymore. He wanted to know where she was because he needed to know. His grandfather claimed not to know; his uncle and Alexandra both know, but they’d both refused to tell him, and he hadn’t pressed them. Wearily, Ian leaned his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, but he wouldn’t sleep, and he knew it, even though it was three o’clock in the morning. He never slept anymore unless he’d either had a day of grueling physical activity or drunk enough brandy to knock himself out. And even when he did, he laid awake, wanting her, and knowing-because she’d told him-that she was somewhere out there, lying awake, wanting him. A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered her standing in the witness box, looking heartbreakingly young and beautiful, first trying logically to explain to everyone what had happened-and when that failed, playing the part of an incorrigible henwit. Ian chuckled, as he’d been doing whenever he thought of her that day. Only Elizabeth would have dared to take on the entire House of Lords-and when she couldn’t sway them with intelligent logic, she had changed tack and used their own stupidity and arrogance to defeat them. If he hadn’t felt so furious and betrayed that day, he’d have stood up and given her the applause she deserved! It was exactly the same tactic she’d used the night he’d been accused of cheating at cards. When she couldn’t convince Everly to withdraw from the duel because Ian was innocent, she’d turned on the hapless youth and outrageously taken him to task because he’d already engaged himself to her the next day. Despite his accusation that her performance in the House of Lords had been motivated by self-interest, he knew it hadn’t. She’d come to save him, she thought, from hanging. ~ Judith McNaught,

1414:Optimists Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person—you already feel fortunate. An optimistic attitude is largely inherited, and it is part of a general disposition for well-being, which may also include a preference for seeing the bright side of everything. If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer. A study of people who exaggerate their expected life span beyond actuarial predictions showed that they work longer hours, are more optimistic about their future income, are more likely to remarry after divorce (the classic “triumph of hope over experience”), and are more prone to bet on individual stocks. Of course, the blessings of optimism are offered only to individuals who are only mildly biased and who are able to “accentuate the positive” without losing track of reality. Optimistic individuals play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the political and military leaders—not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge. They are probably optimistic by temperament; a survey of founders of small businesses concluded that entrepreneurs are more sanguine than midlevel managers about life in general. Their experiences of success have confirmed their faith in their judgment and in their ability to control events. Their self-confidence is reinforced by the admiration of others. This reasoning leads to a hypothesis: the people who have the greatest influence on the lives of others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident, and to take more risks than they realize. ~ Daniel Kahneman,

1415:Look ahead It’s tempting to go through life looking in the rearview mirror. When you are always looking back, you become focused on what didn’t work out, on who hurt you, and on the mistakes you’ve made, such as: “If only I would have finished college.” “If only I’d spent more time with my children.” “If only I’d been raised in a better environment.” As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now. Whether it happened twenty minutes ago or twenty years ago, let go of the hurts and failures and move forward. If you keep bringing the negative baggage from yesterday into today, your future will be poisoned. You can’t change what’s happened to you. You may have had an unfair past, but you don’t have to have an unfair future. You may have had a rough start, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. Don’t let a hurtful relationship sour your life. Don’t let a bad break, a betrayal, a divorce, or a bad childhood cause you to settle for less in life. Move forward and God will pay you back. Move forward and God will vindicate you. Move forward and you’ll come into a new beginning. Nothing that’s happened to you is a surprise to God. The loss of a loved one didn’t catch God off guard. God’s plan for your life did not end just because your business didn’t make it, or a relationship failed, or you had a difficult child. Here’s the question: Will you become stuck and bitter, fall into self-pity, blame others, and let the past poison your future? Or will you shake it off and move forward, knowing your best days are still ahead? The next time you are in your car, notice that there’s a big windshield in the front and a very small rearview mirror. The reason the front windshield is so big and the rearview mirror is so small is that what’s happened in the past is not nearly as important as what is in your future. Where you’re going is a lot more important than where you’ve been. ~ Joel Osteen,

1416:to exonerate him. Given the personalities involved, Skarpellos and Lama, I would suddenly discover that Tony was playing cribbage with a dozen elderly matrons the night Ben was killed. “Suspects are your job,” I tell Nelson. “I think we’re satisfied with the defendant we have. All we need to know is who helped her. Who carried the body, used the shotgun,” he says. “It’s an offer made to fail. Even if she were willing to enter a plea to a crime she didn’t commit in order to save her life, she can’t fulfill the terms.” He looks at me, like “Nice story, but it won’t wash.” Lama kicks in. “Have you heard,” he says, “we got a photo ID party goin’ down at the office? Seems the lady was a creature of habit. Ended up at the same place every night. A motel clerk from hell says she brought her entire stable of studs to his front door. We got him lookin’ at pictures of all her friends. Only a matter of time. Then the deal’s off.” Harry meets this with some logic. “To listen to you, our client already had all the freedom she could ask for. Lovers on every corner, and a cozy home to come home to when she got tired,” says Harry. “Why would she want to kill the meal ticket?” “Seems the victim was getting a little tired of her indiscretions. He was considering a divorce,” says Nelson. “You have read the prenuptial agreement? A divorce, and it was back to work for your client.” Harry and I look at one another. “Who told you Ben was considering a divorce?” I ask. “We have a witness,” says Nelson. He is not the kind to gloat over bad news delivered to an adversary. “You haven’t disclosed him to us.” “True,” he says. “We discovered him after the prelim. We’re still checking it out. When we have everything we’ll pass it along. But I will tell you, it sounds like gospel.” Lama’s expression is Cheshire cat-like, beaming from the corner of the couch. I sense that this is his doing. “I think you should talk to your client. I’m sure she’ll see reason,” says Nelson. “If you move, I think I can convince the judge to go along with the deal.” “I’ll have to talk to her,” I tell him, “but I can’t hold out much hope.” “Talk,” he says. “But let me know your answer soon. If we’re going to trial, I intend to ask for an early date. ~ Steve Martini,

1417:You should focus on what you can change, not what you cannot change. What’s done is done. If somebody offended you, mistreated you, or disappointed you, the hurts can’t be undone. You can get bitter--pack it in a bag and carry it around and let it weigh you down--or you can forgive those who hurt you and go on. If you lost your temper yesterday, you can beat yourself up--put the guilt and condemnation in a bag--or you can ask for forgiveness, receive God’s mercy, and do better today. If you didn’t get a promotion you wanted, you can get sour and go around with a chip on your shoulder, or you can shake it off, knowing that God has something better in store. No matter what happens, big or small, if you make the choice to let it go and move forward, you won’t let the past poison your future. A woman I know went through a divorce years ago. We prayed several times in our services, asking God to bring a good man into her life. One day she met a fine Godly man, who was very successful. She was so happy, but she made the mistake of carrying all her negative baggage from her divorce into the new relationship. She was constantly talking about what she had been through and how she was so mistreated. She had a victim mentality. The man told me later that she was so focused on her past and so caught up in what she had been through that he just couldn’t deal with it. He moved on. That’s what happens when we hold on to the hurts and pains of the past. It will poison you wherever you go. You can’t drag around all the personal baggage from yesterday and expect to have good relationships. You’ve got to let it go. Quit looking at the little rearview mirror and start looking out the great big windshield in front of you. You may have had some bad breaks, but that didn’t stop God’s plan for your life. He still has amazing things in your future. When one door closes, stay in faith and God will open another door. If a dream dies, don’t sit around in self-pity talking about what you lost, move forward and dream another dream. Your life is not over because you lost a loved one, went through a divorce, lost a job, or didn’t get the house you wanted. You would not be alive unless God had another victory in front of you. ~ Joel Osteen,

1418:She is the one who will notice that the first snapdragon of Spring is in bloom; She is the one who will tell the most funny complicated joke. She is the one who will surprise you by knowing the difference between turnips and collard Greens; & between biscuits & scones. She is the one who knows where to take you for dancing or where the food & the restaurant’s decor are not to be missed. She is the one who is saintly. She is the one who reserves the right 30 to dress like a slut. She is the one who takes you shopping; She is the one who knows where the best clothes are bought cheap. She is the one who warms your home with her fragrance; the one who brings music, magic & joy. She is the one speaking the truth from her heart. She is the one at the bedside wedding, funerals or divorce of all the best people you dearly love. She is the one with courage. She is the one who speaks her bright mind; She is the one who encourages young & old to do the same. 31 She is the one on the picket line, at the barricade, at the prison, in jail; She is the one who is there. If they come for me & I am at her house I know she will hide me. If I tell her where I have hidden my heart she will keep my secret safe. She is the one who without hesitation comes to my aid & my defense. She is the one who believes my side of the story First; She is the one whose heart is open. She is the one who loves. She is the one who makes activism the most compelling because she is the one who is irresistable 32 her own self. She is our sister, our teacher, our friend: Gloria Steinem. Born 75 years ago Glorious To your parents & still Radiant Today. Happy Birthday, Beloved. The grand feast Of your noble Spirit Has been & is the cake that nourishes Us. We thank you for your Beauty & your Being. Namaste. ~ Alice Walker,

1419:She pulled the shawl closer as a tall, lithe figure cut across the parking lot and joined her at the passenger door. “You’re already famous,” Colby Lane told her, his dark eyes twinkling in his lean, scarred face. “You’ll see yourself on the evening news, if you live long enough to watch it.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Tate’s on his way right now.” “Unlock this thing and get me out of here!” she squeaked. He chuckled. “Coward.” He unlocked the door and let her climb in. By the time he got behind the wheel and took off, Tate was striding across the parking lot with blood in his eye. Cecily blew him a kiss as Colby gunned the engine down the busy street. “You’re living dangerously tonight,” Colby told her. “He knows where you live,” he added. “He should. He paid for the apartment,” she added in a sharp, hurt tone. She wrapped her arms closer around her. “I don’t want to go home, Colby. Can I stay with you tonight?” She knew, as few other people did, that Colby Lane was still passionately in love with his ex-wife, Maureen. He had nothing to do with other women even two years after his divorce was final. He drank to excess from time to time, but he wasn’t dangerous. Cecily trusted no one more. He’d been a good friend to her, as well as to Tate, over the years. “He won’t like it,” he said. She let out a long breath. “What does it matter now?” she asked wearily. “I’ve burned my bridges.” “I don’t know why that socialite Audrey had to tell you,” he muttered irritably. “It was none of her business.” “Maybe she wants a big diamond engagement ring, and Tate can’t afford it because he’s keeping me,” she said bitterly. He glanced at her rigid profile. “He won’t marry her.” She made a sound deep in her throat. “Why not? She’s got everything…money, power, position and beauty-and a degree from Vassar.” “In psychology,” Colby mused. “She’s been going around with Tate for several months.” “He goes around with a lot of women. He won’t marry any of them.” “Well, he certainly won’t marry me,” she assured him. “I’m white.” “More of a nice, soft tan,” he told her. “You can marry me. I’ll take care of you.” She made a face at him. “You’d call me Maureen in your sleep and I’d lay your head open with the lamp. It would never work. ~ Diana Palmer,

1420:Outside of your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have is with yourself. I don’t mean that we are to spend all our time focused on me, me, me to the exclusion of others. Instead, I mean that we must be healthy internally—emotionally and spiritually—in order to create healthy relationships with others. Motivational pep talks and techniques for achieving success are useless if a person is weighed down by guilt, shame, depression, rejection, bitterness, or crushed self-esteem. Countless marriages land on the rocks of divorce because unhealthy people marry thinking that marriage, or their spouse, will make them whole. Wrong. If you’re not a healthy single person you won’t be a healthy married person. Part of God’s purpose for every human life is wholeness and health. I love the words of Jesus in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” God knows we are the walking wounded in this world and He wants the opportunity to remove everything that limits us and heal every wound from which we suffer. Some wonder why God doesn’t just “fix” us automatically so we can get on with life. It’s because He wants our wounds to be our tutors to lead us to Him. Pain is a wonderful motivator and teacher! When the great Russian intellectual Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was released from the horrible Siberian work camp to which he was sent by Joseph Stalin, he said, “Thank you, prison!” It was the pain and suffering he endured that caused his eyes to be opened to the reality of the God of his childhood, to embrace his God anew in a personal way. When we are able to say thank you to the pain we have endured, we know we are ready to fulfill our purpose in life. When we resist the pain life brings us, all of our energy goes into resistance and we have none left for the pursuit of our purpose. It is the better part of wisdom to let pain do its work and shape us as it will. We will be wiser, deeper, and more productive in the long run. There is a great promise in the New Testament that says God comes to us to comfort us so we can turn around and comfort those who are hurting with the comfort we have received from Him (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Make yourself available to God and to those who suffer. A large part of our own healing comes when we reach out with compassion to others. ~ Zig Ziglar,

1421:To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: HAPPY CHRISTMAS Have you gotten used to the time difference? Bloody hell,I can't sleep. I'd call,but I don't know if you're awake or doing the family thing or what. The bay fog is so thick that I can't see out my window.But if I could, I am quite certain I'd discover that I'm the only person alive in San Francisco. To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: I forgot to tell you. Yesterday I saw a guy wearing an Atlanta Film Festival shirt at the hospital.I asked if he knew you,but he didn't.I also met an enormous,hair man in a cheeky Mrs. Claus getup. he was handing out gifts to the cancer patients.Mum took the attached picture. Do I always look so startled? To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Are you awake yet? Wake up.Wake up wake up wake up. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: re: Are you awake yet? I'm awake! Seany started jumping on my bed,like,three hours ago. We've been opening presents and eating sugar cookies for breakfast. Dad gave me a gold ring shaped like a heart. "For Daddy's sweetheart," he said. As if I'm the type of girl who'd wear a heart-shaped ring. FROM HER FATHER. He gave Seany tons of Star Wars stuff and a rock polishing kit,and I'd much rather have those.I can't beleive Mom invited him here for Christmas. She says it's because their divorce is amicable (um,no) and Seany and I need a father figure in our lives,but all they ever do is fight.This morning it was about my hair.Dad wants me to dye it back, because he thinks I look like a "common prostitute," and Mom wants to re-bleach it.Like either of them has a say. Oops,gotta run.My grandparents just arrived,and Granddad is bellowing for his bonnie lass.That would be me. P.S. Love the picture.Mrs. Claus is totally checking out your butt. And it's Merry Christmas, weirdo. To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: HAHAHA@ Was it a PROMISE RING? Did your father give you a PROMISE RING? To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: Re: HAHAHA! I am so not responding to that. ~ Stephanie Perkins,

1422:Leaning back in his chair, Ian listened to Larimore’s irate summation of the wild and fruitless chase he’d been sent on for two days by Lady Thornton and her butler: “And after all that,” Larimore flung out in high dudgeon, “I returned to the house on Promenade Street to demand the butler allow me past the stoop, only to have the man-“ “Slam the door in your face?” Ian suggested dispassionately. “No, my lord, he invited me in,” Larimore bit out. “He invited me to search the house to my complete satisfaction. She’s left London,” Larimore finished, avoiding his employer’s narrowed gaze. “She’ll go to Havenhurst,” Ian said decisively, and he gave Larimore directions to find the small estate. When Larimore left, Ian picked up a contract he needed to read and approve; but before he’d read two lines Jordan stalked into his study unannounced, carrying a newspaper and wearing an expression Ian hadn’t seen before. “Have you seen the paper today?” Ian ignored the paper and studied his friend’s angry face instead. “No, why?” “Read it,” Jordan said, slapping it down on the desk. “Elizabeth allowed herself to be questioned by a reporter from the Times. Read that.” He jabbed his finger at a few lines near the bottom of the article about Elizabeth by one Mr. Thomas Tyson. “That was your wife’s response when Tyson asked her how she felt when she saw you on trial before your peers.” Frowning at Jordan’s tone, Ian read Elizabeth’s reply: My husband was not tried before his peers. He was merely tried before the Lords of the British Realm. Ian Thornton has no peers. Ian tore his gaze from the article, refusing to react to the incredible sweetness of her response, but Jordan would not let it go. “My compliments to you, Ian,” he said angrily. “You serve your wife with a divorce petition, and she responds by giving you what constitutes a public apology!” He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Ian behind to stare with clenched jaw at the article. One month later Elizabeth had still not been found. Ian continued trying to purge her from his mind and tear her from his heart, but with decreasing success. He knew he was losing ground in the battle, just as he had been slowly losing it from the moment he’d looked up and seen her walking into the House of Lords. ~ Judith McNaught,

1423:Marriage is a paradox second only to life itself. That at the age of twenty or so, with little knowledge of each other and a dangerous overdose of self-confidence, two human beings should undertake to commit themselves for life – and that church and state should receive their vows with a straight face – all this is absurd indeed. And it is tolerable only if it is reveled in as such. A pox on all the neat little explanations as to why it is reasonable that two teenagers should be bound to each other until death. It is not reasonable. It happens to be true to life, but it remains absurd. Down with the books that moralize reasonably on the subject of why divorce is wrong. Divorce is not a wrong; it is a metaphysical impossibility. It is an attempt to do something about life rather than with it - to work out the square root of –I rather than to use it. Up with the absurdity of marriage then. Let the peasant rejoice. He is a very odd ball on a very odd pool table, and his marriage is one of the few things left to him that will roll properly in this game. And up with the marriage service. Let the peasant go back and read it while he rejoices - preferably in the old unbowdlerized version still used by the Church of England. It is full of death and cast iron. And it is one of the great remaining sanity markers. The world is going mad because it has too many reasonable options, and not enough interest or nerve to choose anything for good. In such a world, the marriage service is not reasonable, but it is sane; which is quite another matter. The lunatic lives in a world of reason, and he goes mad without making sense; it is precisely paradox that keeps the rest of us sane. To be born, to love a woman, to cry at music, to catch a cold, to die – these are not excursions on the narrow road of logic; they are blind launchings on a trackless sea. They are not bargains, they are commitments, and for ordinary people, marriage is the very keel of their commitment, the largest piece of ballast in their small and storm-tossed boat. Its unqualified hurling of two people into their deathbead is absurd, but so is the rest of that welter of unqualified hurlings we call life. You cannot contract out of being born, out of crying, out of loving, out of dying; you cannot contract out of marriage. It may be uncomfortable, it certainly is absurd; but it is not abnormal. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,

1424:I need to check your vitals, hon,” she explained. It had been several hours since I’d given birth. I guess this was the routine. She felt my pulse, palpated my legs, asked if I had pain anywhere, and lightly pressed on my abdomen, the whole while making sure I wasn’t showing signs of a blockage or a blood clot, a fever or a hemorrhage. I stared dreamily at Marlboro Man, who gave me a wink or two. I hoped he would, in time, be able to see past the vomit. The nurse then began a battery of questions. “So, no pain?” “Nope. I feel fine now.” “No chills?” “Not at all.” “Have you been able to pass gas in the past few hours?” *Insert awkward ten-second pause* I couldn’t have heard her right. “What?” I asked, staring at her. “Have you been able to pass gas lightly?” *Another awkward pause* What kind of question is this? “Wait…,” I asked. “What?” “Sweetie, have you been able to pass gas today?” I stared at her blankly. “I don’t…” “…Pass gas? You? Today?” She was unrelenting. I continued my blank, desperate stare, completely incapable of registering her question. Throughout the entire course of my pregnancy, I’d gone to great lengths to maintain a certain level of glamour and vanity. Even during labor, I’d attempted to remain the ever-fresh and vibrant new wife, going so far as to reapply tinted lip balm before the epidural so I wouldn’t look pale. I’d also restrained myself during the pushing stage, afraid I’d lose control of my bowels, which would have been the kiss of death upon my pride and my marriage; I would have had to just divorce my husband and start fresh with someone else. I had never once so much as passed gas in front of Marlboro Man. As far as he was concerned, my body lacked this function altogether. So why was I being forced to answer these questions now? I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I’m sorry…,” I stammered. “I don’t understand the question…” The nurse began again, seemingly unconcerned with my lack of comprehension skills. “Have you…” Marlboro Man, lovingly holding our baby and patiently listening all this time from across the room, couldn’t take it anymore. “Honey! She wants to know if you’ve been able to fart today!” The nurse giggled. “Okay, well maybe that’s a little more clear.” I pulled the covers over my head. I was not having this discussion. ~ Ree Drummond,

1425:Women are inherently crooked? Certainly some Muslim clerics think so—or at least, they do not believe in legal equality for women. Bangladeshi Islamic cleric Mufti Fazlul Haq Amini read the same Koran that Tony Blair found so progressive and yet complained about attempts in his native country to establish equal property rights for women. The problem? That would be “directly against Islam and the holy Koran.”7 And where do Muslims get such ideas? They stem from the overall inferior status of women promulgated in the Koran, which specifically refutes the notion that women have as much basic human dignity as men. To the contrary, Allah says men are superior. When giving regulations for divorce, Allah stipulates that women “have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness.” Similar, but not identical, for “men are a degree above them” (2:228). Far from mandating equality, the Koran portrays women as essentially possessions of men. The Koran likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223). And in a tradition Muhammad details the qualities of a good wife, including that “she obeys when instructed” and “the husband is pleased to look at her.”8 The Koran decrees women’s subordination to men in numerous other verses:            •    It declares that a woman’s legal testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).            •    It allows men to marry up to four wives, and also to have sex with slave girls: “If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).            •    It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: “Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4:11).            •    It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4). ~ Robert Spencer,

1426:The people we find truly anathema are the ones who reduce the past to caricature and distort it to fit their own bigoted stereotypes. We’ve gone to events that claimed to be historic fashion shows but turned out to be gaudy polyester parades with no shadow of reality behind them. As we heard our ancestors mocked and bigoted stereotypes presented as facts, we felt like we had gone to an event advertised as an NAACP convention only to discover it was actually a minstrel show featuring actors in blackface. Some so-called “living history” events really are that bigoted. When we object to history being degraded this way, the guilty parties shout that they are “just having fun.” What they are really doing is attacking a past that cannot defend itself. Perhaps they are having fun, but it is the sort of fun a schoolyard brute has at the expense of a child who goes home bruised and weeping. It’s time someone stood up for the past. I have always hated bullies. The instinct to attack difference can be seen in every social species, but if humans truly desire to rise above barbarism, then we must cease acting like beasts. The human race may have been born in mud and ignorance, but we are blessed with minds sufficiently powerful to shape our behavior. Personal choices form the lives of individuals; the sum of all interactions determine the nature of societies. At present, it is politically fashionable in America to tolerate limited diversity based around race, religion, and sexual orientation, yet following a trend does not equate with being truly open-minded. There are people who proudly proclaim they support women’s rights, yet have an appallingly limited definition of what those rights entail. (Currently, fashionable privileges are voting, working outside the home, and easy divorce; some people would be dumbfounded at the idea that creating beautiful things, working inside the home, and marriage are equally desirable rights for many women.) In the eighteenth century, Voltaire declared, “I disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”3 Many modern Americans seem to have perverted this to, “I will fight to the death for your right to agree with what I say.” When we stand up for history, we are in our way standing up for all true diversity. When we question stereotypes and fight ignorance about the past, we force people to question ignorance in general. ~ Sarah A Chrisman,

1427:to look around. At first sight, the apartment was perfectly ordinary. He made a quick circuit of the living room, kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom. The place was tidy enough, but with a few items strewn here and there, the sort of things that might be left lying around by a busy person—a magazine, a half-finished crossword puzzle, a book left open on a night table. Abby had the usual appliances—an old stove and a humming refrigerator, a microwave oven with an unpronounceable brand name, a thirteen-inch TV on a cheap stand, a boom box near a modest collection of CDs. There were clothes in her bedroom closet and silverware, plates, and pots and pans in her kitchen cabinets. He began to wonder if he’d been unduly suspicious. Maybe Abby Hollister was who she said she was, after all. And he’d taken a considerable risk coming here. If he was caught inside her apartment, all his plans for the evening would be scotched. He would end up in a holding cell facing charges that would send him back to prison for parole violation. All because he’d gotten a bug up his ass about some woman he hardly knew, a stranger who didn’t mean anything. He decided he’d better get the hell out. He was retracing his steps through the living room when he glanced at the magazine tossed on the sofa. Something about it seemed wrong. He moved closer and took a better look. It was People, and the cover showed two celebrities whose recent marriage had already ended in divorce. But on the cover the stars were smiling over a caption that read, Love At Last. He picked up the magazine and studied it in the trickle of light through the filmy curtains. The date was September of last year. He put it down and looked at the end tables flanking the sofa. For the first time he noticed a patina of dust on their surfaces. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned in some time. He went into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. It seemed well stocked, but when he opened the carton of milk and sniffed, he discovered water inside—which was just as well, since the milk’s expiration period had ended around the time that the People cover story had been new. Water in the milk carton. Out-of-date magazine on the sofa. Dust everywhere, even coating the kitchen counters. Abby didn’t live here. Nobody did. This apartment was a sham, a shell. It was a dummy address, like the dummy corporations his partner had set up when establishing the overseas bank accounts. It could pass inspection if somebody came to visit, assuming the visitor didn’t look too closely, but it wasn’t meant to be used. Now that he thought about it, the apartment was remarkable for what ~ Michael Prescott,

1428:I know I said this before, but it bears repeating. You know Tate won’t like you staying with me.” “I don’t care,” she said bitterly. “I don’t tell him where to sleep. It’s none of his business what I do anymore.” He made a rough sound. “Would you like to guess what he’s going to assume if you stay the night in my apartment?” She drew in a long breath. “Okay. I don’t want to cause problems between you, not after all the years you’ve been friends. Take me to a hotel instead.” He hesitated uncharacteristically. “I can take the heat, if you can.” “I don’t know that I can. I’ve got enough turmoil in my life right now. Besides, he’ll look for me at your place. I don’t want to be found for a couple of days, until I can get used to my new situation and make some decisions about my future. I want to see Senator Holden and find another apartment. I can do all that from a hotel.” “Suit yourself.” “Make it a moderately priced one,” she added with graveyard humor. “I’m no longer a woman of means. From now on, I’m going to have to be responsible for my own bills.” “You should have poured the soup in the right lap,” he murmured. “Which was?” “Audrey Gannon’s,” he said curtly. “She had no right to tell you that Tate was your benefactor. She did it for pure spite, to drive a wedge between you and Tate. She’s nothing but trouble. One day Tate is going to be sorry that he ever met her.” “She’s lasted longer than the others.” “You haven’t spent enough time talking to her to know what she’ s like. I have,” he added darkly. “She has enemies, among them an ex-husband who’s living in a duplex because she got his house, his Mercedes, and his Swiss bank account in the divorce settlement.” “So that’s where all those pretty diamonds came from,” she said wickedly. “Her parents had money, too, but they spent most of it before they died in a plane crash. She likes unusual men, they say, and Tate’s unusual.” “She won’t go to the reservation to see Leta,” she commented. “Of course not.” He leaned toward her as he stopped at a traffic light. “It’s a Native American reservation!” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Leta’s worth two of Audrey.” “Three,” he returned. “Okay. I’ll find you a hotel. Then I’m leaving town before Tate comes looking for me!” “You might hang a crab on your front door,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. “It just might ward him off.” “Ha!” She turned her eyes toward the bright lights of the city. She felt cold and alone and a little frightened. But everything would work out. She knew it would. She was a grown woman and she could take care of herself. This was her chance to prove it. ~ Diana Palmer,

1429:With a raw ache in his voice he said, “If you would take one step forward, darling, you could cry in my arms. And while you do, I’ll tell you how sorry I am for everything I’ve done-“ Unable to wait, Ian caught her, pulling her tightly against him. “And when I’m finished,” he whispered hoarsely as she wrapped her arms around him and wept brokenly, “you can help me find a way to forgive myself.” Tortured by her tears, he clasped her tighter and rubbed his jaw against her temple, his voice a ravaged whisper: “I’m sorry,” he told her. He cupped her face between his palms, tipping it up and gazing into her eyes, his thumbs moving over her wet cheeks. “I’m sorry.” Slowly, he bent his head, covering her mouth with his. “I’m so damned sorry.” She kissed him back, holding him fiercely to her while shattered sobs racked her slender body and tears poured from her eyes. Tormented by her anguish, Ian dragged his mouth from hers, kissing her wet cheeks, running his hands over her shaking back and shoulders, trying to comfort her. “Please darling, don’t cry anymore,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Please don’t.” She held him tighter, weeping, her cheek pressed to his chest, her tears soaking his heavy woolen shirt and tearing at his heart. “Don’t,” Ian whispered, his voice raw with his own unshed tears. “You’re tearing me apart.” An instant after he said those words, he realized that she’d stop crying to keep from hurting him, and he felt her shudder, trying valiantly to get control. He cupped the back of her head, crumpling the silk of her hair, holding her face pressed to his chest, imagining the nights he’d made her weep like this, despising himself with a virulence that was almost past bearing. He’d driven her here, to hide from the vengeance of his divorce petition, and still she had been waiting for him. In all the endless weeks since she’d confronted him in his study and warned him she wouldn’t let him put her out of his life, Ian had never imagined that she would be hurting like this. She was twenty years old and she had loved him. In return, he had tried to divorce her, publicly scorned her, privately humiliated her, and then he had driven her here to weep in solitude and wait for him. Self-loathing and shame poured through him like hot acid, almost doubling him over. Humbly, he whispered, “Will you come upstairs with me?” She nodded, her cheek rubbing his chest, and he swung her into his arms, cradling her tenderly against him, brushing his lips against her forehead. He carried her upstairs, intending to take her to bed and give her so much pleasure that-at least for tonight-she’d be able to forget the misery he’d caused her. ~ Judith McNaught,

1430:The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete... Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent. Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind. ~ Bob Moorehead,

1431:The problem is, it's just not enough to live according to the rules. Sure, you manage to live according to the rules. Sometimes it's tight, extremely tight, but on the whole you manage it. Your tax papers are up to date. Your bills paid on time. You never go out without your identity card (and the special little wallet for your Visa!). Yet you haven’t any friends. The rules are complex, multiform. There’s the shopping that needs doing out of working hours, the automatic dispensers where money has to be got (and where you so often have to wait). Above all there are the different payments you must make to the organizations that run different aspects of your life. You can fall ill into the bargain, which involves costs, and more formalities. Nevertheless, some free time remains. What’s to be done? How do you use your time? In dedicating yourself to helping people? But basically other people don’t interest you. Listening to records? That used to be a solution, but as the years go by you have to say that music moves you less and less. Taken in its widest sense, a spot of do-it-yourself can be a way out. But the fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments when your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end all combine to plunge you into a state of real suffering. And yet you haven’t always wanted to die. You have had a life. There have been moments when you were having a life. Of course you don't remember too much about it; but there are photographs to prove it. This was probably happening round about the time of your adolescence, or just after. How great your appetite for life was, then! Existence seemed so rich in new possibilities. You might become a pop singer, go off to Venezuela. More surprising still, you have had a childhood. Observe, now, a child of seven, playing with his little soldiers on the living room carpet. I want you to observe him closely. Since the divorce he no longer has a father. Only rarely does he see his mother, who occupies an important post in a cosmetics firm. And yet he plays with his little soldiers and the interest he takes in these representations of the world and of war seems very keen. He already lacks a bit of affection, that's for sure, but what an air he has of being interested in the world! You too, you took an interest in the world. That was long ago. I want you to cast your mind back to then. The domain of the rules was no longer enough for you; you were unable to live any longer in the domain of the rules; so you had to enter into the domain of the struggle. I ask you to go back to that precise moment. It was long ago, no? Cast your mind back: the water was cold. ~ Michel Houellebecq,

1432:The traditional Roman wedding was a splendid affair designed to dramatize the bride’s transfer from the protection of her father’s household gods to those of her husband. Originally, this literally meant that she passed from the authority of her father to her husband, but at the end of the Republic women achieved a greater degree of independence, and the bride remained formally in the care of a guardian from her blood family. In the event of financial and other disagreements, this meant that her interests were more easily protected. Divorce was easy, frequent and often consensual, although husbands were obliged to repay their wives’ dowries. The bride was dressed at home in a white tunic, gathered by a special belt which her husband would later have to untie. Over this she wore a flame-colored veil. Her hair was carefully dressed with pads of artificial hair into six tufts and held together by ribbons. The groom went to her father’s house and, taking her right hand in his, confirmed his vow of fidelity. An animal (usually a ewe or a pig) was sacrificed in the atrium or a nearby shrine and an Augur was appointed to examine the entrails and declare the auspices favorable. The couple exchanged vows after this and the marriage was complete. A wedding banquet, attended by the two families, concluded with a ritual attempt to drag the bride from her mother’s arms in a pretended abduction. A procession was then formed which led the bride to her husband’s house, holding the symbols of housewifely duty, a spindle and distaff. She took the hand of a child whose parents were living, while another child, waving a hawthorn torch, walked in front to clear the way. All those in the procession laughed and made obscene jokes at the happy couple’s expense. When the bride arrived at her new home, she smeared the front door with oil and lard and decorated it with strands of wool. Her husband, who had already arrived, was waiting inside and asked for her praenomen or first name. Because Roman women did not have one and were called only by their family name, she replied in a set phrase: “Wherever you are Caius, I will be Caia.” She was then lifted over the threshold. The husband undid the girdle of his wife’s tunic, at which point the guests discreetly withdrew. On the following morning she dressed in the traditional costume of married women and made a sacrifice to her new household gods. By the late Republic this complicated ritual had lost its appeal for sophisticated Romans and could be replaced by a much simpler ceremony, much as today many people marry in a registry office. The man asked the woman if she wished to become the mistress of a household (materfamilias), to which she answered yes. In turn, she asked him if he wished to become paterfamilias, and on his saying he did the couple became husband and wife. ~ Anthony Everitt,

1433:RICHARD FEYNMAN LETTER TO ARLINE FEYNMAN, 1946 Richard Feynman (1918–1988) shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics. Unrivaled in his generation for his brilliance and innovation, he was also known for being witty, warm, and unconventional. Those last three qualities were particularly evident in this letter, which he wrote to his wife Arline nearly two years after her death from tuberculosis. Feynman and Arline had been high school sweethearts and married in their twenties. Feynman’s second marriage, in 1952, ended in divorce two years later. His third marriage, in 1960, lasted until his death. D’Arline, I adore you, sweetheart. I know how much you like to hear that—but I don’t only write it because you like it—I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you. It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you—almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; & I thought there was no sense to writing. But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you. I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead—but I still want to comfort and take care of you—and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you—I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that together. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together—or learn Chinese—or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now. No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures. When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to & thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true—you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else—but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive. I know you will assure me that I am foolish & that you want me to have full happiness & don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girl friend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I—I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls & very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone—but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real. My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. Rich. P.S. Please excuse my not mailing this—but I don’t know your new address. ~ Lisa Grunwald,

1434:When We Need to Remember the Purpose of Family Did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. MALACHI 2:15 THE PURPOSE OF A FAMILY—a husband, wife, and children—is to glorify God. For those of you who do not have children, for whatever reason, I am not mentioning this to make you feel bad or self-conscious about that. Paul did not have children or a wife because God had another plan for him. Perhaps He has another plan for you. He used Paul in a powerful way that would not have been possible if he was a husband and a father. He is surely using you in that same way. If you have peace about not having children, then God has something else for you to do. If you don’t have peace, then ask God to either give you a child or else give you the peace you need about not having a child. He will do that. With that said, the simple truth about the purpose of marriage is to have “godly offspring” who will grow up to glorify Him. The message in this section of Scripture is that the husband is not to “deal treacherously” with his wife and treat her badly, because the Lord sees all that goes on in your marriage (Malachi 2:13-14). He knows how your husband treats you, as well as how you treat him. But God lays the responsibility right in the husband’s lap. He expects the husband to honor the covenant of marriage by treating his wife well. You both made a covenant before God when you married, and now you are one in His sight. And it is your husband’s responsibility to love you as he loves himself because you are part of him and he is part of you. When he does that, you can glorify God by having godly children—or raising up spiritual children—and not ending up in divorce court. Family is a great calling and a high purpose, and God wants you both to never forget it. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would help both my husband and me to remember that the purpose of our marriage, and any children we may have, is to glorify You. I know we are one in Your sight, but help us to truly become one in our hearts toward each other. Help us not to live in separate worlds, but to grow closer together with each passing year. Where we have already grown apart, I pray You would stop that drift between us and reverse our course so we are headed in the same direction. Teach us how to glorify You in the way we treat each other and in the way we raise our children—or raise up spiritual children—to follow You. Help us to “take heed” to our spirit so that we are always controlled by Your Spirit and no other. Even though I know that the purpose of our marriage and our family is always to glorify You, I know we cannot do that without Your help. Enable each of us to rise above our own selfishness and put renewed desire in our hearts to serve You only. In Jesus’ name I pray. ~ Stormie Omartian,

1435:Sustain 1. My love plays piano and his foot hovers above the pedal. Sustain, they call it when the note floats like a basketball player suspended in air, or a question whose purpose is to remain unanswered. Theres only this low keening urgency, the sound of mourning doves, drone and descant, murmur and coo. I am learning to rest inside the word enough its rough leathery consonants, its f of finitude. 2. To bear up under pain, or the memory of pain repeating itself, like scales, as if we were practicing to never do again what of course we will do again 3. I love you the way language loves the tongue, the way a sentence loves its verb, and parentheses love whatever they enclose. I love you the way notes love the fingers that play them, the way the ear loves sound as well as the silence that comes after. I love you the way a bridge loves land, anchoring itself to the river banks so it can arch over waters too rough to swim. I love you the way an apple loves the teeth that bite it, and a worm loves the earth it turns. 4. After divorce we sustained heavy losses, multiple injuries, head wounds, trauma, shock. But you cant sustain shock. 12 You have to let it go, or move on into deeper waters. 5. Give us this day our stone-ground wholegrain toast with organic butter, our fair trade coffee, our soy creamer, our free-range eggs, our morning paper with its dismaying headlines, our kissing and teasing in the kitchen. Let it all go on, just another day, or week, or ten or twenty years. Barely enough time to slip through this life like a fish through a hole in the net, or a string of pearls through nimble fingers, a lone saxophone note draped around the silken neck of night. 6. When I was young I worshipped the spark of the ignition, turn of the key in the lock, open door, blank page, lost maps, deserted freeways, and myself. Me, with my thumb stuck out, going for broke, coast to coast, on shredded brakes. Later, after the fire had burned through and taken with it my most cherished obstacles, I learned to live in a field of ash, holding sorrow when there was nothing else to hold onto. 7. I dont know this woman with the clean kitchen, the watered garden, curly-leafed kale and immortal chard growing around her house. I dont know how she keeps it going, sustains this note weve put our weight on, or how the trees keep on standing there with all the trouble theyve seen, breathing in poison, giving out oxygen. 13 I want to be like them, though I am only a flesh apple of hope and doubt. I want your hand in mine, as the old world ends and something else is born every moment, singing loves praises just a little while longer. ~ Alison Luterman,

1436:You see,” she explained slowly, “I anticipated that you might send me away until you got over your anger, or that you’d live with me and retaliate in private-things that an ordinary man might do. But I never imagined you would try to put a permanent end to our marriage. And to me. I should have anticipated that, knowing what Duncan had told me about you, but I was counting too much on the fact that, before I ran away, you’d said you loved me-“ “You know damned well I did. And I do. For God’s sake, if you don’t believe anything else I’ve ever said to you, at least believe that.” He expected her to argue, but she didn’t, and Ian realized that she might be young, and inexperienced, but she was also very wise. “I know you did,” she told him, softly. “If you hadn’t loved me so deeply, I could never have hurt you as much as I did-and you wouldn’t have needed to put an end to the possibility I could ever do it again. I realized that was what you were doing, when I stood in your study and you told me you were divorcing me. If I hadn’t understood it, and you, I could never have kept fighting for you all this time.” “I won’t argue with your conclusion, but I will swear to you not to ever do anything like that again to you.” “Thank you. I don’t think I could bear it another time.” “Could you enlighten me as to what Duncan told you to make you arrive at all that?” Her smile was filled with tenderness and understanding. “He told me what you did when you returned home and discovered your family had died.” “What did I do?” “You severed yourself from the only other thing you loved-a black Labrador named Shadow. You did it so that you couldn’t be hurt anymore-at least not by anything over which you had control. You did essentially the same thing, although far more drastically, when you tried to divorce me.” “In your place,” Ian said, his voice rough with emotion as he laid his hand against her cheek, “I think I’d hate me.” His wife turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm. “Do you know,” she said with a teary smile, “how it feels to know I am loved so much…” She shook her head as if trying to find a better way to explain, and began again, her voice shaking with love. “Do you know what I notice whenever we are out in company?” Unable to restrain himself, Ian pulled her into his arms, holding her against his heart. “No,” he whispered, “what do you notice?” “I notice the way other men treat their wives, the way they look at them, or speak to them. And do you know what?” “What?” “I am the only wife,” she whispered achingly, “with the exception of Alex, whose husband adores her and doesn’t care if the whole world knows it. And I absolutely know,” she added with a soft smile, “that I am the only wife whose husband has ever tried to seduce her in front of the Hospital Fund Raising Committee.” His arms tightened around her, and with a groaning laugh, Ian tried, very successfully, to seduce his wife on the sofa. ~ Judith McNaught,

1437:Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes" here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of us-- excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that "all of us." As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write more from "Underground." [The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here.] ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

1438:Kemmer is not always played by pairs. Pairing seems to be the commonest custom, but in the kemmerhouses of towns and cities, groups may form and intercourse take place promiscuously among the males and females of the group. The furthest extreme from this practice is the custom of vowing kemmering (Karh. oskyommer), which is to all intents and purposes monogamous marriage. It has no legal status, but socially and ethically is an ancient and vigorous institution. The whole structure of the Karhidish Clan-Hearths and Domains is indubitably based upon the institution of monogamous marriage. I am not sure of divorce rules in general; here in Osnoriner there is divorce, but no remarriage after either divorce or the partner’s death: one can only vow kemmering once. Descent of course is reckoned, all over Gethen, from the mother, the “parent in the flesh” (Karh. amha). Incest is permitted, with various restrictions, between siblings, even the full siblings of a vowed-kemmering pair. Siblings are not however allowed to vow kemmering, nor keep kemmering after the birth of a child to one of the pair. Incest between generations is strictly forbidden (In Karhide/Orgoreyn; but is said to be permitted among the tribesmen of Perunter, the Antarctic Continent. This may be slander.). What else have I learned for certain? That seems to sum it up. There is one feature of this anomalous arrangement that might have adaptive value. Since coitus takes place only during the period of fertility, the chance of conception is high, as with all mammals that have an estrous cycle. In harsh conditions where infant mortality is great, a race survival value may be indicated. At present neither infant mortality nor the birthrate runs high in the civilized areas of Gethen. Tinibossol estimates a population of not over 100 million on the Three Continents, and considers it to have been stable for at least a millennium. Ritual and ethical absention and the use of contraceptive drugs seem to have played the major part in maintaining this stability. There are aspects of ambisexuality that we have only glimpsed or guessed at, and which we may never grasp entirely. The kemmer phenomenon fascinates all of us Investigators, of course. It fascinates us, but it rules the Gethenians, dominates them. The structure of their societies, the management of their industry, agriculture, commerce, the size of their settlements, the subjects of their stories, everything is shaped to fit the somer-kemmer cycle. Everybody has his holiday once a month; no one, whatever his position, is obliged or forced to work when in kemmer. No one is barred from the kemmerhouse, however poor or strange. Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion. This is easy for us to understand. What is very hard for us to understand is that, four-fifths of the time, these people are not sexually motivated at all. Room is made for sex, plenty of room; but a room, as it were, apart. The society of Gethen, in its daily functioning and in its continuity, is without sex. Consider: ~ Ursula K Le Guin,

1439:What’s going to happen to Wes?” She lifted her eyes steadily to her brother’s, but she didn’t answer at once. “I don’t know. He’s admitted himself into a drug treatment program.” “Why?” Bud asked. Again she paused. “For drug treatment. It’s not unusual for some of those traders to get hooked on... You know... Uppers?” It was stated as a question. And Preacher thought, it was meth. It wasn’t a little bitty innocent drug. “And you couldn’t do anything about that?” “Like what, Bud?” she returned. “I don’t know. Like help him with that. I mean, what did you have to do?” Paige put down her fork and glared into her brother’s eyes. “No, Bud. I couldn’t help with that. It was completely beyond my control.” Bud tilted his eyes toward his lettuce, stabbed a piece with his fork and muttered, “Maybe you could’ve kept your stupid mouth shut.” Preacher’s fork went down sharply. And Preacher, who rarely used profanity and only in the most heated moments, said, “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Bud’s eyes snapped up to Preacher’s face. His jaw ground and he scowled. “She tell you she had six thousand square feet and a pool?” Preacher glanced at Paige, Paige glanced at Preacher and then swiveled her eyes slowly to Bud. She spoke to Preacher while she looked at Bud and said, “My brother doesn’t understand. The size of the house you live in has nothing to do with anything.” “The hell,” Bud said. “I’m just saying, there are times to keep your mouth shut, that’s all I’m saying. You had it fucking made.” It took every red blood cell in Preacher’s body to stay in his chair. He wanted to shout, He beat her up in the street in front of me! He killed their baby with his foot! He was squeezing and releasing his fork with such tension, he was unaware he was bending it. It wasn’t his right to speak out; he was a guest. He didn’t see himself as Bud’s guest, he was Paige’s guest. He got a sick feeling in his stomach at the thought he could’ve dropped her here for a visit, alone. He felt his blood pressure going up; his temples were pulsing. “Bud, he was abusive.” “Jesus Christ, you had a few problems. The guy was loaded, for Christ’s sake!” Preacher thought he might explode, his heated blood was expanding so fast. He could hear his own heartbeat. And he felt a small, light hand on top of his coiled fist. He raised his eyes and met the dull, nervous stare of Paige’s mother, pleadingly looking at him from across the table. “Bud doesn’t mean exactly that,” she said. “It’s just that we’ve never had a divorce in the family. I raised the kids to understand, you have to try to get beyond the problems.” “Everyone has problems,” Gin said, nodding. Those same eyes. Begging. Preacher didn’t think he could do it. Sit through it. He was pretty sure he’d never get to the steak without shoving Bud up against the wall and challenging him to keep his mouth shut through something like his fists. The struggle was, that was like Wes. Get mad, take it to the mat. Beat the living shit out of someone. Someone you could beat into submission real easy. “They weren’t problems,” Paige said insistently. “He was violent.” “Aw, Jesus Christ,” Bud said, lifting his beer. A ~ Robyn Carr,

1440:It’s that time of the month again… As we head into those dog days of July, Mike would like to thank those who helped him get the toys he needs to enjoy his summer. Thanks to you, he bought a new bass boat, which we don’t need; a condo in Florida, where we don’t spend any time; and a $2,000 set of golf clubs…which he had been using as an alibi to cover the fact that he has been remorselessly banging his secretary, Beebee, for the last six months. Tragically, I didn’t suspect a thing. Right up until the moment Cherry Glick inadvertently delivered a lovely floral arrangement to our house, apparently intended to celebrate the anniversary of the first time Beebee provided Mike with her special brand of administrative support. Sadly, even after this damning evidence-and seeing Mike ram his tongue down Beebee’s throat-I didn’t quite grasp the depth of his deception. It took reading the contents of his secret e-mail account before I was convinced. I learned that cheap motel rooms have been christened. Office equipment has been sullied. And you should think twice before calling Mike’s work number during his lunch hour, because there’s a good chance that Beebee will be under his desk “assisting” him. I must confess that I was disappointed by Mike’s over-wrought prose, but I now understand why he insisted that I write this newsletter every month. I would say this is a case of those who can write, do; and those who can’t do Taxes. And since seeing is believing, I could have included a Hustler-ready pictorial layout of the photos of Mike’s work wife. However, I believe distributing these photos would be a felony. The camera work isn’t half-bad, though. It’s good to see that Mike has some skill in the bedroom, even if it’s just photography. And what does Beebee have to say for herself? Not Much. In fact, attempts to interview her for this issue were met with spaced-out indifference. I’ve had a hard time not blaming the conniving, store-bought-cleavage-baring Oompa Loompa-skinned adulteress for her part in the destruction of my marriage. But considering what she’s getting, Beebee has my sympathies. I blame Mike. I blame Mike for not honoring the vows he made to me. I blame Mike for not being strong enough to pass up the temptation of readily available extramarital sex. And I blame Mike for not being enough of a man to tell me he was having an affair, instead letting me find out via a misdirected floral delivery. I hope you have enjoyed this new digital version of the Terwilliger and Associates Newsletter. Next month’s newsletter will not be written by me as I will be divorcing Mike’s cheating ass. As soon as I press send on this e-mail, I’m hiring Sammy “the Shark” Shackleton. I don’t know why they call him “the Shark” but I did hear about a case where Sammy got a woman her soon-to-be ex-husband’s house, his car, his boat and his manhood in a mayonnaise jar. And one last thing, believe me when I say I will not be letting Mike off with “irreconcilable differences” in divorce court. Mike Terwilliger will own up to being the faithless, loveless, spineless, useless, dickless wonder he is. ~ Molly Harper,

1441:The conclusion that race is a serious and durable social fault line is not a popular one in the social sciences. Many scholars have downplayed its importance, and have insisted that class differences are the real cause of social conflict. Political scientist Walker Connor, who has taught at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Cambridge, has sharply criticized his colleagues for ignoring ethnic loyalty, which he calls ethnonationalism. He wrote of “the school of thought called ‘nation-building’ that dominated the literature on political development, particularly in the United States after the Second World War:” 'The near total disregard of ethnonationalism that characterized the school, which numbered so many leading political scientists of the time, still astonishes. Again we encounter that divorce between intellectual theory and the real world.' He explained further: 'To the degree that ethnic identity is given recognition, it is apt to be as a somewhat unimportant and ephemeral nuisance that will unquestionably give way to a common identity . . . as modern communication and transportation networks link the state’s various parts more closely.' However: “There is little evidence of modern communications destroying ethnic consciousness, and much evidence of their augmenting it.” Prof. Connor came close to saying that any scholar who ignores ethnic loyalty is dishonest: '[H]e perceives those trends that he deems desirable as actually occurring, regardless of the factual situation. If the fact of ethnic nationalism is not compatible with his vision, it can thus be willed away. . . . [T]he treatment calls for total disregard or cavalier dismissal of the undesired facts.' This harsh judgment may not be unwarranted. Robert Putnam, mentioned above for his research on how racial diversity decreases trust in American neighborhoods, waited five years to publish his data. He was displeased with his findings, and worked very hard to find something other than racial diversity to explain why people in Maine and North Dakota trusted each other more than people in Los Angeles. Setting aside the reluctance academics may have for publishing data that conflict with current political ideals, Prof. Connor wrote that scholars discount racial or ethnic loyalty because of “the inherent limitations of rational inquiry into the realm of group identity.” Social scientists like to analyze political and economic interests because they are clear and rational, whereas Prof. Connor argues that rational calculations “hint not at all at the passions that motivate Kurdish, Tamil, and Tigre guerrillas or Basque, Corsican, Irish, and Palestinian terrorists.” As Chateaubriand noted in the 18th century: “Men don’t allow themselves to be killed for their interests; they allow themselves to be killed for their passions.” Prof. Connor adds that group loyalty is evoked “not through appeals to reason but through appeals to the emotions (appeals not to the mind but to the blood).” Academics do not like the unquantifiable, the emotional, the primitive—even if these things drive men harder than the practical and the rational—and are therefore inclined to downplay or even disregard them. ~ Jared Taylor,

1442:Ms. Lane.”Barrons’ voice is deep, touched with that strange Old World accent and mildly pissed off. Jericho Barrons is often mildly pissed off. I think he crawled from the swamp that way, chafed either by some condition in it, out of it, or maybe just the general mass incompetence he encountered in both places. He’s the most controlled, capable man I’ve ever known. After all we’ve been through together, he still calls me Ms. Lane, with one exception: When I’m in his bed. Or on the floor, or some other place where I’ve temporarily lost my mind and become convinced I can’t breathe without him inside me this very instant. Then the things he calls me are varied and nobody’s business but mine. I reply: “Barrons,” without inflection. I’ve learned a few things in our time together. Distance is frequently the only intimacy he’ll tolerate. Suits me. I’ve got my own demons. Besides I don’t believe good relationships come from living inside each other’s pockets. I believe divorce comes from that. I admire the animal grace with which he enters the room and moves toward me. He prefers dark colors, the better to slide in and out of the night, or a room, unnoticed except for whatever he’s left behind that you may or may not discover for some time, like, say a tattoo on the back of one’s skull. “What are you doing?” “Reading,” I say nonchalantly, rubbing the tattoo on the back of my skull. I angle the volume so he can’t see the cover. If he sees what I’m reading, he’ll know I’m looking for something. If he realizes how bad it’s gotten, and what I’m thinking about doing, he’ll try to stop me. He circles behind me, looks over my shoulder at the thick vellum of the ancient manuscript. “In the first tongue?” “Is that what it is?” I feign innocence. He knows precisely which cells in my body are innocent and which are thoroughly corrupted. He’s responsible for most of the corrupted ones. One corner of his mouth ticks up and I see the glint of beast behind his eyes, a feral crimson backlight, bloodstaining the whites. It turns me on. Barrons makes me feel violently, electrically sexual and alive. I’d march into hell beside him. But I will not let him march into hell beside me. And there’s no doubt that’s where I’m going. I thought I was strong, a heroine. I thought I was the victor. The enemy got inside my head and tried to seduce me with lies. It’s easy to walk away from lies. Power is another thing. Temptation isn’t a sin that you triumph over once, completely and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say your prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows exactly how you take it. He skirts the Chesterfield sofa and stands over me. “Looking for something, Ms. Lane?” I’m eye level with his belt but that’s not where my gaze gets stuck and suddenly my mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow and I know I’m going to want to. I’m Pri-ya for this man. I hate it. I love it. I can’t escape it. I reach for his belt buckle. The manuscript slides from my lap, forgotten. Along with everything else but this moment, this man. “I just found it,” I tell him. ~ Karen Marie Moning,

1443:Ah yes, the people concerned. That is very important. You remember, perhaps, who they were?’ Depleach considered. ‘Let me see-it’s a long time ago. There were only five people who were really in it, so to speak-I’m not counting the servants-a couple of faithful old things, scared-looking creatures-they didn’t know anything about anything. No one could suspect them.’ ‘There are five people, you say. Tell me about them.’ ‘Well, there was Philip Blake. He was Crale’s greatest friend-had known him all his life. He was staying in the house at the time.He’s alive. I see him now and again on the links. Lives at St George’s Hill. Stockbroker. Plays the markets and gets away with it. Successful man, running to fat a bit.’ ‘Yes. And who next?’ ‘Then there was Blake’s elder brother. Country squire-stay at home sort of chap.’ A jingle ran through Poirot’s head. He repressed it. He mustnot always be thinking of nursery rhymes. It seemed an obsession with him lately. And yet the jingle persisted. ‘This little pig went to market, this little pig stayed at home…’ He murmured: ‘He stayed at home-yes?’ ‘He’s the fellow I was telling you about-messed about with drugs-and herbs-bit of a chemist. His hobby. What was his name now? Literary sort of name-I’ve got it. Meredith. Meredith Blake. Don’t know whether he’s alive or not.’ ‘And who next?’ ‘Next? Well, there’s the cause of all the trouble. The girl in the case. Elsa Greer.’ ‘This little pig ate roast beef,’ murmured Poirot. Depleach stared at him. ‘They’ve fed her meat all right,’ he said. ‘She’s been a go-getter. She’s had three husbands since then. In and out of the divorce court as easy as you please. And every time she makes a change, it’s for the better. Lady Dittisham-that’s who she is now. Open anyTatler and you’re sure to find her.’ ‘And the other two?’ ‘There was the governess woman. I don’t remember her name. Nice capable woman. Thompson-Jones-something like that. And there was the child. Caroline Crale’s half-sister. She must have been about fifteen. She’s made rather a name for herself. Digs up things and goes trekking to the back of beyond. Warren-that’s her name. Angela Warren. Rather an alarming young woman nowadays. I met her the other day.’ ‘She is not, then, the little pig who cried Wee Wee Wee…?’ Sir Montague Depleach looked at him rather oddly. He said drily: ‘She’s had something to cry Wee-Wee about in her life! She’s disfigured, you know. Got a bad scar down one side of her face. She-Oh well, you’ll hear all about it, I dare say.’ Poirot stood up. He said: ‘I thank you. You have been very kind. If Mrs Crale didnot kill her husband-’ Depleach interrupted him: ‘But she did, old boy, she did. Take my word for it.’ Poirot continued without taking any notice of the interruption. ‘Then it seems logical to suppose that one of these five people must have done so.’ ‘One of themcould have done it, I suppose,’ said Depleach, doubtfully. ‘But I don’t see why any of themshould. No reason at all! In fact, I’m quite sure none of themdid do it. Do get this bee out of your bonnet, old boy!’ But Hercule Poirot only smiled and shook his head. ~ Agatha Christie,

1444:Now that you understand the key players in ecosystems, here are the key principles of building an ecosystem. They are similar to the principles of creating a community discussed in chapter 8, “The Art of Evangelizing.” CREATE SOMETHING WORTHY OF AN ECOSYSTEM. Once again, the key to evangelism, sales, presentations, and now ecosystems is a great product. In fact, if you create a great product, you may not be able to stop an ecosystem from forming. By contrast, it’s hard to build an ecosystem around crap. DESIGNATE A CHAMPION. Many employees would like to help build an ecosystem, but who wakes up every day with this task at the top of her list of priorities? Another way to look at this is, “Who’s going to get fired if an ecosystem doesn’t happen?” Ecosystems need a champion—an identifiable hero—within the company to carry the flag for the community. DON’T COMPETE WITH THE ECOSYSTEM. If you want people or organizations to take part in your ecosystem, then you shouldn’t compete with them. For example, if you want people to create apps for your product, then don’t sell (or give away) apps that do the same thing. It was hard to convince companies to create a Macintosh word processor when Apple was giving away MacWrite. CREATE AN OPEN SYSTEM. An “open system” means that there are minimal requirements to participating and minimal controls on what you can do. A “closed system” means that you control who participates and what they can do. Either can work, but I recommend an open system because it appeals to my trusting, anarchic personality. This means that members of your ecosystem will be able to write apps, access data, and interact with your product. I’m using software terminology here, but the point is to enable people to customize and tweak your product. PUBLISH INFORMATION. The natural complement of an open system is publishing books and articles about the product. This spreads information to people on the periphery of a product. Publishing also communicates to the world that your startup is open and willing to help external parties. FOSTER DISCOURSE. The definition of “discourse” is “verbal exchange.” The key word is “exchange.” Any company that wants an ecosystem should foster the exchange of ideas and opinions. This means your website should provide a forum where people can engage with other members as well as your employees. This doesn’t mean that you let the ecosystem run your company, but you should hear what members have to say. WELCOME CRITICISM. Most organizations feel warm and fuzzy toward their ecosystem as long as the ecosystem says nice things, buys their products, and never complains. The minute that the ecosystem says anything negative, however, many organizations freak out and get defensive. This is dumb. A healthy ecosystem is a long-term relationship, so an organization shouldn’t file for divorce at the first sign of discord. Indeed, the more an organization welcomes—or even celebrates—criticism, the stronger its bonds to its ecosystem become. CREATE A NONMONETARY REWARD SYSTEM. You already know how I feel about paying people off to help you, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reward people in other ways. Things as simple as public recognition, badges, points, and credits have more impact than a few bucks. Many people don’t participate in an ecosystem for the money, so don’t insult them by rewarding them with it. ~ Guy Kawasaki,

1445:Bring Cecily home,” he said curtly. “I won’t have her at risk, even in the slightest way.” “I’ll take care of Cecily,” came the terse reply. “She’s better off without you in her life.” Tate’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, affronted. “You know what I mean,” Holden said. “Let her heal. She’s too young to consign herself to spinsterhood over a man who doesn’t even see her.” “Infatuation dies,” Tate said. Holden nodded. “Yes, it does. Goodbye.” “So does hero worship,” he continued, laboring the point. “And that’s why after eight years, Cecily has had one raging affair after the other,” he said facetiously. The words had power. They wounded. “You fool,” Holden said in a soft tone. “Do you really think she’d let any man touch her except you?” He went to his office door and gestured toward the desk. “Don’t forget your gadget,” he added quietly. “Wait!” Holden paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned. “What?” Tate held the device in his hands, watching the lights flicker on it. “Mixing two cultures when one of them is all but extinct is a selfish thing,” he said after a minute. “It has nothing to do with personal feelings. It’s a matter of necessity.” Holden let go of the doorknob and moved to stand directly in front of Tate. “If I had a son,” he said, almost choking on the word, “I’d tell him that there are things even more important than lofty principles. I’d tell him…that love is a rare and precious thing, and that substitutes are notoriously unfulfilling.” Tate searched the older man’s eyes. “You’re a fine one to talk.” Holden’s face fell. “Yes, that’s true.” He turned away. Why should he feel guilty? But he did. “I didn’t mean to say that,” Tate said, irritated by his remorse and the other man’s defeated posture. “I can’t help the way I feel about my culture.” “If it weren’t for the cultural difference, how would you feel about Cecily?” Tate hesitated. “It wouldn’t change anything. She’s been my responsibility. I’ve taken care of her. It would be gratitude on her part, even a little hero worship, nothing more. I couldn’t take advantage of that. Besides, she’s involved with Colby.” “And you couldn’t live with being the second man.” Tate’s face hardened. His eyes flashed. Holden shook his head. “You’re just brimming over with excuses, aren’t you? It isn’t the race thing, it isn’t the culture thing, it isn’t even the guardian-ward thing. You’re afraid.” Tate’s mouth made a thin line. He didn’t reply. “When you love someone, you give up control of yourself,” he continued quietly. “You have to consider the other person’s needs, wants, fears. What you do affects the other person. There’s a certain loss of freedom as well.” He moved a step closer. “The point I’m making is that Cecily already fills that place in your life. You’re still protecting her, and it doesn’t matter that there’s another man. Because you can’t stop looking out for her. Everything you said in this office proves that.” He searched Tate’s turbulent eyes. “You don’t like Colby Lane, and it isn’t because you think Cecily’s involved with him. It’s because he’s been tied to one woman so tight that he can’t struggle free of his love for her, even after years of divorce. That’s how you feel, isn’t it, Tate? You can’t get free of Cecily, either. But Colby’s always around and she indulges him. She might marry him in an act of desperation. And then what will you do? Will your noble excuses matter a damn then? ~ Diana Palmer,

1446:We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for "our standard of living." They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of modern adults. There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small group of us, a great deal more work than we have yet been able to do. How could we divorce ourselves completely and yet responsibly from the technologies and powers that are destroying our planet? The answer is not yet thinkable, and it will not be thinkable for some time -- even though there are now groups and families and persons everywhere in the country who have begun the labor of thinking it. And so we are by no means divided, or readily divisible, into environmental saints and sinners. But there are legitimate distinctions that need to be made. These are distinctions of degree and of consciousness. Some people are less destructive than others, and some are more conscious of their destructiveness than others. For some, their involvement in pollution, soil depletion, strip-mining, deforestation, industrial and commercial waste is simply a "practical" compromise, a necessary "reality," the price of modern comfort and convenience. For others, this list of involvements is an agenda for thought and work that will produce remedies. People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society. They have first observed the tendency of modern organizations to perform in opposition to their stated purposes. They have seen governments that exploit and oppress the people they are sworn to serve and protect, medical procedures that produce ill health, schools that preserve ignorance, methods of transportation that, as Ivan Illich says, have 'created more distances than they... bridge.' And they have seen that these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character. This realization has become the typical moral crisis of our time. Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live. ~ Wendell Berry,

1447:The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species. ~ Matt Ridley,

1448:The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary ... You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species. ~ Matt Ridley,

1449:Translator's Note There is a tradition in Laparone that the first man to wake each morning must sweep shadows from his porch lest night pull the long limbs of sunlight into its mouth and devour the day. Serto wants to be the broom melting dark and light in the moment of their divorce. This teases the translator with a feast of moral and technical difficulties. For example. There is a widely chattered rumor that the arm Serto lost in the last battle for Muipo, now passed by Zedefi rebels from base to base in the Chimasta mountains, reverts to his body in dream and chokes him to death, his last breath the word benudok. In Kuntolo this means something like traitor/ savior. The aspiration, for which there is no simple English equivalent, in fact no comparable word in the Romance “pallet,” is to hold in one unit of language the complex idea of the man or woman who saves a village or clan by a putatively faithless act, the virtue of which only he or she is aware. In the first sentence of Kiloso dak Vermoso or Swallowed River, Serto injects the legend of his missing arm into our imaginations in words of necessary misinterpretation. Ekiu zar sedru dok erchulo tubuso can be translated one of two ways—The arm rose and embraced the sun or The arm rose and devoured the sun. Given Serto’s standing as a world writer, the opening sentence is a challenge to translators to base the tone of the novel on the seesaw of a single word. By the time Mersatta, tortured by the dream of the arm, hangs himself from the 300-year-old kloson tree in the square of his unnamed village, it is clear the arm has been the novel’s narrator, and that if erchulo had been translated 48 as embraced, Mersatta is to be forgiven, as devoured, Mersatta should be left to rot. Further complicating matters is that sometimes the narrator is the arm but others a tongue or foot, there is an entire chapter called Bukosaman or Metronome, where the narrator becomes, without reference until the last word of the chapter, the gold buckle of General Cuntare’s belt. As always with Serto, we are made to wonder, knowing so much about his life— the shuttling of rebel messages as a child along the honed ridges of the Chimastas, the rape of his mother, shooting of his father before his eyes, the sudden appearance of a wealthy uncle who shipped the boy out of the country into the arms of the Treost Jesuits, his return as the lunatic pen behind the incendiary pages of The Undressed Land—if we are not being asked to wear the complexity of his guilt and decide if he, the supposed informer at Muipo, is a child of reverence or scorn. Out of this tempest I have essentially written my own book. Mersatta still dies but is happy to let the sway of his body replace the wind’s tick-tock. The arm which haunts him has nothing to say about the revolution but wants to come home. At the end the two are reconciiled into a single body of death. After that the country is quiet, rebel come down from the mountains to discover their familes have long ago left, packed rivers and wheat fields and nailed a note to the barbershop saying Don’t follow, after twenty years your eyes can no longer see our skin. Then the rebels take the mountains apart, I leave them with mouths full of dirt, hands clawed to nubs in bereavement, and Serto in the distance in the guise of the Guitano, a sea famed for placid waters but hiding the Judas teeth of rocks. 49 ~ Bob Hicok,

1450:Are-are you leaving?” She saw his shoulders stiffen at the sound of her voice, and when he turned and looked at her, she could almost feel the effort he was exerting to keep his rage under control. “You’re leaving,” he bit out. In silent, helpless protest Elizabeth shook her head and started slowly across the carpet, dimly aware that this was worse, much worse than merely standing up in front of several hundred lords in the House. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” he warned softly. “Do-do what?” Elizabeth said shakily. “Get any nearer to me.” She stopped cold, her mind registering the physical threat in his voice, refusing to believe it, her gaze searching his granite features. “Ian,” she began, stretching her hand out in a gesture of mute appeal, then letting it fall to her side when her beseeching move got nothing from him but a blast of contempt from his eyes. “I realize,” she began again, her voice trembling with emotion while she tried to think how to begin to diffuse his wrath, “that you must despise me for what I’ve done.” “You’re right.” “But,” Elizabeth continued bravely, “I am prepared to do anything, anything to try to atone for it. No matter how it must seem to you now, I never stopped loving-“ His voice cracked like a whiplash. “Shut up!” “No, you have to listen to me,” she said, speaking more quickly now, driven by panic and an awful sense of foreboding that nothing she could do or say would ever make him soften. “I never stopped loving you, even when I-“ “I’m warning you, Elizabeth,” he said in a murderous voice, “shut up and get out! Get out of my house and out of my life!” “Is-is it Robert? I mean, do you not believe Robert was the man I was with?” “I don’t give a damn who the son of a bitch was.” Elizabeth began to quake in genuine terror, because he meant that-she could see that he did. “It was Robert, exactly as I said,” she continued haltingly. “I can prove it to you beyond any doubt, if you’ll let me.” He laughed at that, a short, strangled laugh that was more deadly and final than his anger had been. “Elizabeth, I wouldn’t believe you if I’d seen you with him. Am I making myself clear? You are a consummate liar and a magnificent actress.” “If you’re saying that be-because of the foolish things I said in the witness box, you s-surely must know why I did it.” His contemptuous gaze raked her. “Of course I know why you did it! It was a means to an end-the same reason you’ve had for everything you do. You’d sleep with a snake if it gave you a means to an end.” “Why are you saying this?” she cried. “Because on the same day your investigator told you I was responsible for your brother’s disappearance, you stood beside me in a goddamned church and vowed to love me unto death! You were willing to marry a man you believed could be a murderer, to sleep with a murderer.” “You don’t believe that! I can prove it somehow-I know I can, if you’ll just give me a chance-“ “No.” “Ian-“ “I don’t want proof.” “I love you,” she said brokenly. “I don’t want your ‘love,’ and I don’t want you. Now-“ He glanced up when Dolton knocked on the door. “Mr. Larimore is here, my lord.” “Tell him I’ll be with him directly,” Ian announced, and Elizabeth gaped at him. “You-you’re going to have a business meeting now?” “Not exactly, my love. I’ve sent for Larimore for a different reason this time.” Nameless fright quaked down Elizabeth’s spine at his tone. “What-what other reason would you have for summoning a solicitor at a time like this?” “I’m starting divorce proceedings, Elizabeth.” “You’re what?” she breathed, and she felt the room whirl. “On what grounds-my stupidity?” “Desertion,” he bit out. ~ Judith McNaught,

1451:Here’s a simple definition of ideology: “A set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved.”8 And here’s the most basic of all ideological questions: Preserve the present order, or change it? At the French Assembly of 1789, the delegates who favored preservation sat on the right side of the chamber, while those who favored change sat on the left. The terms right and left have stood for conservatism and liberalism ever since. Political theorists since Marx had long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the peasants and workers want to change things (or at least they would if their consciousness could be raised and they could see their self-interest properly, said the Marxists). But even though social class may once have been a good predictor of ideology, that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left) and so do the poor (rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left). And when political scientists looked into it, they found that self-interest does a remarkably poor job of predicting political attitudes.9 So for most of the late twentieth century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents or the TV programs they watched.10 Some political scientists even said that most people were so confused about political issues that they had no real ideology at all.11 But then came the studies of twins. In the 1980s, when scientists began analyzing large databases that allowed them to compare identical twins (who share all of their genes, plus, usually, their prenatal and childhood environments) to same-sex fraternal twins (who share half of their genes, plus their prenatal and childhood environments), they found that the identical twins were more similar on just about everything.12 And what’s more, identical twins reared in separate households (because of adoption) usually turn out to be very similar, whereas unrelated children reared together (because of adoption) rarely turn out similar to each other, or to their adoptive parents; they tend to be more similar to their genetic parents. Genes contribute, somehow, to just about every aspect of our personalities.13 We’re not just talking about IQ, mental illness, and basic personality traits such as shyness. We’re talking about the degree to which you like jazz, spicy foods, and abstract art; your likelihood of getting a divorce or dying in a car crash; your degree of religiosity, and your political orientation as an adult. Whether you end up on the right or the left of the political spectrum turns out to be just as heritable as most other traits: genetics explains between a third and a half of the variability among people on their political attitudes.14 Being raised in a liberal or conservative household accounts for much less. How can that be? How can there be a genetic basis for attitudes about nuclear power, progressive taxation, and foreign aid when these issues only emerged in the last century or two? And how can there be a genetic basis for ideology when people sometimes change their political parties as adults? To answer these questions it helps to return to the definition of innate that I gave in chapter 7. Innate does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience. The genes guide the construction of the brain in the uterus, but that’s only the first draft, so to speak. The draft gets revised by childhood experiences. To understand the origins of ideology you have to take a developmental perspective, starting with the genes and ending with an adult voting for a particular candidate or joining a political protest. There are three major steps in the process. Step ~ Jonathan Haidt,

1452:FatherMichael has entered the room Wildflower: Ah don’t tell me you’re through a divorce yourself Father? SureOne: Don’t be silly Wildflower, have a bit of respect! He’s here for the ceremony. Wildflower: I know that. I was just trying to lighten the atmosphere. FatherMichael: So have the loving couple arrived yet? SureOne: No but it’s customary for the bride to be late. FatherMichael: Well is the groom here? SingleSam has entered the room Wildflower: Here he is now. Hello there SingleSam. I think this is the first time ever that both the bride and groom will have to change their names. SingleSam: Hello all. Buttercup: Where’s the bride? LonelyLady: Probably fixing her makeup. Wildflower: Oh don’t be silly. No one can even see her. LonelyLady: SingleSam can see her. SureOne: She’s not doing her makeup; she’s supposed to keep the groom waiting. SingleSam: No she’s right here on the laptop beside me. She’s just having problems with her password logging in. SureOne: Doomed from the start. Divorced 1 has entered the room Wildflower: Wahoo! Here comes the bride, all dressed in . . . SingleSam: Black. Wildflower: How charming. Buttercup: She’s right to wear black. Divorced 1: What’s wrong with misery guts today? LonelyLady: She found a letter from Alex that was written 12 years ago proclaiming his love for her and she doesn’t know what to do. Divorced 1: Here’s a word of advice. Get over it, he’s married. Now let’s focus the attention on me for a change. SoOverHim has entered the room FatherMichael: OK let’s begin. We are gathered here online today to witness the marriage of SingleSam (soon to be “Sam”) and Divorced 1 (soon to be “Married 1”). SoOverHim: WHAT?? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? THIS IS A MARRIAGE CEREMONY IN A DIVORCED PEOPLE CHAT ROOM?? Wildflower: Uh-oh, looks like we got ourselves a gate crasher here. Excuse me can we see your wedding invite please? Divorced 1: Ha ha. SoOverHim: YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY? YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME SICK, COMING IN HERE AND TRYING TO UPSET OTHERS WHO ARE GENUINELY TROUBLED. Buttercup: Oh we are genuinely troubled alright. And could you please STOP SHOUTING. LonelyLady: You see SoOverHim, this is where SingleSam and Divorced 1 met for the first time. SoOverHim: OH I HAVE SEEN IT ALL NOW! Buttercup: Sshh! SoOverHim: Sorry. Mind if I stick around? Divorced 1: Sure grab a pew; just don’t trip over my train. Wildflower: Ha ha. FatherMichael: OK we should get on with this; I don’t want to be late for my 2 o’clock. First I have to ask, is there anyone in here who thinks there is any reason why these two should not be married? LonelyLady: Yes. SureOne: I could give more than one reason. Buttercup: Hell yes. SoOverHim: DON’T DO IT! FatherMichael: Well I’m afraid this has put me in a very tricky predicament. Divorced 1: Father we are in a divorced chat room, of course they all object to marriage. Can we get on with it? FatherMichael: Certainly. Do you Sam take Penelope to be your lawful wedded wife? SingleSam: I do. FatherMichael: Do you Penelope take Sam to be your lawful wedded husband? Divorced 1: I do (yeah, yeah my name is Penelope). FatherMichael: You have already e-mailed your vows to me so by the online power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride. Now if the witnesses could click on the icon to the right of the screen they will find a form to type their names, addresses, and phone numbers. Once that’s filled in just e-mail it off to me. I’ll be off now. Congratulations again. FatherMichael has left the room Wildflower: Congrats Sam and Penelope! Divorced 1: Thanks girls for being here. SoOverHim: Freaks. SoOverHim has left the room ~ Cecelia Ahern,

1453:A Farewell To Tobacco May the Babylonish curse Straight confound my stammering verse, If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide or scant) To take leave of thee, great plant! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love, thee so, That, whichever thing I shew, The plain truth will seem to be A constrain'd hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a mistress than a weed. Sooty retainer to the vine, Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon Thy begrimed complexion, And, for thy pernicious sake, More and greater oaths to break Than reclaimed lovers take 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay Much too in the female way, While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath Faster than kisses or than death. Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, That our worst foes cannot find us, And ill fortune, that would thwart us, Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man, thro' thy height'ning steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem, And all about us does express (Fancy and wit in richest dress) 10 A Sicilian fruitfulness. Thou through such a mist dost shew us, That our best friends do not know us, And, for those allowed features, Due to reasonable creatures, Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, Monsters that, who see us, fear us; Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion. Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou, That but by reflex canst shew What his deity can do, As the false Egyptian spell Aped the true Hebrew miracle? Some few vapours thou may'st raise, The weak brain may serve to amaze, But to the reins and nobler heart Canst nor life nor heat impart. Brother of Bacchus, later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant: only thou His true Indian conquest art; And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. Scent to match thy rich perfume Chemic art did ne'er presume Through her quaint alembic strain, 11 None so sov'reign to the brain. Nature, that did in thee excel, Fram'd again no second smell. Roses, violets, but toys For the smaller sort of boys, Or for greener damsels meant; Thou art the only manly scent. Stinking'st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite --- Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 'Twas but in a sort I blam'd thee; None e'er prosper'd who defam'd thee; Irony all, and feign'd abuse, Such as perplext lovers use, At a need, when, in despair To paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, 12 Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot Whether it be pain or not. Or, as men, constrain'd to part With what's nearest to their heart, While their sorrow's at the height, Lose discrimination quite, And their hasty wrath let fall, To appease their frantic gall, On the darling thing whatever, Whence they feel it death to sever, Though it be, as they, perforce, Guiltless of the sad divorce. For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. For thy sake, tobacco, I Would do any thing but die, And but seek to extend my days Long enough to sing thy praise. But, as she, who once hath been A king's consort, is a queen Ever after, nor will bate Any tittle of her state, Though a widow, or divorced, So I, from thy converse forced, The old name and style retain, A right Katherine of Spain; And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys Of the blest Tobacco Boys; Where, though I, by sour physician, Am debarr'd the full fruition Of thy favours, I may catch Some collateral sweets, and snatch Sidelong odours, that give life Like glances from a neighbour's wife; And still live in the by-places And the suburbs of thy graces; And in thy borders take delight, 13 An unconquer'd Canaanite. ~ Charles Lamb,

1454:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,

1455:On Returning To England There! once again I stand on home, Though round me still there swirls the foam, Leaping athwart the vessel's track To bid a wanderer welcome back, And though as yet through softening haze White cliffs but vaguely greet my gaze. For, England! yours the waves, the spray, And, be one's foothold what it may, Wherever billow wafts or wends, Your soil is trodden, your shore extends. How stern! how sweet! Though fresh from lands Where soft seas heave on slumbering strands, And zephyrs moistened by the south Seem kisses from an infant's mouth, My northern blood exults to face The rapture of this rough embrace, Glowing in every vein to feel The cordial caress of steel From spear-blue air and sword-blue sea, The armour of your liberty. Braced by the manly air, I reach My soul out to the approaching beach, And own, the instant I arrive, The dignity of being alive! And now with forward-faring feet Eager I leap to land, and greet The hearty grasp, the honest gaze, The voice that means the thing it says, The gait of men by birthright free, Unceremonial courtesy. None frown, none cringe, but, fearless-eyed, Are kindly all; since, side by side, Authority and Freedom reign In twin equality, and drain Their sanction from the self-same breast, And Law is wise Will manifest. Yes, this is England, frank and fair: I tread its turf, I breathe its air, 363 And catch from every stalwart lung The music of my mother tongue. And who are these that cluster round With hastening feet and silvery sound, And eyes as liquid as the dawn, When laughs the dew on Kentish lawn? These England's daughters, frank yet arch, Supple as April, strong as March: Like pink-white windflowers in the grove, That came while east and west wind strove For mastery, and Spring seemed late, Hardy alike and delicate. How well their faces fit the scene, The copses gray, the hedgerows green, The white-veiled blackthorn, gorse afire, The cottage yew, the village spire; The pastures flecked with frisking lambs Around their gravely grazing dams; The children loitering home from school, Their hands and pinafores all full Of cuckoo-pint and bluebell spike, Gathered in dingle, dell, and dyke; The comely homes one just can see Through flowering belts of bush and tree, That all combine, all, all conspire, To more than satisfy desire, To make one love this lovely earth, And bless Heaven for one's British birth. Bewitching climes! where late I sought In change of scene a change of thought, Refreshment from familiar ground, And, what I sought for, more than found, Where old enchantment haunteth still Ligurian coast and Tuscan hill, Climes I have ventured oft and long To celebrate in faltering song, Where fearless almond, faery larch, Smiling, disarm the frown of March, Snow hath no terrors, frost no sting, And playful Winter mimics Spring, 364 Deem me not thankless, nor deny Fresh welcome from your shore and sky, Repose from thought so oft implored, And ne'er refused, if, now restored By you to health, by you to home, Glad I return, late glad to roam. For dear to me though wayside shrine By silent gorge or murmuring brine; Dear though the barefoot peasant folk Who lop the vine and steer the yoke Of soft-eyed, sleek-skinned, creamy beeves, Up narrow ways to broad slant eaves; The stony mule-tracks twisting slow Up slopes where cherry-blossoms blow 'Mid olive gray and ilex brown, On to some sun-bronzed mountain town; The hush and cool of marble domes, Where, wed to reverie, one roams Through transept, chancel, cloister, cell, Where still with far-off faces dwell Sages and saints devoutly limned By hands long dust and eyes long dimmed; Dear though all these, and ne'er forgot, No southern shore, no sunniest spot, Not Roccabruna's hamlet crest, Not Eza's brow, not Taggia's breast, Not Bellosguardo's sunset hour, Not Dante's seat nor Giotto's Tower, Nor even Spiaggiascura's foam, Moisten and melt my heart like home. For here the cuckoo seems more glad, The nightingale more sweetly sad, Primroses more akin in gaze To childlike wonder, childlike ways; And all things that one sees and hears, Since rooted in the bygone years, And blending with their warm caress A touch of homely tenderness, Bid the quick instinct in one's blood Pay tribute unto motherhood. How should strange lands, it boots not where, Divorce one from one's native air, 365 Or in a loyal breast dethrone Unreasoning reverence for one's own? Yet love and reason surely blend To stir this passion and commend? And who will blame if, though one seeks In gentler tides, and sterner peaks That tower above a wider plain, Contrast to northern hill and main, I cherish still and hold apart The fondest feeling in my heart For where, beneath one's parent sky, Our dear ones live, our dead ones lie? And you, dear friend, who linger still Beside the iris-crested rill That silvers through your olives gray From convent-capped Fiesole, Think not that I forget, forswear, The scenes we lately vowed so fair. To these your wandering footsteps bring The freshness of an English Spring; And even Florence sunnier glows, When Phyllis prattles and Ivor crows. And, though among them still you stray, Sweet-lengthening-out a Tuscan May, You too will here return before Our Northern roses blow once more, To prove to all of kindred birth, For winsome grace and sterling worth, Nothing can match, where'er we roam, An English wife in English home. ~ Alfred Austin,

1456:The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto X. Preludes. I The Joyful Wisdom Would Wisdom for herself be woo'd, And wake the foolish from his dream, She must be glad as well as good, And must not only be, but seem. Beauty and joy are hers by right; And, knowing this, I wonder less That she's so scorn'd, when falsely dight In misery and ugliness. What's that which Heaven to man endears, And that which eyes no sooner see Than the heart says, with floods of tears, ‘Ah, that's the thing which I would be!’ Not childhood, full of frown and fret; Not youth, impatient to disown Those visions high, which to forget Were worse than never to have known; Not worldlings, in whose fair outside Nor courtesy nor justice fails, Thanks to cross-pulling vices tied, Like Samson's foxes, by the tails; Not poets; real things are dreams, When dreams are as realities, And boasters of celestial gleams Go stumbling aye for want of eyes; Not patriots nor people's men, In whom two worse-match'd evils meet Than ever sought Adullam's den, Base conscience and a high conceit; Not new-made saints, their feelings iced, Their joy in man and nature gone, Who sing ‘O easy yoke of Christ!’ But find 'tis hard to get it on; Not great men, even when they're good; The good man whom the time makes great, By some disgrace of chance or blood, God fails not to humiliate; 105 Not these: but souls, found here and there, Oases in our waste of sin, Where everything is well and fair, And Heav'n remits its discipline; Whose sweet subdual of the world The worldling scarce can recognise, And ridicule, against it hurl'd, Drops with a broken sting and dies; Who nobly, if they cannot know Whether a 'scutcheon's dubious field Carries a falcon or a crow, Fancy a falcon on the shield; Yet, ever careful not to hurt God's honour, who creates success, Their praise of even the best desert Is but to have presumed no less; Who, should their own life plaudits bring, Are simply vex'd at heart that such An easy, yea, delightful thing Should move the minds of men so much. They live by law, not like the fool, But like the bard, who freely sings In strictest bonds of rhyme and rule, And finds in them, not bonds, but wings. Postponing still their private ease To courtly custom, appetite, Subjected to observances, To banquet goes with full delight; Nay, continence and gratitude So cleanse their lives from earth's alloy, They taste, in Nature's common food, Nothing but spiritual joy. They shine like Moses in the face, And teach our hearts, without the rod, That God's grace is the only grace, And all grace is the grace of God. II The Devices Love, kiss'd by Wisdom, wakes twice Love, And Wisdom is, thro' loving, wise. Let Dove and Snake, and Snake and Dove, This Wisdom's be, that Love's device. 106 Going To Church. I woke at three; for I was bid To breakfast with the Dean at nine, And thence to Church. My curtain slid, I found the dawning Sunday fine; And could not rest, so rose. The air Was dark and sharp; the roosted birds Cheep'd, ‘Here am I, Sweet; are you there?’ On Avon's misty flats the herds Expected, comfortless, the day, Which slowly fired the clouds above; The cock scream'd, somewhere far away; In sleep the matrimonial dove Was crooning; no wind waked the wood, Nor moved the midnight river-damps, Nor thrill'd the poplar; quiet stood The chestnut with its thousand lamps; The moon shone yet, but weak and drear, And seem'd to watch, with bated breath, The landscape, all made sharp and clear By stillness, as a face by death. II My pray'rs for her being done, I took Occasion by the quiet hour To find and know, by Rule and Book, The rights of love's beloved power. III Fronting the question without ruth, Nor ignorant that, evermore, If men will stoop to kiss the Truth, She lifts them higher than before, I, from above, such light required As now should once for all destroy The folly which at times desired A sanction for so great a joy. 107 IV Thenceforth, and through that pray'r, I trod A path with no suspicions dim. I loved her in the name of God, And for the ray she was of Him; I ought to admire much more, not less; Her beauty was a godly grace; The mystery of loveliness, Which made an altar of her face, Was not of the flesh, though that was fair, But a most pure and living light Without a name, by which the rare And virtuous spirit flamed to sight. If oft, in love, effect lack'd cause And cause effect, 'twere vain to soar Reasons to seek for that which was Reason itself, or something more. My joy was no idolatry Upon the ends of the vile earth bent, For when I loved her most then I Most yearn'd for more divine content. That other doubt, which, like a ghost, In the brain's darkness haunted me, Was thus resolved: Him loved I most, But her I loved most sensibly. Lastly, my giddiest hope allow'd No selfish thought, or earthly smirch; And forth I went, in peace, and proud To take my passion into Church; Grateful and glad to think that all Such doubts would seem entirely vain To her whose nature's lighter fall Made no divorce of heart from brain. I found them, with exactest grace And fresh as Spring, for Spring attired; And by the radiance in her face I saw she felt she was admired; And, through the common luck of love, A moment's fortunate delay, To fit the little lilac glove, 108 Gave me her arm; and I and they (They true to this and every hour, As if attended on by Time), Enter'd the Church while yet the tower Was noisy with the finish'd chime. VI Her soft voice, singularly heard Beside me, in her chant, withstood The roar of voices, like a bird Sole warbling in a windy wood; And, when we knelt, she seem'd to be An angel teaching me to pray; And all through the high Liturgy My spirit rejoiced without allay, Being, for once, borne clearly above All banks and bars of ignorance, By this bright spring-tide of pure love And floated in a free expanse, Whence it could see from side to side, The obscurity from every part Winnow'd away and purified By the vibrations of my heart. ~ Coventry Patmore,

1457:On The Death Of The Queen Mary of Modena d. 1718 {1} Dark was the shade where only cou'd be seen Disasterous Yew that ever balefull green Distructive in the field of old when strung Gloomy o'er graves of sleeping warriours hung Deep was the wild recess that not an ear Which grudged her praises might the accents hear Where sad ARDELIA {2} mourn'd URANIA's{3} Death In sighs which seem'd her own expireing breath In moving Sylables so often broke That more then Eloquence the anguish spoke Urging the tears which cou'd not give relief But seem'd to propagate renewing grief Lamira{4} near her sat and caught the sound Too weak for ecchoing rocks which fixt the bound For Clifts that overlook't the dangerous wave Th'unhappy Vessels or the Sailors grave The pittying Nymph whom sympathy constrain'd Ask't why her friend thus heavily complain'd Why she retired to that ill omen'd spot By men forsaken and the World forgot Why thus from light and company she fled And living sought the mansions of the Dead Her head reclined on the obdurate stone Still uttering low but interrupted moan In which URANIA she to all prefer'd And with her seem'd unactive or interr'd As if all virtues of the polish't mind All excellencies of the female kind All wining graces in Urania join'd As if perfection but in her was seen And Her least dignity was England's Queen. Thou hast discrib'd her pleas'd ARDELIA cry'd As thou hadst known her awfull without pride As thou in Her Domestick train hadst stood And seen her great and found her warmly good Duely maintaining her exalted place Yet condescending with attractive grace Recall'd be days when ebon locks o'erspread 103 My youthfull neck my cheeks a bashfull red When early joys my glowing bosom warm'd When trifles pleas'd & every pleasure charm'd Then eager from the rural seat I came Of long traced Ancestors of worthy name To seek the Court of many woes the source Compleated by this last this sad divorce From her to whom my self I had resign'd The Sovereign Mistress of my vanquish't mind Who now survive but to attend her hearse With dutious tribute of recording verse In which may truth with energy be found And soft as her compassion be the sound Bless't were the hours when thro' attendance due Her numerous charms were present to my view When lowly to her radiant eyes I bowed Suns to my sight but Suns without a cloud Towards me their beneficial aspect turn'd Imprest my duty and my conduct warn'd For who that saw the modest airs they cast But from that pattern must be nicely chast Peculiar Souls have their peculiar sighs And thro' the eye the inward beauty shines Then who can wonder if in hers appear'd Superior sense to be reveer'd & fear'd Endearing sweetness to her happy friends And Holy fire which towards the alter tends Bles't my attention was when drawing near (My places claim) her crouded audience chair I heard her by admiring States addrest With embasies in different tongues exprest To all that Europe sent she gave replies In their own speech most eloquent & wise Soft was her talk and soothing to the heart By nature solid perfected by art The Roman Accent which such grace affords To Tuscan language harmonized her words All eyes all listning sense upon her hung When from her lovely mouth th'inchantment sprung What Livia was when Rome Augustus sway'de {5} And thro' a woman's wit the world obey'd What Portia was when fortitude and love {6} 104 Inflected wounds which did her firmness prove And forcing Brutus to applaud her worth Drew with the steel th'important secret forth Such was URANIA where they most excell'd And where they fail'd by nobler zeal upheld What Italy produc't of glorious names Her native Country & her kindred Dames All virtues which Antiquity cou'd boast She equal'd but on Stormy Britain tost They lost their value on a northern Coast Yet who can wonder if to her we grant What Poets feign when they Diana paint {7} What Legends write when they enthrone a Saint What now ARDELIA speaks with conscious sense Of Real Worth & matchless excellence Never such lustre strove against the light Never such beauty satisfied the sight Never such Majesty on earth was found As when URANIA worthyly was crown'd As when superior airs declared her birth From Conquerors o'er the Monarchs of the Earth And large excuse did for their Maxim bring That Roman Ladies stoop'd to wed a King If Royalty had then arose from choice And merit had compell'd the publick voice All had allow'd URANIA claimed the most In view of whom all other charms were lost Her's in Meridian strong in their decay But sweetly sinking like declining day In grief but veil'd as when a rainy cloud The glorious Sun does yet transparent Shroud And whilst it softens each resplendent beam Weeps o'er the land from whence the vapour came O'er Brittain so her Pious sorrows fell Less for her Woes then that it cou'd rebell Yet thence arose the shades her life o'ercast And worldly greatness seldom made to last Thence in a foreign clime her Consort died Whom death cou'd never from her thoughts divide Thence Sable weeds & cyprus walks she chose And from within produc't her own repose Yet only pray'd for those she cou'd not calm 105 As fragrant trees tho' wounded shed but balm Nor ceas't to live till vindicated Heaven Shew'd that in vain were such examples given Who held her light to three great Kingdoms forth And gave her Sufferings to dilate her worth That Gallia too might see she cou'd support Monastick rules and Britains worst effort Now peacefull is the spirit which possest That never blemish't that afflicted breast Closed are such eyes as paradise might boast Seen but in Eve e'er innocence she lost The solemn grave with reverence takes her down And lasting wreaths succeed th'unstable crown For rude Huzza's in mercenary streets All Hail in her triumphant way she meets Who shall in silent Majesty repose Till every tomb shall every guest disclose Till Heaven which does all human loss repair Distinguishing the attoms of the fair Shall give URANIA's form transcendant beauty there And from the beams Iradiating her face (Which here but wanted that suspended grace) Shall shew the Britains how they strove in vain To strip that brow which was consign'd to reign Tho' Polititians strove to guide the round Of miscall'd fortune & prescribe its bound Till the contested Earth shou'd be no longer found. Here she concludes Lamira thinks it just Such pious tears shou'd wait such Royal Dust. ~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,

1458:Forsaking All Others Part 5 TRAINED nurses, trained nurses everywhere­ Trained nurses by night, trained nurses by day In the corridors, on the stair, Looking for towels, carrying a tray; Saying, 'you mustn't,' 'you must,' 'you may.' Smooth as to hair, stiff as to skirt, Kind in a cool, impersonal way,­ Angels of mercy, bright-eyed, alert, Hard young angels, sent to avert That older angel of dark despair ­ Stiff starched angels, a trifle curt ­ Trained nurses, trained nurses everywhere. II A WHITE figure spoke from the doorway In a tone deliberately bright: 'Would you like to see the patient For a moment, and say goodnight?' Shepherded in like a stranger He stood beside her bed, Gazed at those pale, blank eyelids In that carven ivory head. Took her hand and heard her Murmur: 'Is that you, Jim?' But he knew she was very tired ­ Tired even of him. Too much spent with the struggle Of drawing breath to afford A brief smile - utterly weary, And more than utterly bored. III 42 NEVER before had Ruth been out of reach: Barriers had been - but only of his making. Now she had passed beyond the power of speech, Quite, quite indifferent that his heart was breaking. Here in the bedroom that he used to share She lived day after day, averse to living, Indifferent, unforgiving, unaware That he had any need of her forgiving. IV AT first Lee wrote to him every day Tactful letters, that let him see She knew very well he would rather be With her - but it wasn't the thing to say. Tactful letters at first, and then Letters less tactful and more sincere, Ending: 'Why don't you write to me, dear?' Write to me . . . over and over again. But he could not answer her piteous call; Not exactly that he forgot Their love, but only that she had not Any reality for him at all. She seemed like a pleasant book he had read Read and enjoyed; but the printed page Cannot compete with the heritage Of Nature. . . the living, and Oh, the dead! At last he sent her a brief reply: 'I cannot write - or eat or sleep Just now. I am going through the deep Waters. Forgive me, dear Lee. Good-bye.' THEN a night came When in sleep broken 43 He heard his name Suddenly spoken. Into his dream Horrors flocked thickly­ Was that a scream? 'Better come quicklyl' Cold was his room And his hands shaking; Out of the gloom Dawn was just breaking­ Dawn cool and green Over the ocean, Never more seen Without emotion Of death - agony ­ Somebody crying ­ All dawns that dawn, when he Knew Ruth was dying. VI WHAT can you do with a woman's things After a woman is dead? Not the bracelets and rings and strings Of pearls, but the small unvalued things ­ What can I do, Wayne said. What can you do with a woman's dresses, After a woman is dead? Hanging limp in the cedar presses, They are part of herself, her pretty dresses ­ What can I do, Wayne said. What can you do with a woman's shoes, After a woman is dead? Shoes that perhaps you helped her choose, Poor little empty half-worn shoes­ What can I do, Wayne said. What can you do with her brush and comb, 44 After a woman is dead? What in God's name can you do with her home And her loss and her love and her brush and comb ­ What can I do, Wayne said. VII UP a little river Where salmon used to play, Not twenty miles distant A little village lay -­ Ruth's native village, Where Wayne used to go To see his mother's mother Many years ago. Here in a churchyard With pines along the wall And a wooden church steeple Almost too tall, Here in September, On a bright clear day Among the graves of sailors, They laid Ruth away. In this same churchyard, Sitting on the stones, He had first said he loved her In young shaken tones. That had been September, But not this bright light. Between the pine-needles The stars shone white,­ Such a little maiden, Such a young man­ 'I love you.' - And she answered: 'I don't see how you can.' They had been so happy They had not cared at all That the place was a churchyard With pines along the wall. VIII 45 WAYNE stood bareheaded on the churchyard sward By the open grave under the open sky: 'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord, He who believeth in Me shall never die.' Beautiful, terrible service! He heard a word Here and there, and then he would drift away To other memories and things not heard­ Ruth's laugh when she used to laugh, so little and gay. 'When thou with rebukes dost chasten a man from sin..' Was it sin that had parted him from Ruth? Was sin the secret corrosion that entered in Likea moth fretting the garment of love in youth? Too late, too late! He heard the parson say: 'Before I go hence and be no more seen. . . A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday. . . Too late, too late! 'As grass in the morning green...' 'Was it Ruth he was leaving here in the churchyard plot­ Could it be Ruth who had gone, not saying good-bye? 'What advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.' How can a man help eating and drinking? Die to-morrow! To-day, if he had his will. How many years must he spend in thinking, thinking Of the thing which someone has said that all men kill? Well, he could bear what he must bear - even the sound Of earth on a coffin falling. What must be must. 'We therefore commit her body to the ground, Ashes to ashes, earth to earth, dust to dust.' Prayers! Would they never be done, these killing Rites for the dead! Ah, there was the organ's roll From the little church, and children's shrilling, Piping Ruth's favourite hymn, 'Hark, hark, my soul...' 'Hark, hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling 46 O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore; How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling Of that new life where sin shall be no morel Angels of Jesus, Angels of light, Singing to welcome The pilgrims of the night.' IX 'Dear Lee:­ I've tried so many times to write, And now I must write, for I sail next week For Italy - Sardinia - I might Go on to Egypt later, and the Greek Islands. I may be several years away. 'I loved you, Lee. I wonder if I can Explain at all what's happened? From your wealth You gave me freely - more than any man Has ever had - beauty, wit, youth and health­ I loved you passionately; and now my wife Is dead. One might expect a mild distress, A briefly pensive mood. . . Instead, my life Is shattered. . . is dissolved. . . is meaningless. . . She whom of late I thought so little of And saw so little, was, I find, the spring Of all I did and felt - even of my love Of you. . . What an insane, incredible thingl But there it is. 'Dear Lee, this is the truth: That any marriage founded on devotion Though that devotion die, as mine for Ruth, Is not a state, but a unique emotion, Potent, unalterable - not romantic Love, though romantic love is where it starts Marriage begins only when those hot, frantic Fires have finished welding human hearts. It is not love, friendship, or partnership, But this emotion-marriage, of a force 47 That when it once has held you in its grip Nothing will free you wholly - not divorce, Or death, for these destroy not it, but you, As I am now destroyed. 'Beware, dear Lee, Of a true marriage, if you are not true Yourself - or you will be destroyed - like me.' ~ Alice Duer Miller,

1459:The Break Away Your daisies have come on the day of my divorce: the courtroom a cement box, a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land for the Jew in me, but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us— and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors that makes the now separate parts useless, even to cut each other up as we did yearly under the crayoned-in sun. The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break into two cans ready for recycling, flattened tin humans and a tin law, even for my twenty-five years of hanging on by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers. The gray room: Judge, lawyer, witness and me and invisible Skeezix, and all the other torn enduring the bewilderments of their division. Your daisies have come on the day of my divorce. They arrive like round yellow fish, sucking with love at the coral of our love. Yet they wait, in their short time, like little utero half-borns, half killed, thin and bone soft. They breathe the air that stands for twenty-five illicit days, the sun crawling inside the sheets, the moon spinning like a tornado in the washbowl, and we orchestrated them both, calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS. 211 There was a song, our song on your cassette, that played over and over and baptised the prodigals. It spoke the unspeakable, as the rain will on an attic roof, letting the animal join its soul as we kneeled before a miracleforgetting its knife. The daisies confer in the old-married kitchen papered with blue and green chefs who call out pies, cookies, yummy, at the charcoal and cigarette smoke they wear like a yellowy salve. The daisies absorb it allthe twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love (If one could call such handfuls of fists and immobile arms that!) and on this day my world rips itself up while the country unfastens along with its perjuring king and his court. It unfastens into an abortion of belief, as in methe legal riftas on might do with the daisies but does not for they stand for a love undergoihng open heart surgery that might take if one prayed tough enough. And yet I demand, even in prayer, that I am not a thief, a mugger of need, and that your heart survive on its own, belonging only to itself, whole, entirely whole, and workable in its dark cavern under your ribs. 212 I pray it will know truth, if truth catches in its cup and yet I pray, as a child would, that the surgery take. I dream it is taking. Next I dream the love is swallowing itself. Next I dream the love is made of glass, glass coming through the telephone that is breaking slowly, day by day, into my ear. Next I dream that I put on the love like a lifejacket and we float, jacket and I, we bounce on that priest-blue. We are as light as a cat's ear and it is safe, safe far too long! And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window and peer down at the moon in the pond and know that beauty has walked over my head, into this bedroom and out, flowing out through the window screen, dropping deep into the water to hide. I will observe the daisies fade and dry up wuntil they become flour, snowing themselves onto the table beside the drone of the refrigerator, beside the radio playing Frankie (as often as FM will allow) snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceilingas twenty-five years split from my side like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma. It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds and their little half-life, their numbered days that raged like a secret radio, recalling love that I picked up innocently, 213 yet guiltily, as my five-year-old daughter picked gum off the sidewalk and it became suddenly an elastic miracle. For me it was love found like a diamond where carrots growthe glint of diamond on a plane wing, meaning: DANGER! THICK ICE! but the good crunch of that orange, the diamond, the carrot, both with four million years of resurrecting dirt, and the love, although Adam did not know the word, the love of Adam obeying his sudden gift. You, who sought me for nine years, in stories made up in front of your naked mirror or walking through rooms of fog women, you trying to forget the mother who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss through the keyhole, you who wrote out your own birth and built it with your own poems, your own lumber, your own keyhole, into the trunk and leaves of your manhood, you, who fell into my words, years before you fell into me (the other, both the Camp Director and the camper), you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams, and calls and letters and once a luncheon, and twice a reading by me for you. But I wouldn't! Yet this year, yanking off all past years, I took the bait and was pulled upward, upward, into the sky and was held by the sun- 214 the quick wonder of its yellow lapand became a woman who learned her own shin and dug into her soul and found it full, and you became a man who learned his won skin and dug into his manhood, his humanhood and found you were as real as a baker or a seer and we became a home, up into the elbows of each other's soul, without knowingan invisible purchasethat inhabits our house forever. We were blessed by the House-Die by the altar of the color T.V. and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage, a tiny marriage called belief, as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy, so close to absolute, so daft within a year or two. The daisies have come for the last time. And I who have, each year of my life, spoken to the tooth fairy, believing in her, even when I was her, am helpless to stop your daisies from dying, although your voice cries into the telephone: Marry me! Marry me! and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight: The love is in dark trouble! The love is starting to die, right nowwe are in the process of it. The empty process of it. I see two deaths, and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart, and though I willed one away in court today 215 and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other, they both die like waves breaking over me and I am drowning a little, but always swimming among the pillows and stones of the breakwater. And though your daisies are an unwanted death, I wade through the smell of their cancer and recognize the prognosis, its cartful of lossI say now, you gave what you could. It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on! and the dead city of my marriage seems less important than the fact that the daisies came weekly, over and over, likes kisses that can't stop themselves. There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973. Let one be forgottenBury it! Wall it up! But let me not forget the man of my child-like flowers though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior, he remains, his fingers the marvel of fourth of July sparklers, his furious ice cream cones of licking, remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth when I sweat into the bathtub of his being. For the rest that is left: name it gentle, as gentle as radishes inhabiting their short life in the earth, name it gentle, gentle as old friends waving so long at the window, or in the drive, name it gentle as maple wings singing themselves upon the pond outside, as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond, that night that it was ours, 216 when our bodies floated and bumped in moon water and the cicadas called out like tongues. Let such as this be resurrected in all men whenever they mold their days and nights as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine and planted the seed that dives into my God and will do so forever no matter how often I sweep the floor. ~ Anne Sexton,

1460:Robin Hood And The Prince Of Aragon NOW Robin Hood, Will Scadlock and Little John Are walking over the plain, With a good fat buck which Will Scadlock With his strong bow had slain. `Jog on, jog on,' cries Robin Hood, `The day it runs full fast; For though my nephew me a breakfast gave, I have not yet broke my fast. `Then to yonder lodge let us take our way, I think it wondrous good, Where my nephew by my bold yeomen Shall be welcomd unto the green wood.' With that he took the bugle-horn, Full well he could it blow; Streight from the woods came marching down One hundred tall fellows and mo. `Stand, stand to your arms!' crys Will Scadlock, `Lo! the enemies are within ken:' With that Robin Hood he laughd aloud, Crys, They are my bold yeomen. Who, when they arriv'd and Robin espy'd, Cry'd, Master, what is your will? We thought you had in danger been, Your horn did sound so shrill. `Now nay, now nay,' quoth Robin Hood, `The danger is past and gone; I would have you to welcome my nephew here, That hath paid me two for one.' In feasting and sporting they passed the day, Till Phoebus sunk into the deep; Then each one to his quarters hy'd, His guard there for to keep. 583 Long had they not walked within the green wood, But Robin he was espy'd Of a beautiful damsel all alone, That on a black palfrey did ride. Her riding-suit was of sable hew black, Sypress over her face, Through which her rose-like cheeks did blush, All with a comely grace. `Come, tell me the cause, thou pritty one,' Quoth Robin, aend tell me aright, From whence thou comest, and whither thou goest, All in this mournful plight?' `From London I came,' the damsel reply'd, `From London upon the thames, Which circled is, O grief to tell! Besieg'd with forraign arms. `By the proud Prince of Aragon, Who swears by his martial hand To have the princess for his spouse, Or else to waste this land: `Except that champions can be found That dare fight three to three, Against the prince and giants twain, Most horrid for to see: `Whose grisly looks, and eyes like brands, Strike terrour where they come, With serpents hissing on their helms, Instead of feathered plume. `The princess shall be the victors prize, The king hath vowd and said, And he that shall the conquest win Shall have her to his bride. `Now we are four damsels sent abroad, 584 To the east, west, north, and south, To try whose fortune is so good To find these champions forth. `But all in vaine we have sought about; Yet none so bold there are That dare adventure life and blood, To free a lady fair.' `When is the day?' quoth Robin Hood, `Tell me this and no more:' `On Midsummer next,' the damsel said, `Which is June the twenty-four.' With that the teares trickled down her cheeks, And silent was her tongue; With sighs and sobs she took her leave, Away her palfrey sprung. This news struck Robin to the heart, He fell down on the grass; His actions and his troubled mind Shewd he perplexed was. `Where lies your grief?' quoth Will Scadlock, `O master, tell to me; If the damsels eyes have piercd your heart, I'll fetch her back to thee.' `Now nay, now nay,' quoth Robin Hood, `She doth not cause my smart; But it is the poor distressed princess That wounds me to the heart. `I will go fight the giants all To set the lady free:' `The devil take my soul,' quoth Little John, `If I part with thy company.' `Must I stay behind?' quoth Will Scadlock; `No, no, that must not be; I'le make the third man in the fight, 585 So we shall be three to three.' These words cheerd Robin at the heart, Joy shone within his face; Within his arms he huggd them both, And kindly did imbrace. Quoth he, We'll put on mothly gray, With long staves in our hands, A scrip and bottle by our sides, As come from the Holy Land. So may we pass along the high-way; None will ask from whence we came, But take us pilgrims for to be, Or else some holy men. Now they are on their journey gone, As fast as they may speed, Yet for all haste, ere they arriv'd, The princess forth was led: To be deliverd to the prince, Who in the list did stand, Prepar'd to fight, or else receive His lady by the hand. With that he walkt about the lists, With giants by his side: `Bring forth,' said he, 'your champions, Or bring me forth my bride. `This is the four and twentieth day, The day prefixt upon; Bring forth my bride, or London burns, I swear by Acaron.' Then cries the king, and queen likewise, Both weeping as they speak, Lo! we have brought our daughter dear, Whom we are forcd to forsake. 586 With that stept out bold Robin Hood, Crys, My liege, it must not be so; Such beauty as the fair princess Is not for a tyrants mow. The prince he then began to storm; Crys, Fool, fanatick, baboon! How dares thou stop my valours prize? I'll kill thee with a frown. `Thou tyrant Turk, thou infidel,' Thus Robin began to reply, `Thy frowns I scorn; lo! here's my gage, And thus I thee defie. `And for these two Goliahs there, That stand on either side, Here are two little Davids by, That soon can tame their pride.' Then did the king for armour send, For lances, swords, and shields: And thus all three in armour bright Came marching to the field. The trumpets began to sound a charge, Each singled out his man; Their arms in pieces soon were hewd, Blood sprang from every vain. The prince he reacht Robin a blow---He struck with might and main---Which forcd him to reel about the field, As though he had been slain. `God-a-mercy,' quoth Robin, 'For that blow! The quarrel shall soon be try'd; This stroke shall shew a full divorce Betwixt thee and thy bride.' So from his shoulders he's cut his head, Which on the ground did fall, 587 And grumbling sore at Robin Hood, To be so dealt withal. The giants then began to rage, To see their prince lie dead: `Thou's be the next,' quoth Little John, `Unless thou well guard thy head.' With that his faulchion he whirld about---It was both keen and sharp---He clove the giant to the belt, And cut in twain his heart. Will Scadlock well had playd his part, The giant he had brought to his knee; Quoth he, The devil cannot break his fast, Unless he have you all three. So with his faulchion he run him through, A deep and gashly wound; Who damd and foamd, cursd and blasphemd, And then fell to the ground. Now all the lists with cheers were filld, The skies they did resound, Which brought the princess to herself, Who was faln in a swound. The king and queen and princess fair Came walking to the place, And gave the champions many thanks, And did them further grace. `Tell me,' quoth the king, 'whence you are, That thus disguised came, Whose valour speaks that noble blood Doth run through every vain.' `A boon, a boon,' quoth Robin Hood, `On my knees I beg and crave:' `By my crown,' quoth the king, `I grant; Ask what, and thou shalt have.' 588 `Then pardon I beg for my merry men, Which are within the green wood, For Little John, and Will Scadlock, And for me, bold Robin Hood.' `Art thou Robin Hood?' then quoth the king; `For the valour you have shewn, Your pardons I doe freely grant, And welcome every one. `The princess I promised the victors prize; She cannot have you all three; `She shall chuse,' quoth Robin; saith Little John, Then little share falls to me. Then did the princess view all three, With a comely lovely grace, Who took Will Scadlock by the hand, Quoth, Here I make my choice. With that a noble lord stept forth, Of Maxfield earl was he, Who lookt Will Scadlock in the face, Then wept most bitterly. Quoth he, I had a son like thee, Whom I lovd wondrous well; But he is gone, or rather dead; His name is Young Gamwell. Then did Will Scadlock fall on his knees, Cries, Father! father! here, Here kneels your son, your Young Gamwell You said you lovd so dear. But, lord! what imbracing and kissing was there, When all these friends were met! They are gone to the wedding, and so to bedding, And so I bid you good night. 589 ~ Anonymous Olde English,

1461:The Battle Of Harlaw--Evergreen Version Frae Dunidier as I cam throuch, Doun by the hill of Banochie, Allangst the lands of Garioch. Grit pitie was to heir and se The noys and dulesum hermonie, That evir that dreiry day did daw! Cryand the corynoch on hie, Alas! alas! for the Harlaw. I marvlit what the matter meant; All folks were in a fiery fariy: I wist nocht wha was fae or freind, Yet quietly I did me carrie. But sen the days of auld King Hairy, Sic slauchter was not hard nor sene, And thair I had nae tyme to tairy, For bissiness in Aberdene. Thus as I walkit on the way, To Inverury as I went, I met a man, and bad him stay, Requeisting him to mak me quaint Of the beginning and the event That happenit thair at the Harlaw; Then he entreited me to tak tent, And he the truth sould to me schaw. Grit Donald of the Ysles did claim Unto the lands of Ross sum richt, And to the governour he came, Them for to haif, gif that he micht, Wha saw his interest was but slicht, And thairfore answerit with disdain. He hastit hame baith day and nicht, And sent nae bodward back again. But Donald richt impatient Of that answer Duke Robert gaif, He vow'd to God Omniyotent, 190 All the hale lands of Ross to half, Or ells be graithed in his graif: He wald not quat his richt for nocht, Nor be abusit like a slaif; That bargin sould be deirly bocht. Then haistylie he did command That all his weir-men should convene; Ilk an well harnisit frae hand, To melt and heir what he did mein. He waxit wrath and vowit tein; Sweirand he wald surpryse the North, Subdew the brugh of Aberdene, Mearns, Angus, and all Fyfe to Forth. Thus with the weir-men of the yles, Wha war ay at his bidding bown, With money maid, with forss and wyls, Richt far and neir, baith up and doun, Throw mount and muir, frae town to town, Allangst the lands of Ross he roars, And all obey'd at his bandown, Evin frae the North to Suthren shoars. Then all the countrie men did yield; For nae resistans durst they mak, Nor offer batill in the feild, Be forss of arms to beir him bak. Syne they resolvit all and spak, That best it was for thair behoif, They sould him for thair chiftain tak, Believing weil he did them luve. Then he a proclamation maid, All men to meet at Inverness, Throw Murray land to mak a raid, Frae Arthursyre unto Spey-ness. And further mair, he sent express, To schaw his collours and ensenzie, To all and sindry, mair and less, Throchout the bounds of Byne and Enzie. 191 And then throw fair Strathbogie land His purpose was for to pursew, And whatsoevir durst gainstand, That race they should full sairly rew. Then he bad all his men be trew, And him defend by forss and slicht, And promist them rewardis anew, And mak them men of mekle micht. Without resistans, as he said, Throw all these parts he stoutly past, Where sum war wae, and sum war glaid, But Garioch was all agast. Throw all these feilds be sped him fast, For sic a sicht was never sene; And then, forsuith, he langd at last To se the bruch of Aberdene. To hinder this prowd enterprise, The stout and michty Erl of Marr With all his men in arms did ryse, Even frae Curgarf to Craigyvar: And down the syde of Don richt far, Angus and Mearns did all convene To fecht, or Donald came sae nar The ryall bruch of Aberdene. And thus the martial Erle of Marr Marcht with his men in richt array; Befoir his enemis was aware, His banner bauldly did display. For weil enewch they kent the way, And all their semblance well they saw: Without all dangir or delay, Come haistily to the Harlaw. With him the braif Lord Ogilvy, Of Angus sheriff principall, The constable of gude Dunde, The vanguard led before them all. Suppose in number they war small, Thay first richt bauldlie did pursew, 192 And maid thair faes befor them fall, Wha then that race did sairly rew. And then the worthy Lord Salton, The strong undoubted Laird of Drum, The stalwart Laird of Lawristone, With ilk thair forces all and sum. Panmuir with all his men, did cum, The provost of braif Aberdene, With trumpets and with tuick of drum, Came schortly in thair armour schene. These with the Earle of Marr came on, In the reir-ward richt orderlie, Thair enemies to sett upon; In awfull manner hardilie, Togither vowit to live and die, Since they had marchit mony mylis, For to suppress the tyrannie Of douted Donald of the Ysles. But he, in number ten to ane, Right subtile alang did ryde, With Malcomtosch, and fell Maclean, With all thair power at thair syde; Presumeand on their strenth and pryde, Without all feir or ony aw, Richt bauldie battil did abyde, Hard by the town of fair Harlaw. The armies met, the trumpet sounds, The dandring drums alloud did touk, Baith armies byding on the bounds, Till ane of them the feild sould bruik. Nae help was thairfor, nane wald jouk, Ferss was the fecht on ilka syde, And on the ground lay mony a bouk Of them that thair did battil byd. With doutsum victorie they dealt, The bludy battil lastit lang; Each man fits nibours forss thair felt, 193 The weakest aft-tymes gat the wrang: Thair was nae mowis thair them amang, Naithing was hard but heavy knocks, That eccho mad a dulefull sang, Thairto resounding frae the rocks. But Donalds men at last gaif back, For they war all out of array: The Earl of Marris men throw them brak, Pursewing shairply in thair way, Thair enemys to tak or slay, Be dynt of forss to gar them yield; Wha war richt blyth to win away, And sae for feirdness tint the feild. Then Donald fled, and that full fast, To mountains hich for all his micht; For he and his war all agast, And ran till they war out of sicht; And sae of Ross he lost his richt, Thocht mony men with hem he brocht; Towards the yles fled day and nicht, And all he wan was deirlie bocht. This is (quod he) the richt report Of all that I did heir and knaw; Thocht my discourse be sumthing schort, Tak this to be a richt suthe saw: Contrairie God and the kings law, Thair was spilt mekle Christian blude, Into the battil of Harlaw: This is the sum, sae I conclude. But yet a bonnie while abide, And I sall mak thee cleirly ken What slaughter was on ilkay syde, Of Lowland and of Highland men, Wha for thair awin haif evir bene; These lazie lowns micht weil be spared, Chased like deers into their dens, And gat their wages for reward. 194 Malcomtosh, of the clan heid-cheif, Macklean with his grit hauchty heid, With all thair succour and relief, War dulefully dung to the deid; And now we are freid of thair feid, They will not lang to cum again; Thousands with them, without remeid, On Donald's syd, that day war slain. And on the uther syde war lost, Into the feild that dismal day, Chief men of worth, of mekle cost, To be lamentit sair for ay. The Lord Saltoun of Rothemay, A man of micht and mekle main; Grit dolour was for his decay, That sae unhappylie was slain. Of the best men amang them was The gracious gude Lord Ogilvy, The sheriff-principal of Angus, Renownit for truth and equitie, For faith and magnanimitie; He had few fallows in the field, Yet fell by fatall destinie, For he naeways wad grant to yield. Sir James Scrimgeor of Duddap, knicht, Grit constabill of fair Dunde, Unto the dulefull deith was dicht; The kingis cheif bannerman was he, A valiant man of chevalrie, Whose predecessors wan that place At Spey, with gude King William frie 'Gainst Murray, and Macduncan's race. Gude Sir Allexander Irving, The much renowit laird of Drum, Nane in his days was bettir sene When they war semblit all and sum. To praise him we sould not be dumm, For valour, witt, and worthyness; 195 To end his days he ther did cum Whose ransom is remeidyless. And thair the knicht of Lawriston Was slain into his armour schene, And gude Sir Robert Davidson, Wha provost was of Aberdene: The knicht of Panmure, as was sene, A mortall man in armour bricht, Sir Thomas Murray, stout and kene, Left to the warld thair last gude nicht. Thair was not sen King Keneths days Sic strange intestine crewel stryf In Scotland sene, as ilk man says, Whare mony liklie lost thair lyfe; Whilk maid divorce twene man and wyfe, And mony childrene fatherless, Whilk in this realme has bene full ryfe: Lord help these lands, our wrangs redress. In July, on Saint James his even, That four and twenty dismall day, Twelve hundred, ten score and eleven Of theirs sen Chryst, the suthe to say, Men will remember, as they may, When thus the ventie they knaw, And mony a ane may murn for ay, The brim battil of the Harlaw. ~ Andrew Lang,

1462:Forsaking All Others Part 1 'NOT that you'll like him,' Nell said, 'No mystery - no romance, A fine, stern, eagle-like head, But he simply reeks of finance, -­ Started from nothing - self-made -­ And rather likes you to know it, And now collects porcelain and jade, Or some Seventeenth Century poet. 'Married in simpler days, A poor little wren of a being, Who exists to pray and praise, And spends her life agreeing, Thin and dowdy and pale, And getting paler and thinner­ Well, the point of this dreary tale Is I've asked them both to dinner. 'I'd leave her out like a shot, For I'm not so keen about her, But, my dear, believe it or not, He won't dine out without her. She has that terrible hold That aging wives exert to Replace young charms grown old­ Poor health and impeccable virtue. 'Lightly I asked them to dine, And now I perceive the dangers, My friends-yours and mine­ Are so terribly rude to strangers. But you, dear girl, I can trust To come and be brilliant and tender; Vamp the man, if you must, But give an impression of splendor.' II LEE sat before her mirror... rouged her lips, 19 Set dripping diamond earrings in her ears, Polished a little at her finger tips, Thought that she did not look her thirty years; Thought, 'Poor dear Nellie's ill-assorted feasts! I want to be as helpful as I can Among that group of men and gods and beasts... Why does she think I shall not like this man? She made him sound entrancing... strong and crude, Successful, dominant...I, who for so long Have known a somewhat pitiful servitude To weakness, have no terror of the strong.' Her maid held up her cloak of furry white, And gave her money in a golden purse. She sighed: 'Not even third-rate bridge to-night, Just third-rate conversation... which is worse.' III 'NELLIE, I'm sorry I'm late, Edward, I honestly am. Just the malignance of fate I always get caught in a jam Whenever I'm coming to you. 'Mrs. Wayne back of you, Lee, And Mr. Wayne.' 'How do you do. Isn't that cocktail for me? IV MENU CAVIAR, cocktails, soup of black bean, Shad, Moet-Chandon of 1919, A saddle of mutton, a stuffed aubergine, With some creme de menthe jelly of beautiful green, Avocados and lettuce and cold galantine And baba au rhum with a sauce grenadine, Coffee and fruit and some excellent fine. 20 V SOME women - hard, beautiful women - know a way Of looking up at a man, so gentle and gay, A magical child-like look that seems to say: Let us be happy together for an hour, a day, A night, or forever. Let us yield to the charm. Lee looked at Wayne and put her hand on his arm, Under the broadcloth and linen she felt his muscles like steel, Feeling, she said to herself, as a man's arm ought to feel. And she glanced at her own hand there, so slim and cool With its single cabochon emerald, like a deep green pool. 'Shall we go first,' she asked him, 'or let them all go ahead? ' And so they spoke of leading... and being led. And then she told him a story, heard she didn't know when, Of an arctic expedition, from which two men Had got lost and while they were off and away They met a dog, starving like them and astray... A clever heroic creature, who in the end Guided them back, and they loved that dog like a friend; ­ Loved him and worried about him all the way back... What would he do when he met the head of the pack, The leader of dogs, the old dog, cruel and stern, Who brooked no rival. How could this new dog learn... Himself a leader and used to his own wild way, How could he learn to be one of the pack and obey? Would he not fight for mastery... hopeless...they caught their breath. Were they not leading this friend they loved to death? And now the crisis was on them... they saw camp now, Two men in a fragile boat and a dog standing up in the prow. They pushed the boat as near as they could to the bank, And someone to help them land shoved out a plank, The new dog leaped on the plank, and the old dog, bristling and proud Made one step to meet him in front of the crowd, And they looked at each other a moment, and the old dog lay on his back, And the new dog stepped ashore... the head of the pack. 'A very interesting story. Why did you tell it to me? ' 21 Asked Wayne, with his black eyes on her. 'Why do you think? ' asked Lee. VI CANDLE light beams, flickers and blazes On panelled pine walls, fashioned of old; Pale pink roses in golden vases, Hothouse grapes in a bowl of gold; Crystal goblets, and plenty of them, Flashing their points of rainbow light. Tall, grave men servants bending above them, Everyone talking with all his might: ­ 'Why didn't Archie go with Jessie? ' 'My dear, she didn't want him, of course.' 'Aren't things getting a trifle messy? ' 'There's nothing messy about divorce.' 'Algy's a sort of weak Othello.' 'Poor creature. Jessie is quite a bird.' 'I hear Nan's doing her room in yellow.'. 'Her room? I think it's her hair you heard.' 'Tom never could resist a title.' 'Well, I'm rather a snob myself-' 'The woman is large and rich and vital And does not mean to be laid on the shelf.' 'Nonsense, she's older than Tom's own mother, And ought to be laid on a couple of shelves.' While Lee and Wayne just talked to each other, Talked to each other about themselves. VII NELLIE and Edward left alone, Feeling their house again their own, Stood by the fire. 'It seemed to me 22 The Great Man fell with a crash for Lee...' 'Nellie, the dinner was very good.' 'Darling, so glad you liked your food: I'm afraid it's all the fun you had, With Mrs. Wayne...' 'No, not so bad. I rather liked her. The old girl said Good things; she's got a tongue in her head. But why the deuce need she look like that? She isn't old and she isn't fat. Wayne's probably generous, certainly rich, Why need she dress like a Salem witch? ' 'Oh, I could talk an hour,' said Nell, 'On the psychic basis of dressing well. It isn't a question of pocket-books, It isn't a figure, it isn't looks. It isn't going to first-rate places. Believe me, the thing has a psychic basis. It's caring... caring a terrible lot... Whether you're right, or whether you're not. It's being a slave, yet now and then Snapping your fingers at gods and men. It's art, it's genius, it's using your mind... What does the Bible say-'that kind Comes not forth but by fasting and prayer...' Well, that's the answer... you've got to care: And Mrs. Wayne clearly has not been caring For twenty years about what she was wearing.' NELLIE and Edward left alone, Feeling their house again their own, Stood by the fire. 'It seemed to me The Great Man fell with a crash for Lee...' 'Nellie, the dinner was very good.' 'Darling, so glad you liked your food: 23 I'm afraid it's all the fun you had, With Mrs. Wayne...' 'No, not so bad. I rather liked her. The old girl said Good things; she's got a tongue in her head. But why the deuce need she look like that? She isn't old and she isn't fat. Wayne's probably generous, certainly rich, Why need she dress like a Salem witch? ' 'Oh, I could talk an hour,' said Nell, 'On the psychic basis of dressing well. It isn't a question of pocket-books, It isn't a figure, it isn't looks. It isn't going to first-rate places. Believe me, the thing has a psychic basis. It's caring... caring a terrible lot... Whether you're right, or whether you're not. It's being a slave, yet now and then Snapping your fingers at gods and men. It's art, it's genius, it's using your mind... What does the Bible say-'that kind Comes not forth but by fasting and prayer...' Well, that's the answer... you've got to care: And Mrs. Wayne clearly has not been caring For twenty years about what she was wearing.' VII AT first the Waynes were silent driving home. Park Avenue tilted southward mile by mile Until a pale, golden, exotic dome Stood like a gate across the steep defile. Rain had been falling and the streets were black. The traffic lights-emerald and carmine pink­ Were clearly, perfectly reflected back As in dark mirrors or a pool of ink. And it was doubly beautiful and gay When green or red flashed down the polished way. Wayne in his corner, staring at the skies, 24 Thought, with his air of easy self-command: 'God, what a woman! What a skin, what eyes, Lashes a man could feel against his hand. She lacks a leader, and she knows her lack, For all her skill and pride... I understood, If I could turn Time's moving finger back How easily I could lead her, if I would. 'Why do you tell that tale,' I asked, 'to me? ' She looked at me. 'Why do you think? ' said she. 'If I were free... but I have led my life With Ruth, and I am bound beyond repeal, Bound faster to her than she knows: my wife Is sceptical and wise, and true as steel. I will not hurt her, as I once before Hurt her. I have an oath in heaven; and so I shall not see this lady any more. Thank God I have the art of saying No. I shall not go to see her in her flat Or telephone or write her... that is that.' Ruth, staring at the polished onyx street, Thought: 'Merciful God, must I again endure This agony: must I again compete, I who am old and tired and insecure? And she is beautiful and white and slim, And confident of stirring men's desire... I felt even as she first looked at him, Something that flashed between the two like fire. I always know when these wild passions start, By something sharp and sickening at my heart. 'Honey-toned Emily, my childhood friend Who sweetly laid her plans to take my place; And that stenographer in Little Bend With her mad eyes and her impassive face... Wild midnight scenes over the telephone, In office hours a most respectful 'Sir' And yet her heart was set on him alone, She really loved him, and I pitied her. We had so much in common, she and I, She almost told me, when she said good-bye. 25 'But worst was Grace. Grace with her secret art... She made him feel in some Satanic way They were Olympians... she and he... apart, Superior to me... to common clay. They were spectators at a childish play, They were all-seeing, in a world of blind... I could have killed them both with ecstasy.. She so contemptuous and he so kind ' And suddenly his voice was at her ear, Saying: 'Did you enjoy yourself, my dear? ' IX LEE alone in her room in the dark Stared out over Central Park. The rain brought out the primitive smell Of cold wet earth. Lee thought: 'Ah, well, There is a man I certainly can Have if I want... and he is a man; A man who might possibly seethe and bubble, And be a good deal of fun, and a lot of trouble.' ~ Alice Duer Miller,

1463:Madeline In Church Here, in the darkness, where this plaster saint Stands nearer than God stands to our distress, And one small candle shines, but not so faint As the far lights of everlastingness, I'd rather kneel than over there, in open day Where Christ is hanging, rather pray To something more like my own clay, Not too divine; For, once, perhaps my little saint Before he got his niche and crown, Had one short stroll about the town; It brings him closer, just that taint— And anyone can wash the paint Off our poor faces, his and mine! Is that why I see Monty now? equal to any saint, poor boy, as good as gold, But still, with just the proper trace Of earthliness on his shining wedding face; And then gone suddenly blank and old The hateful day of the divorce: Stuart got his, hands down, of course Crowing like twenty cocks and grinning like a horse: But Monty took it hard. All said and done I liked him best,— He was the first, he stands out clearer than the rest. It seems too funny all we other rips Should have immortal souls; Monty and Redge quite damnably Keep theirs afloat while we go down like scuttled ships.— It's funny too, how easily we sink, One might put up a monument, I think To half the world and cut across it "Lost at Sea!" I should drown Jim, poor little sparrow, if I netted him to-night— No, it's no use this penny light— Or my poor saint with his tin-pot crown— The trees of Calvary are where they were, When we are sure that we can spare The tallest, let us go and strike it down And leave the other two still standing there. I, too, would ask Him to remember me If there were any Paradise beyond this earth that I could see. 18 Oh! quiet Christ who never knew The poisonous fangs that bite us through And make us do the things we do, See how we suffer and fight and die, How helpless and how low we lie, God holds You, and You hang so high, Though no one looking long at You, Can think You do not suffer too, But, up there, from your still, star-lighted tree What can You know, what can You really see Of this dark ditch, the soul of me! We are what we are: when I was half a child I could not sit Watching black shadows on green lawns and red carnations burning in the sun, Without paying so heavily for it That joy and pain, like any mother and her unborn child were almost one. I could hardly bear The dreams upon the eyes of white geraniums in the dusk, The thick, close voice of musk, The jessamine music on the thin night air, Or, sometimes, my own hands about me anywhere — The sight of my own face (for it was lovely then) even the scent of my own hair, Oh! there was nothing, nothing that did not sweep to the high seat Of laughing gods, and then blow down and beat My soul into the highway dust, as hoofs do the dropped roses of the street. I think my body was my soul, And when we are made thus Who shall control Our hands, our eyes, the wandering passion of our feet, Who shall teach us To thrust the world out of our heart: to say, till perhaps in death, When the race is run, And it is forced from us with our last breath "Thy will be done"? If it is Your will that we should be content with the tame, bloodless things. As pale as angels smirking by, with folded wings— Oh! I know Virtue, and the peace it brings! The temperate, well-worn smile The one man gives you, when you are evermore his own: And afterwards the child's, for a little while, 19 With its unknowing and all-seeing eyes So soon to change, and make you feel how quick The clock goes round. If one had learned the trick— (How does one though?) quite early on, Of long green pastures under placid skies, One might be walking now with patient truth. What did we ever care for it, who have asked for youth, When, oh! my God! this is going or has gone? There is a portrait of my mother, at nineteen, With the black spaniel, standing by the garden seat, The dainty head held high against the painted green And throwing out the youngest smile, shy, but half haughty and half sweet. Her picture then: but simply Youth, or simply Spring To me to-day: a radiance on the wall, So exquisite, so heart-breaking a thing Beside the mask that I remember, shrunk and small, Sapless and lined like a dead leaf, All that was left of oh! the loveliest face, by time and grief! And in the glass, last night, I saw a ghost behind my chair— Yet why remember it, when one can still go moderately gay—? Or could—with any one of the old crew, But oh! these boys! the solemn way They take you and the things they say— This "I have only as long as you" When you remind them you are not precisely twenty-two— Although at heart perhaps—God! if it were Only the face, only the hair! If Jim had written to me as he did to-day A year ago—and now it leaves me cold— I know what this means, old, old, old: Et avec ça—mais on a vécu, tout se paie. That is not always true: there was my Mother (well at least the dead are free!) Yoked to the man that Father was; yoked to the woman I am, Monty too; The little portress at the Convent School, stewing in hell so patiently; The poor, fair boy who shot himself at Aix. And what of me—and what of me ? But I, I paid for what I had, and they for nothing. No, one cannot see How it shall be made up to them in some serene eternity. If there were fifty heavens God could not give us back the child who went or 20 never came; Here, on our little patch of this great earth, the sun of any darkened day. Not one of all the starry buds hung on the hawthorn trees of last year's May, No shadow from the sloping fields of yesterday; For every hour they slant across the hedge a different way, The shadows are never the same. "Find rest in Him" One knows the parsons' tags— Back to the fold, across the evening fields, like any flock of baa-ing sheep: Yes, it may be, when He has shorn, led us to slaughter, torn the bleating soul in us to rags, For so He giveth His belovèd sleep. Oh! He will take us stripped and done, Driven into His heart. So we are won: Then safe, safe are we? in the shelter of His everlasting wings— I do not envy Him his victories, His arms are full of broken things. But I shall not be in them. Let Him take The finer ones, the easier to break. And they are not gone, yet, for me, the lights, the colours, the perfumes, Though now they speak rather in sumptuous rooms. In silks and in gemlike wines; Here, even, in this corner where my little candle shines And overhead the lancet-window glows With golds and crimsons you could almost drink To know how jewels taste, just as I used to think There was the scent in every red and yellow rose Of all the sunsets. But this place is grey, And much too quiet. No one here, Why, this is awful, this is fear! Nothing to see, no face. Nothing to hear except your heart beating in space As if the world was ended. Dead at last! Dead soul, dead body, tied together fast. These to go on with and alone, to the slow end: No one to sit with, really, or to speak to, friend to friend: Out of the long procession, black or white or red Not one left now to say "Still I am here, then see you, dear, lay here your head". 21 Only the doll's house looking on the Park To-night, all nights, I know, when the man puts the lights out, very dark. With, upstairs, in the blue and gold box of a room, just the maids' footsteps overhead, Then utter silence and the empty world—the room—the bed— The corpse! No, not quite dead, while this cries out in me. But nearly: very soon to be A handful of forgotten dust— There must be someone. Christ! there must, Tell me there will be someone. Who? If there were no one else, could it be You? How old was Mary out of whom you cast So many devils? Was she young or perhaps for years She had sat staring, with dry eyes, at this and that man going past Till suddenly she saw You on the steps of Simon's house And stood and looked at You through tears. I think she must have known by those The thing, for what it was that had come to her. For some of us there is a passion, I suppose, So far from earthly cares and earthly fears That in its stillness you can hardly stir Or in its nearness, lift your hand, So great that you have simply got to stand Looking at it through tears, through tears. Then straight from these there broke the kiss, I think You must have known by this The thing, for what it was, that had come to You: She did not love You like the rest, It was in her own way, but at the worst, the best, She gave You something altogether new. And through it all, from her, no word, She scarcely saw You, scarcely heard: Surely You knew when she so touched You with her hair, Or by the wet cheek lying there, And while her perfume clung to You from head to feet all through the day That You can change the things for which we care, But even You, unless You kill us, not the way. 22 This, then was peace for her, but passion too. I wonder was it like a kiss that once I knew, The only one that I would care to take Into the grave with me, to which if there were afterwards, to wake. Almost as happy as the carven dead In some dim chancel lying head by head We slept with it, but face to face, the whole night through— One breath, one throbbing quietness, as if the thing behind our lips was endless life, Lost, as I woke, to hear in the strange earthly dawn, his "Are you there?" And lie still, listening to the wind outside, among the firs. So Mary chose the dream of Him for what was left to her of night and day, It is the only truth: it is the dream in us that neither life nor death nor any other thing can take away: But if she had not touched Him in the doorway of the dream could she have cared so much ? She was a sinner, we are what we are: the spirit afterwards, but first the touch. And He has never shared with me my haunted house beneath the trees Of Eden and Calvary, with its ghosts that have not any eyes for tears, And the happier guests who would not see, or if they did, remember these, Though they lived there a thousand years. Outside, too gravely looking at me. He seems to stand, And looking at Him, if my forgotten spirit came Unwillingly back, what could it claim Of those calm eyes, that quiet speech, Breaking like a slow tide upon the beach, The scarred, not quite human hand ?— Unwillingly back to the burden of old imaginings When it has learned so long not to think, not to be, Again, again it would speak as it has spoken to me of things That I shall not see! I cannot bear to look at this divinely bent and gracious head: When I was small I never quite believed that He was dead: And at the Convent school I used to lie awake in bed Thinking about His hands. It did not matter what they said, He was alive to me, so hurt, so hurt! And most of all in Holy Week When there was no one else to see 23 I used to think it would not hurt me too, so terribly, If He had ever seemed to notice me Or, if, for once, He would only speak. ~ Charlotte Mary Mew,

1464:Malmaison How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there, beyond the high wall! How quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, over there, over there, sliding through the green countryside! Like ships of the line, stately with canvas, the tall clouds pass along the sky, over the glittering roof, over the trees, over the looped and curving river. A breeze quivers through the linden-trees. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! But the road is dusty. Already the Citoyenne Beauharnais wearies of her walk. Her skin is chalked and powdered with dust, she smells dust, and behind the wall are roses! Roses with smooth open petals, poised above rippling leaves . . . Roses . . . They have told her so. The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs her shoulders and makes a little face. She must mend her pace if she would be back in time for dinner. Roses indeed! The guillotine more likely. The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles in the sun. II Gallop! Gallop! The General brooks no delay. Make way, good people, and scatter out of his path, you, and your hens, and your dogs, and your children. The General is returned from Egypt, and is come in a `caleche' and four to visit his new property. Throw open the gates, you, Porter of Malmaison. Pull off your cap, my man, this is your master, the husband of Madame. Faster! Faster! A jerk and a jingle and they are arrived, he and she. Madame has red eyes. Fie! It is for joy at her husband's return. Learn your place, Porter. A gentleman here for two months? Fie! Fie, then! Since when have you taken to gossiping. Madame may have a brother, I suppose. That -- all green, and red, and glitter, with flesh as dark as ebony -- that is a slave; a bloodthirsty, stabbing, slashing heathen, come from the hot countries to cure your tongue of idle whispering. A fine afternoon it is, with tall bright clouds sailing over the trees. 125 'Bonaparte, mon ami, the trees are golden like my star, the star I pinned to your destiny when I married you. The gypsy, you remember her prophecy! My dear friend, not here, the servants are watching; send them away, and that flashing splendour, Roustan. Superb -- Imperial, but . . . My dear, your arm is trembling; I faint to feel it touching me! No, no, Bonaparte, not that -- spare me that -- did we not bury that last night! You hurt me, my friend, you are so hot and strong. Not long, Dear, no, thank God, not long.' The looped river runs saffron, for the sun is setting. It is getting dark. Dark. Darker. In the moonlight, the slate roof shines palely milkily white. The roses have faded at Malmaison, nipped by the frost. What need for roses? Smooth, open petals -- her arms. Fragrant, outcurved petals -- her breasts. He rises like a sun above her, stooping to touch the petals, press them wider. Eagles. Bees. What are they to open roses! A little shivering breeze runs through the linden-trees, and the tiered clouds blow across the sky like ships of the line, stately with canvas. III The gates stand wide at Malmaison, stand wide all day. The gravel of the avenue glints under the continual rolling of wheels. An officer gallops up with his sabre clicking; a mameluke gallops down with his charger kicking. `Valets de pied' run about in ones, and twos, and groups, like swirled blown leaves. Tramp! Tramp! The guard is changing, and the grenadiers off duty lounge out of sight, ranging along the roads toward Paris. The slate roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles milkily, vaguely, the great glass-houses put out its shining. Glass, stone, and onyx now for the sun's mirror. Much has come to pass at Malmaison. New rocks and fountains, blocks of carven marble, fluted pillars uprearing antique temples, vases and urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers everywhere, new flowers, rare flowers, parterre after parterre of flowers. Indeed, the roses bloom at Malmaison. It is youth, youth untrammeled and advancing, trundling a country ahead of it as though it were a hoop. Laughter, and spur janglings in tessellated vestibules. Tripping of clocked 126 and embroidered stockings in little low-heeled shoes over smooth grass-plots. India muslins spangled with silver patterns slide through trees -mingle -- separate -- white day fireflies flashing moon-brilliance in the shade of foliage. 'The kangaroos! I vow, Captain, I must see the kangaroos.' 'As you please, dear Lady, but I recommend the shady linden alley and feeding the cockatoos.' 'They say that Madame Bonaparte's breed of sheep is the best in all France.' 'And, oh, have you seen the enchanting little cedar she planted when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of Marengo?' Picking, choosing, the chattering company flits to and fro. Over the trees the great clouds go, tiered, stately, like ships of the line bright with canvas. Prisoners'-base, and its swooping, veering, racing, giggling, bumping. The First Consul runs plump into M. de Beauharnais and falls. But he picks himself up smartly, and starts after M. Isabey. Too late, M. Le Premier Consul, Mademoiselle Hortense is out after you. Quickly, my dear Sir! Stir your short legs, she is swift and eager, and as graceful as her mother. She is there, that other, playing too, but lightly, warily, bearing herself with care, rather floating out upon the air than running, never far from goal. She is there, borne up above her guests as something indefinably fair, a rose above periwinkles. A blown rose, smooth as satin, reflexed, one loosened petal hanging back and down. A rose that undulates languorously as the breeze takes it, resting upon its leaves in a faintness of perfume. There are rumours about the First Consul. Malmaison is full of women, and Paris is only two leagues distant. Madame Bonaparte stands on the wooden bridge at sunset, and watches a black swan pushing the pink and silver water in front of him as he swims, crinkling its smoothness into pleats of changing colour with his breast. Madame Bonaparte presses against the parapet of the bridge, and the crushed roses at her belt melt, petal by petal, into the pink water. 127 IV A vile day, Porter. But keep your wits about you. The Empress will soon be here. Queer, without the Emperor! It is indeed, but best not consider that. Scratch your head and prick up your ears. Divorce is not for you to debate about. She is late? Ah, well, the roads are muddy. The rain spears are as sharp as whetted knives. They dart down and down, edged and shining. Clop-trop! Clop-trop! A carriage grows out of the mist. Hist, Porter. You can keep on your hat. It is only Her Majesty's dogs and her parrot. Clop-trop! The Ladies in Waiting, Porter. Clop-trop! It is Her Majesty. At least, I suppose it is, but the blinds are drawn. 'In all the years I have served Her Majesty she never before passed the gate without giving me a smile!' You're a droll fellow, to expect the Empress to put out her head in the pouring rain and salute you. She has affairs of her own to think about. Clang the gate, no need for further waiting, nobody else will be coming to Malmaison to-night. White under her veil, drained and shaking, the woman crosses the antechamber. Empress! Empress! Foolish splendour, perished to dust. Ashes of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth! Over the glass domes of the hot-houses drenches the rain. Behind her a clock ticks -- ticks again. The sound knocks upon her thought with the echoing shudder of hollow vases. She places her hands on her ears, but the minutes pass, knocking. Tears in Malmaison. And years to come each knocking by, minute after minute. Years, many years, and tears, and cold pouring rain. 'I feel as though I had died, and the only sensation I have is that I am no more.' Rain! Heavy, thudding rain! 128 The roses bloom at Malmaison. And not only roses. Tulips, myrtles, geraniums, camelias, rhododendrons, dahlias, double hyacinths. All the year through, under glass, under the sky, flowers bud, expand, die, and give way to others, always others. From distant countries they have been brought, and taught to live in the cool temperateness of France. There is the `Bonapartea' from Peru; the `Napoleone Imperiale'; the `Josephinia Imperatrix', a pearl-white flower, purple-shadowed, the calix pricked out with crimson points. Malmaison wears its flowers as a lady wears her gems, flauntingly, assertively. Malmaison decks herself to hide the hollow within. The glass-houses grow and grow, and every year fling up hotter reflections to the sailing sun. The cost runs into millions, but a woman must have something to console herself for a broken heart. One can play backgammon and patience, and then patience and backgammon, and stake gold napoleons on each game won. Sport truly! It is an unruly spirit which could ask better. With her jewels, her laces, her shawls; her two hundred and twenty dresses, her fichus, her veils; her pictures, her busts, her birds. It is absurd that she cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought of her ingratitude. What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as never before. It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller figure? Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife. She owes her chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor; her grocer, her butcher, her poulterer; her architect, and the shopkeeper who sells her rouge; her perfumer, her dressmaker, her merchant of shoes. She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and chairs. She owes masons and carpenters, vintners, lingeres. The lady's affairs are in sad confusion. And why? Why? Can a river flow when the spring is dry? Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock ticks, one after one. The clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by 129 brushing against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for the moon. Scarlet, clear-blue, purple epauletted with gold. It is a parade of soldiers sweeping up the avenue. Eight horses, eight Imperial harnesses, four caparisoned postilions, a carriage with the Emperor's arms on the panels. Ho, Porter, pop out your eyes, and no wonder. Where else under the Heavens could you see such splendour! They sit on a stone seat. The little man in the green coat of a Colonel of Chasseurs, and the lady, beautiful as a satin seed-pod, and as pale. The house has memories. The satin seed-pod holds his germs of Empire. We will stay here, under the blue sky and the turreted white clouds. She draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him to replenish it. Her soft transparent texture woos his nervous fingering. He speaks to her of debts, of resignation; of her children, and his; he promises that she shall see the King of Rome; he says some harsh things and some pleasant. But she is there, close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot with violet, pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose-leaves in a twilit room. Suddenly the Emperor calls his carriage and rolls away across the looping Seine. VI Crystal-blue brightness over the glass-houses. Crystal-blue streaks and ripples over the lake. A macaw on a gilded perch screams; they have forgotten to take out his dinner. The windows shake. Boom! Boom! It is the rumbling of Prussian cannon beyond Pecq. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, rotting beneath them. Fallen flowers strew the unraked walks. Fallen flowers for a fallen Emperor! The General in charge of him draws back and watches. Snatches of music -snarling, sneering music of bagpipes. They say a Scotch regiment is besieging Saint-Denis. The Emperor wipes his face, or is it his eyes. His tired eyes which see nowhere the grace they long for. Josephine! Somebody asks him a question, he does not answer, somebody else does that. There are voices, but one voice he does not hear, and yet he hears it all the time. Josephine! The Emperor puts up his hand to screen his face. The white light of a bright cloud spears sharply through the linden-trees. 130 `Vive l'Empereur!' There are troops passing beyond the wall, troops which sing and call. Boom! A pink rose is jarred off its stem and falls at the Emperor's feet. 'Very well. I go.' Where! Does it matter? There is no sword to clatter. Nothing but soft brushing gravel and a gate which shuts with a click. 'Quick, fellow, don't spare your horses.' A whip cracks, wheels turn, why burn one's eyes following a fleck of dust. VII Over the slate roof tall clouds, like ships of the line, pass along the sky. The glass-houses glitter splotchily, for many of their lights are broken. Roses bloom, fiery cinders quenching under damp weeds. Wreckage and misery, and a trailing of petty deeds smearing over old recollections. The musty rooms are empty and their shutters are closed, only in the gallery there is a stuffed black swan, covered with dust. When you touch it, the feathers come off and float softly to the ground. Through a chink in the shutters, one can see the stately clouds crossing the sky toward the Roman arches of the Marly Aqueduct. ~ Amy Lowell,

1465:A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS DRAMATIS PERSONS OTHO THE GREAT, Emperor of Germany. LUDOLPH, his Son. CONRAD, Duke of Franconia. ALBERT, a Knight, favoured by Otho. SIGIFRED, an Officer, friend of Ludolph. THEODORE, an Officer GONFRED, an Officer ETHELBERT. an Abbot. GERSA, Prince of Hungary. An Hungarian Captain. Physician. Page. Nobles, Knights, Attendants, and Soldiers. ERMINIA, Niece of Otho. AURANTHE, Conrad's Sister. Ladies and Attendants. SCENE. The Castle of Friedburg, its vicinity, and the Hungarian Camp. TIME. One Day. SCENE I. An Apartment in the Castle. Enter CONRAD. Conrad. So, I am safe emerged from these broils! Amid the wreck of thousands I am whole; For every crime I have a laurel-wreath, For every lie a lordship. Nor yet has My ship of fortune furl'd her silken sails, Let her glide on! This danger'd neck is saved, By dexterous policy, from the rebel's axe; And of my ducal palace not one stone Is bruised by the Hungarian petards. Toil hard, ye slaves, and from the miser-earth Bring forth once more my bullion, treasured deep, With ah my jewell'd salvers, silver and gold, And precious goblets that make rich the wine. But why do I stand babbling to myself? Where is Auranthe? I have news for her Shall- Enter AURANTHE. Auranthe. Conrad! what tidings? Good, if I may guess From your alert eyes and high-lifted brows. What tidings of the battle? Albert? Ludolph? Otho? Conrad. You guess aright. And, sister, slurring o'er Our by-gone quarrels, I confess my heart Is beating with a child's anxiety, To make our golden fortune known to you. Auranthe. So serious? Conrad. Yes, so serious, that before I utter even the shadow of a hint Concerning what will make that sin-worn cheek Blush joyous blood through every lineament, You must make here a solemn vow to me. Auranthe. I prythee, Conrad, do not overact The hypocrite what vow would you impose? Conrad. Trust me for once, that you may be assured 'Tis not confiding to a broken reed, A poor Court-bankrupt, outwitted and lost, Revolve these facts in your acutest mood, In such a mood as now you listen to me: A few days since, I was an open rebel Against the Emperor, had suborn'd his son, Drawn off his nobles to revolt, and shown Contented fools causes for discontent Fresh hatch'd in my ambition's eagle nest So thrived I as a rebel, and behold Now I am Otho's favourite, his dear friend, His right hand, his brave Conrad. Auranthe. I confess You have intrigued with these unsteady times To admiration; but to be a favourite Conrad. I saw my moment. The Hungarians, Collected silently in holes and corners, Appeared, a sudden host, in the open day. I should have perish'd in our empire's wreck, But, calling interest loyalty, swore faith To most believing Otho; and so helped His blood-stained ensigns to the victory In yesterday's hard fight, that it has turn'd The edge of his sharp wrath to eager kindness. Auranthe. So far yourself. But what is this to me More than that I am glad? I gratulate you. Conrad. Yes, sister, but it does regard you greatly, Nearly, momentously, aye, painfully! Make me this vow Auranthe. Concerning whom or what? Conrad. Albert! Auranthe. I would inquire somewhat of him: You had a letter from me touching him? No treason 'gainst his head in deed or word! Surely you spar'd him at my earnest prayer? Give me the letter it should not exist! Conrad. At one pernicious charge of the enemy, I, for a moment-whiles, was prisoner ta'en And rifled, stuff! the horses' hoofs have minc'd it! Auranthe. He is alive? Conrad. He is! but here make oath To alienate him from your scheming brain, Divorce him from your solitary thoughts, And cloud him in such utter banishment, That when his person meets again your eye, Your vision shall quite lose its memory, And wander past him as through vacancy. Auranthe. I'll not be perjured. Conrad. No, nor great, nor mighty; You would not wear a crown, or rule a kingdom. To you it is indifferent. Auranthe. What means this? Conrad. You'll not be perjured! Go to Albert then, That camp-mushroom dishonour of our house. Go, page his dusty heels upon a march, Furbish his jingling baldric while he sleeps, And share his mouldy ration in a siege. Yet stay, perhaps a charm may call you back, And make the widening circlets of your eyes Sparkle with healthy fevers. The Emperor Hath given consent that you should marry Ludolph! Auranthe. Can it be, brother? For a golden crown With a queen's awful lips I doubly thank you! This is to wake in Paradise ! Farewell Thou clod of yesterday 'twas not myself! Not till this moment did I ever feel My spirit's faculties! I'll flatter you For this, and be you ever proud of it; Thou, Jove-like, struck'dst thy forehead, And from the teeming marrow of thy brain I spring complete Minerva! But the prince His highness Ludolph where is he? Conrad. I know not: When, lackeying my counsel at a beck, The rebel lords, on bended knees, received The Emperor's pardon, Ludolph kept aloof, Sole, in a stiff, fool-hardy, sulky pride; Yet, for all this, I never saw a father In such a sickly longing for his son. We shall soon see him, for the Emperor He will be here this morning. Auranthe. That I heard Among the midnight rumours from the camp. Conrad. You give up Albert to me? Auranthe. Harm him not! E'en for his highness Ludolph's sceptry hand, I would not Albert suffer any wrong. Conrad. Have I not laboured, plotted ? Auranthe. See you spare him: Nor be pathetic, my kind benefactor, On all the many bounties of your hand, 'Twas for yourself you laboured not for me! Do you not count, when I am queen, to take Advantage of your chance discoveries Of my poor secrets, and so hold a rod Over my life? Conrad. Let not this slave this villain Be cause of feud between us. See! he comes! Look, woman, look, your Albert is quite safe! In haste it seems. Now shall I be in the way, And wish'd with silent curses in my grave, Or side by side with 'whelmed mariners. Enter ALBERT. Albert. Fair on your graces fall this early morrow! So it is like to do, without my prayers, For your right noble names, like favourite tunes, Have fallen full frequent from our Emperor's lips, High commented with smiles. Auranthe. Noble Albert! Conrad (aside). Noble! Auranthe. Such salutation argues a glad heart In our prosperity. We thank you, sir. Albert. Lady! O, would to Heaven your poor servant Could do you better service than mere words! But I have other greeting than mine own, From no less man than Otho, who has sent This ring as pledge of dearest amity; 'Tis chosen I hear from Hymen's jewel'ry, And you will prize it, lady, I doubt not, Beyond all pleasures past, and all to come. To you great duke Conrad. To me! What of me, ha? Albert. What pleas'd your grace to say? Conrad. Your message, sir! Albert. You mean not this to me? Conrad. Sister, this way; For there shall be no '''gentle Alberts" now, [Aside. No "sweet Auranthes!" [Exeunt CONRAD and AURANTHE. Albert (solus). The duke is out of temper; if he knows More than a brother of a sister ought, I should not quarrel with his peevishness. Auranthe Heaven preserve her always fair! Is in the heady, proud, ambitious vein; I bicker not with her, bid her farewell! She has taken flight from me, then let her soar, He is a fool who stands at pining gaze! But for poor Ludolph, he is food for sorrow: No levelling bluster of my licens'd thoughts, No military swagger of my mind, Can smother from myself the wrong I've done him, Without design, indeed, yet it is so, And opiate for the conscience have I none! [Exit. SCENE II. The Court-yard of the Castle. Martial Music. Enter, from the outer gate, OTHO, Nobles, Knights, and Attendants. The Soldiers halt at the gate, with Banners in sight. Otho. Where is my noble herald? Enter CONRAD, from the Castle, attended by two Knights and Servants. ALBERT following. Well, hast told Auranthe our intent imperial? Lest our rent banners, too o' the sudden shown, Should fright her silken casements, and dismay Her household to our lack of entertainment. A victory! Conrad. God save illustrious Otho! Otho. Aye, Conrad, it will pluck out all grey hairs; It is the best physician for the spleen; The courtliest inviter to a feast; The subtlest excuser of small faults; And a nice judge in the age and smack of wine. Enter, from the Castle, AURANTHE, followed by Pages holding up her robes, and a tram of Women. She kneels. Hail my sweet hostess! I do thank the stars, Or my good soldiers, or their ladies' eyes, That, after such a merry battle fought, I can, all safe in body and in soul, Kiss your fair hand and lady fortune's too. My ring! now, on my life, it doth rejoice These lips to feel 't on this soft ivory! Keep it, my brightest daughter; it may prove The little prologue to a line of kings. I strove against thee and my hot-blood son, Dull blockhead that I was to be so blind, But now my sight is clear; forgive me, lady. Auranthe. My lord, I was a vassal to your frown, And now your favour makes me but more humble; In wintry winds the simple snow is safe, But fadeth at the greeting of the sun: Unto thine anger I might well have spoken, Taking on me a woman's privilege, But this so sudden kindness makes me dumb. Otho. What need of this? Enough, if you will be A potent tutoress to my wayward boy, And teach him, what it seems his nurse could not To say, for once, I thank you. Sigifred! Albert. He has not yet return'd, my gracious liege. Otho. What then! No tidings of my friendly Arab? Conrad. None, mighty Otho. [To one of his Knights, who goes out. Send forth instantly An hundred horsemen from my honoured gates, To scour the plains and search the cottages. Cry a reward, to him who shall first bring News of that vanished Arabian, A full-heap'd helmet of the purest gold. Otho. More thanks, good Conrad; for, except my son's, There is no face I rather would behold Than that same quick-eyed pagan's. By the saints, This coming night of banquets must not light Her dazzling torches; nor the music breathe Smooth, without clashing cymbal, tones of peace And in-door melodies; nor the ruddy wine Ebb spouting to the lees; if I pledge not In my first cup, that Arab! Albert. Mighty Monarch, I wonder not this stranger's victor-deeds So, hang upon your spirit. Twice in the fight It was my chance to meet his olive brow, Triumphant in the enemy's shatter 'd rhomb; And, to say truth, in any Christian arm I never saw such prowess. Otho. Did you ever? O, 'tis a noble boy! tut! what do I say? I mean a triple Saladin, whose eyes, When in the glorious scuffle they met mine, Seem'd to say "Sleep, old man, in safety sleep; I am the victory!" Conrad. Pity he's not here. Otho. And my son too, pity he is not here. Lady Auranthe, I would not make you blush, But can you give a guess where Ludolph is? Know you not of him? Auranthe. Indeed, my liege, no secret Otho. Nay, nay, without more words, dost know of him? Auranthe. I would I were so over-fortunate, Both for his sake and mine, and to make glad A father's ears with tidings of his son. Otho. I see 'tis like to be a tedious day. Were Theodore and Gonfred and the rest Sent forth with my commands? Albert. Aye, my lord. Otho. And no news! No news! 'Faith! 'tis very strange He thus avoids us. Lady, is't not strange? Will he be truant to you too? It is a shame. Conrad. Will 't please your highness enter, and accept The unworthy welcome of your servant's house? Leaving your cares to one whose diligence May in few hours make pleasures of them all. Otho. Not so tedious, Conrad. No, no, no, I must see Ludolph or the What's that shout! Voices without. Huzza! huzza! Long live the Emperor! Other Voices. Fall back! Away there! Otho. Say, what noise is that? [ALBERT advancing from the bark of the Stage, whither he had hastened on hearing the cheers of the soldiery. Albert. It is young Gersa, the Hungarian prince, Pick'd like a red stag from the fallow herd Of prisoners. Poor prince, forlorn he steps, Slow, and demure, and proud in his despair. If I may judge by his so tragic bearing, His eye not downcast, and his folded arm, He doth this moment wish himself asleep Among his fallen captains on yon plains. Enter GERSA, in chains, and guarded, Otho. Well said, Sir Albert. Gersa. Not a word of greeting. No welcome to a princely visitor, Most mighty Otho? Will not my great host Vouchsafe a syllable, before he bids His gentlemen conduct me with all care To some securest lodgings? cold perhaps! Otho. What mood is this? Hath fortune touch'd thy brain? Gersa. kings and princes of this fev'rous world, What abject things, what mockeries must ye be, What nerveless minions of safe palaces! When here, a monarch, whose proud foot is used To fallen princes' necks, as to his stirrup, Must needs exclaim that I am mad forsooth, Because I cannot flatter with bent knees My conqueror! Otho. Gersa, I think you wrong me: I think I have a better fame abroad. Gersa. I prythee mock me not with gentle speech, But, as a favour, bid me from thy presence; Let me no longer be the wondering food Of all these eyes; prythee command me hence! Otho. Do not mistake me, Gersa. That you may not, Come, fair Auranthe, try if your soft hands Can manage those hard rivets to set free So brave a prince and soldier. Auranthe (sets him free). Welcome task! Gersa. I am wound up in deep astonishment! Thank you, fair lady. Otho! emperor! You rob me of myself; my dignity Is now your infant; I am a weak child. Otho. Give me your hand, and let this kindly grasp Live in our memories. Gersa. In mine it will. I blush to think of my unchasten'd tongue; But I was haunted by the monstrous ghost Of all our slain battalions. Sire, reflect, And pardon you will grant, that, at this hour, The bruised remnants of our stricken camp Are huddling undistinguish'd my dear friends, With common thousands, into shallow graves. Otho. Enough, most noble Gersa. You are free To cheer the brave remainder of your host By your own healing presence, and that too, Not as their leader merely, but their king; For, as I hear, the wily enemy, Who eas'd the crownet from your infant brows, Bloody Taraxa, is among the dead. Gersa. Then I retire, so generous Otho please, Bearing with me a weight of benefits Too heavy to be borne. Otho. It is not so; Still understand me, King of Hungary, Nor judge my open purposes awry. Though I did hold you high in my esteem For your self's sake, I do not personate The stage-play emperor to entrap applause, To set the silly sort o' the world agape, And make the politic smile; no, I have heard How in the Council you condemn 'd this war, Urging the perfidy of broken faith, For that I am your friend. Gersa. If ever, sire, You are mine enemy, I dare here swear 'Twill not be Gersa's fault. Otho, farewell! Otho. Will you return, Prince, to our banqueting? Gersa. As to my father's board I will return. Otho. Conrad, with all due ceremony, give The prince a regal escort to his camp; Albert, go thou and bear him company. Gersa, farewell! Gersa. All happiness attend you! Otho. Return with what good speed you may; for soon We must consult upon our terms of peace. [Exeunt GERSA and ALBERT with others. And thus a marble column do I build To prop my empire's dome. Conrad, in thee I have another stedfast one, to uphold The portals of my state; and, for my own Pre-eminence and safety, I will strive To keep thy strength upon its pedestal. For, without thee, this day I might have been A show-monster about the streets of Prague, In chains, as just now stood that noble prince: And then to me no mercy had been shown, For when the conquered lion is once dungeon'd, Who lets him forth again? or dares to give An old lion sugar-cates of mild reprieve? Not to thine ear alone I make confession, But to all here, as, by experience, I know how the great basement of all power Is frankness, and a true tongue to the world; And how intriguing secrecy is proof Of fear and weakness, and a hollow state. Conrad, I owe thee much. Conrad. To kiss that hand, My emperor, is ample recompense, For a mere act of duty. Otho. Thou art wrong; For what can any man on earth do more? We will make trial of your house's welcome, My bright Auranthe! Conrad. How is Friedburg honoured! Enter ETHELBERT and six Monks. Ethelbert. The benison of heaven on your head, Imperial Otho! Otho. Who stays me? Speak! Quick! Ethelbert. Pause but one moment, mighty conqueror Upon the threshold of this house of joy. Otho. Pray, do not prose, good Ethelbert, but speak What is your purpose. Ethelbert. The restoration of some captive maids, Devoted to Heaven's pious ministries, Who, being driven from their religious cells, And kept in thraldom by our enemy, When late this province was a lawless spoil, Still weep amid the wild Hungarian camp, Though hemm'd around by thy victorious arms. Otho. Demand the holy sisterhood in our name From Gersa's tents. Farewell, old Ethelbert. Ethelbert. The saints will bless you for this pious care. Otho. Daughter, your hand; Ludolph's would fit it best. Conrad. Ho ! let the music sound ! [Music. ETHELBERT raises his hands, as in benediction of OTHO. Exeunt severally. The scene closes on them. SCENE III. The Country, with the Castle in the distance. Enter LUDOLPH and SIGIFRED. Ludolph. You have my secret; let it not be breath 'd. Sigifred. Still give me leave to wonder that the Prince Ludolph and the swift Arab are the same ; Still to rejoice that 'twas a German arm Death doing in a turban'd masquerade. Ludolph. The Emperor must not know it, Sigifred. Sigifred. I prythee, why? What happier hour of time Could thy pleasd star point down upon from heaven With silver index, bidding thee make peace? Ludolph. Still it must not be known, good Sigifred; The star may point oblique. Sigifred. If Otho knew His son to be that unknown Mussulman After whose spurring heels he sent me forth, With one of his well-pleas'd Olympian oaths, The charters of man's greatness, at this hour He would be watching round the castle walls, And, like an anxious warder, strain his sight For the first glimpse of such a son return 'd Ludolph, that blast of the Hungarians, That Saracenic meteor of the fight, That silent fury, whose fell Scymitar Kept danger all aloof from Otho's head, And left him space for wonder. Ludolph. Say no more. Not as a swordsman would I pardon claim, But as a son. The bronz'd centurion, Long toil'd in foreign wars, and whose high deeds Are shaded in a forest of tall spears, Known only to his troop, hath greater plea Of favour with my sire than I can have. Sigifred. My lord, forgive me that I cannot see How this proud temper with clear reason squares. What made you then, with such an anxious love, Hover around that life, whose bitter days You vext with bad revolt? Was 't opium, Or the mad-fumed wine? Nay, do not frown, I rather would grieve with you than upbraid. Ludolph. I do believe you. No, 'twas not to make A father his son's debtor, or to heal His deep heart-sickness for a rebel child. Twas done in memory of my boyish days, Poor cancel for his kindness to my youth, For all his calming of my childish griefs, And all his smiles upon my merriment. No, not a thousand foughten fields could sponge Those days paternal from my memory, Though now upon my head he heaps disgrace. Sigifred. My Prince, you think too harshly Ludolph. Can I so? Hath he not gall'd my spirit to the quick? And with a sullen rigour obstinate Pour'd out a phial of wrath upon my faults? Hunted me as the Tartar does the boar, Driven me to the very edge o' the world, And almost put a price upon my head? Sigifred. Remember how he spar'd the rebel lords. Ludolph. Yes, yes, I know he hath a noble nature That cannot trample on the fallen. But his Is not the only proud heart in his realm. He hath wrong'd me, and I have done him wrong; He hath lov'd me, and I have shown him kindness; We should be almost equal. Sigifred. Yet, for all this, I would you had appear 'd among those lords, And ta'en his favour. Ludolph. Ha! till now I thought My friend had held poor Ludolph's honour dear. What ! would you have me sue before his throne And kiss the courtier's missal, its silk steps? Or hug the golden housings of his steed, Amid a camp, whose steeled swarms I dar'd But yesterday? And, at the trumpet sound, Bow like some unknown mercenary's flag, And lick the soiled grass? No, no, my friend, I would not, I, be pardon'd in the heap, And bless indemnity with all that scum, Those men I mean, who on my shoulders propped Their weak rebellion, winning me with lies, And pitying forsooth my many wrongs; Poor self-deceived wretches, who must think Each one himself a king in embryo, Because some dozen vassals cry'd my lord! Cowards, who never knew their little hearts, Till flurried danger held the mirror up, And then they own'd themselves without a blush, Curling, like spaniels, round my father's feet. Such things deserted me and are forgiven, While I, least guilty, am an outcast still, And will be, for I love such fair disgrace. Sigifred. I know the clear truth; so would Otho see, For he is just and noble. Fain would I Be pleader for you Ludolph. He'll hear none of it; You know his temper, hot, proud, obstinate; Endanger not yourself so uselessly. I will encounter his thwart spleen myself, To-day, at the Duke Conrad's, where he keeps His crowded state after the victory. There will I be, a most unwelcome guest, And parley with him, as a son should do, Who doubly loathes a father's tyranny; Tell him how feeble is that tyranny; How the relationship of father and son Is no more valid than a silken leash Where lions tug adverse, if love grow not From interchanged love through many years. Aye, and those turreted Franconian walls, Like to a jealous casket, hold my pearl My fair Auranthe! Yes, I will be there. Sigifred. Be not so rash; wait till his wrath shall pass, Until his royal spirit softly ebbs Self-influenced ; then, in his morning dreams He will forgive thee, and awake in grief To have not thy good morrow. Ludolph. Yes, to-day I must be there, while her young pulses beat Among the new-plum'd minions of the war. Have you seen her of late? No? Auranthe, Franconia's fair sister, 'tis I mean. She should be paler for my troublous days And there it is my father's iron lips Have sworn divorcement 'twixt me and my right. Sigifred (aside). Auranthe! I had hop'd this whim had pass'd. Ludolph. And, Sigifred, with all his love of justice, When will he take that grandchild in his arms, That, by my love I swear, shall soon be his? This reconcilement is impossible, For see but who are these? Sigifred. They are messengers From our great emperor; to you, I doubt not, For couriers are abroad to seek you out. Enter THEODORE and GONFRED. Theodore. Seeing so many vigilant eyes explore The province to invite your highness back To your high dignities, we are too happy. Gonfred. We have no eloquence to colour justly The emperor's anxious wishes. Ludolph. Go. I follow you. [Exeunt THEODORE and GONFRED. I play the prude : it is but venturing Why should he be so earnest? Come, my friend, Let us to Friedburg castle. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes ~ John Keats, Otho The Great - Act I ,

1466:Resignation Pt 2 But what in either sex, beyond All parts, our glory crowns? 'In ruffling seasons to be calm, And smile, when fortune frowns.' Heaven's choice is safer than our own; Of ages past inquire, What the most formidable fate? 'To have our own desire.' If, in your wrath, the worst of foes You wish extremely ill; Expose him to the thunder's stroke, Or that of his own will. What numbers, rushing down the steep Of inclination strong, Have perish'd in their ardent wish! Wish ardent, ever wrong! 'Tis resignation's full reverse, Most wrong, as it implies Error most fatal in our choice, Detachment from the skies. By closing with the skies, we make Omnipotence our own; That done, how formidable ill's Whole army is o'erthrown! No longer impotent, and frail, Ourselves above we rise: We scarce believe ourselves below! We trespass on the skies! The Lord, the soul, and source of all, Whilst man enjoys his ease, Is executing human will, In earth, and air, and seas; 70 Beyond us, what can angels boast? Archangels what require? Whate'er below, above, is done, Is done as-we desire. What glory this for man so mean, Whose life is but a span! This is meridian majesty! This, the sublime of man! Beyond the boast of pagan song My sacred subject shines! And for a foil the lustre takes Of Rome's exalted lines. 'All, that the sun surveys, subdued, But Cato's mighty mind.' How grand! most true; yet far beneath The soul of the resign'd: To more than kingdoms, more than worlds, To passion that gives law; Its matchless empire could have kept Great Cato's pride in awe; That fatal pride, whose cruel point Transfix'd his noble breast; Far nobler! if his fate sustain'd And left to heaven the rest; Then he the palm had borne away, At distance Caesar thrown; Put him off cheaply with the world, And made the skies his own. What cannot resignation do? It wonders can perform; That powerful charm, 'Thy will be done,' Can lay the loudest storm. Come, resignation! then, from fields, 71 Where, mounted on the wing, A wing of flame, blest martyrs' souls Ascended to their king. Who is it calls thee? one whose need Transcends the common size; Who stands in front against a foe To which no equal rise: In front he stands, the brink he treads Of an eternal state; How dreadful his appointed post! How strongly arm'd by fate: His threatening foe! what shadows deep O'erwhelm his gloomy brow! His dart tremendous! -at fourscore My sole asylum, thou! Haste, then, O resignation! haste, 'Tis thine to reconcile My foe, and me; at thy approach My foe begins to smile: O! for that summit of my wish, Whilst here I draw my breath, That promise of eternal life, A glorious smile in death: What sight, heaven's azure arch beneath, Has most of heaven to boast? The man resign'd; at once serene, And giving up the ghost. At death's arrival they shall smile, Who, not in life o'er gay, Serious and frequent thought send out To meet him on his way: My gay coevals! (such there are) If happiness is dear; Approaching death's alarming day 72 Discreetly let us fear: The fear of death is truly wise, Till wisdom can rise higher; And, arm'd with pious fortitude, Death dreaded once, desire: Grand climacteric vanities The vainest will despise; Shock'd, when beneath the snow of age Man immaturely dies: But am not I myself the man? No need abroad to roam In quest of faults to be chastis'd; What cause to blush at home? In life's decline, when men relapse Into the sports of youth, The second child out-fools the first, And tempts the lash of truth; Shall a mere truant from the grave With rival boys engage? His trembling voice attempt to sing, And ape the poet's rage? Here, madam! let me visit one, My fault who, partly, shares, And tell myself, by telling him, What more becomes our years; And if your breast with prudent zeal For resignation glows, You will not disapprove a just Resentment at its foes. In youth, Voltaire! our foibles plead For some indulgence due; When heads are white, their thoughts and aims Should change their colour too: 73 How are you cheated by your wit! Old age is bound to pay, By nature's law, a mind discreet, For joys it takes away; A mighty change is wrought by years, Reversing human lot; In age 'tis honour to lie hid, 'Tis praise to be forgot; The wise, as flowers, which spread at noon, And all their charms expose, When evening damps and shades descend, Their evolutions close. What though your muse has nobly soar'd, Is that our truth sublime? Ours, hoary friend! is to prefer Eternity to time: Why close a life so justly fam'd With such bold trash as this? (54) This for renown? yes, such as makes Obscurity a bliss: Your trash, with mine, at open war, Is obstinately bent,(55) Like wits below, to sow your tares Of gloom and discontent: With so much sunshine at command, Why light with darkness mix? Why dash with pain our pleasure? Your Helicon with Styx? Your works in our divided minds Repugnant passions raise, Confound us with a double stroke, We shudder whilst we praise; A curious web, as finely wrought As genius can inspire, 74 From a black bag of poison spun, With horror we admire. Mean as it is, if this is read With a disdainful air, I can't forgive so great a foe To my dear friend Voltaire: Early I knew him, early prais'd, And long to praise him late; His genius greatly I admire, Nor would deplore his fate; A fate how much to be deplor'd! At which our nature starts; Forbear to fall on your own sword. To perish by your parts: 'But great your name'-To feed on air, Were then immortals born? Nothing is great, of which more great, More glorious is the scorn. Can fame your carcass from the worm Which gnaws us in the grave, Or soul from that which never dies, Applauding Europe save? But fame you lose; good sense alone Your idol, praise, can claim; When wild wit murders happiness, It puts to death our fame! Nor boast your genius, talents bright; E'en dunces will despise, If in your western beams is miss'd A genius for the skies; Your taste too fails; what most excels True taste must relish most! And what, to rival palms above, Can proudest laurels boast? 75 Sound heads salvation's helmet seek,(56) Resplendent are its rays, Let that suffice; it needs no plume, Of sublunary praise. May this enable couch'd Voltaire To see that-'All is right,'(57) His eye, by flash of wit struck blind, Restoring to its sight; If so, all's well: who much have err'd, That much have been forgiven; I speak with joy, with joy he'll hear, 'Voltaires are, now, in heaven.' Nay, such philanthropy divine, So boundless in degree, Its marvellous of love extends (Stoops most profound!) to me: Let others cruel stars arraign, Or dwell on their distress; But let my page, for mercies pour'd, A grateful heart express: Walking, the present God was seen, Of old, in Eden fair; The God as present, by plain steps Of providential care, I behold passing through my life; His awful voice I hear; And, conscious of my nakedness, Would hide myself for fear: But where the trees, or where the clouds, Can cover from his sight? Naked the centre to that eye, To which the sun is night. As yonder glittering lamps on high 76 Through night illumin'd roll; My thoughts of him, by whom they shine, Chase darkness from my soul; My soul, which reads his hand as clear In my minute affairs, As in his ample manuscript Of sun, and moon, and stars; And knows him not more bent aright To wield that vast machine, Than to correct one erring thought In my small world within; A world, that shall survive the fall Of all his wonders here; Survive, when suns ten thousand drop, And leave a darken'd sphere. Yon matter gross, how bright it shines! For time how great his care! Sure spirit and eternity Far richer glories share; Let those our hearts impress, on those Our contemplation dwell; On those my thoughts how justly thrown, By what I now shall tell: When backward with attentive mind Life's labyrinth I trace, I find him far myself beyond Propitious to my peace: Through all the crooked paths I trod, My folly he pursued; My heart astray to quick return Importunately woo'd; Due resignation home to press On my capricious will, How many rescues did I meet, 77 Beneath the mask of ill! How many foes in ambush laid Beneath my soul's desire! The deepest penitents are made By what we most admire. Have I not sometimes (real good So little mortals know!) Mounting the summit of my wish, Profoundly plung'd in woe? I rarely plann'd, but cause I found My plan's defeat to bless: Oft I lamented an event; It turn'd to my success. By sharpen'd appetite to give To good intense delight, Through dark and deep perplexities He led me to the right. And is not this the gloomy path, Which you are treading now? The path most gloomy leads to light, When our proud passions bow: When labouring under fancied ill, My spirits to sustain, He kindly cur'd with sovereign draughts Of unimagin'd pain. Pain'd sense from fancied tyranny Alone can set us free; A thousand miseries we feel, Till sunk in misery. Cloy'd with a glut of all we wish, Our wish we relish less; Success, a sort of suicide, Is ruin'd by success: 78 Sometimes he led me near to death, And, pointing to the grave, Bid terror whisper kind advice; And taught the tomb to save: To raise my thoughts beyond where worlds As spangles o'er us shine, One day he gave, and bid the next My soul's delight resign. We to ourselves, but through the means Of mirrors, are unknown; In this my fate can you descry No features of your own? And if you can, let that excuse These self-recording lines; A record, modesty forbids, Or to small bound confines: In grief why deep ingulf'd? You see You suffer nothing rare; Uncommon grief for common fate! That wisdom cannot bear. When streams flow backward to their source, And humbled flames descend, And mountains wing'd shall fly aloft, Then human sorrows end; But human prudence too must cease, When sorrows domineer, When fortitude has lost its fire, And freezes into fear: The pang most poignant of my life Now heightens my delight; I see a fair creation rise From chaos, and old night: From what seem'd horror, and despair, The richest harvest rose; 79 And gave me in the nod divine An absolute repose. Of all the plunders of mankind, More gross, or frequent, none, Than in their grief and joy misplac'd, Eternally are shown. But whither points all this parade? It says, that near you lies A book, perhaps yet unperus'd, Which you should greatly prize: Of self-perusal, science rare! Few know the mighty gain; Learn'd prelates, self-unread, may read Their Bibles o'er in vain: Self-knowledge, which from heaven itself (So sages tell us) came, What is it, but a daughter fair Of my maternal theme? Unletter'd and untravel'd men An oracle might find, Would they consult their own contents, The Delphos of the mind. Enter your bosom; there you'll meet A revelation new, A revelation personal; Which none can read but you. There will you clearly read reveal'd In your enlighten'd thought, By mercies manifold, through life, To fresh remembrance brought, A mighty Being! and in him A complicated friend, A father, brother, spouse; no dread Of death, divorce, or end: 80 Who such a matchless friend embrace, And lodge him in their heart, Full well, from agonies exempt, With other friends may part: As when o'erloaded branches bear Large clusters big with wine, We scarce regret one falling leaf From the luxuriant vine. My short advice to you may sound Obscure or somewhat odd, Though 'tis the best that man can give,'E'en be content with God.' Through love he gave you the deceas'd, Through greater took him hence; This reason fully could evince, Though murmur'd at by sense. This friend, far past the kindest kind, Is past the greatest great; His greatness let me touch in points Not foreign to your state; His eye, this instant, reads your heart; A truth less obvious hear; This instant its most secret thoughts Are sounding in his ear: Dispute you this? O! stand in awe, And cease your sorrow; know, That tears now trickling down, he saw Ten thousand years ago; And twice ten thousand hence, if you Your temper reconcile To reason's bound, will he behold Your prudence with a smile; A smile, which through eternity 81 Diffuses so bright rays, The dimmest deifies e'en guilt, If guilt, at last, obeys: Your guilt (for guilt it is to mourn When such a sovereign reigns) , Your guilt diminish; peace pursue; How glorious peace in pains! Here, then, your sorrows cease; if not, Think how unhappy they, Who guilt increase by streaming tears, Which guilt should wash away; Of tears that gush profuse restrain; Whence burst those dismal sighs? They from the throbbing breast of one (Strange truth!) most happy rise; Not angels (hear it, and exult!) Enjoy a larger share Than is indulg'd to you, and yours, Of God's impartial care; Anxious for each, as if on each His care for all was thrown; For all his care as absolute, As all had been but one. And is he then so near! so kind! How little then, and great, That riddle, man! O! let me gaze At wonders in his fate; His fate, who yesterday did crawl A worm from darkness deep, And shall, with brother worms, beneath A turf, to-morrow sleep; How mean! -And yet, if well obey'd His mighty Master's call, The whole creation for mean man 82 Is deem'd a boon too small: Too small the whole creation deem'd For emmets in the dust! Account amazing! yet most true; My song is bold, yet just: Man born for infinite, in whom Nor period can destroy The power, in exquisite extremes, To suffer, or enjoy; Give him earth's empire (if no more) He's beggar'd, and undone! Imprison'd in unbounded space! Benighted by the sun! For what the sun's meridian blaze To the most feeble ray Which glimmers from the distant dawn Of uncreated day? 'Tis not the poet's rapture feign'd Swells here the vain to please; The mind most sober kindles most At truths sublime as these; They warm e'en me.-I dare not say, Divine ambition strove Not to bless only, but confound, Nay, fright us with its love; And yet so frightful what, or kind, As that the rending rock, The darken'd sun, and rising dead, So formidable spoke? And are we darker than that sun? Than rocks more hard, and blind? We are; -if not to such a God In agonies resigned. 83 Yes, e'en in agonies forbear To doubt almighty love; Whate'er endears eternity, Is mercy from above; What most imbitters time, that most Eternity endears, And thus, by plunging in distress, Exalts us to the spheres; Joy's fountain head! where bliss o'er bliss, O'er wonders wonders rise, And an Omnipotence prepares Its banquet for the wise: Ambrosial banquet! rich in wines Nectareous to the soul! What transports sparkle from the stream, As angels fill the bowl! Fountain profuse of every bliss! Good-will immense prevails; Man's line can't fathom its profound An angel's plummet fails. Thy love and might, by what they know, Who judge, nor dream of more; They ask a drop, how deep the sea! One sand, how wide the shore! Of thy exuberant good-will, Offended Deity! The thousandth part who comprehends, A deity is he. How yonder ample azure field With radiant worlds is sown! How tubes astonish us with those More deep in ether thrown! And those beyond of brighter worlds Why not a million more? - 84 In lieu of answer, let us all Fall prostrate, and adore. Since thou art infinite in power, Nor thy indulgence less; Since man, quite impotent and blind, Oft drops into distress; Say, what is resignation? 'T is Man's weakness understood; And wisdom grasping, with a hand Far stronger, every good. Let rash repiners stand appall'd, In thee who dare not trust; Whose abject souls, like demons dark, Are murmuring in the dust; For man to murmur, or repine At what by thee is done, No less absurd, than to complain Of darkness in the sun. Who would not, with a heart at ease, Bright eye, unclouded brow, Wisdom and goodness at the helm, The roughest ocean plough? What, though I'm swallow'd in the deep? Though mountains o'er me roar? Jehovah reigns! as Jonah safe, I'm landed, and adore: Thy will is welcome, let it wear Its most tremendous form; Roar, waves; rage, winds! I know that thou Canst save me by a storm. From the immortal spirits born, To thee, their fountain, flow, If wise; as curl'd around to theirs Meandering streams below: 85 Not less compell'd by reason's call, To thee our souls aspire, Than to thy skies, by nature's law, High mounts material fire; To thee aspiring they exult, I feel my spirits rise, I feel myself thy son, and pant For patrimonial skies; Since ardent thirst of future good, And generous sense of past, To thee man's prudence strongly ties, And binds affection fast; Since great thy love, and great our want, And men the wisest blind, And bliss our aim; pronounce us all Distracted, or resigned; Resign'd through duty, interest, shame; Deep shame! dare I complain, When (wondrous truth!) in heaven itself Joy ow'd its birth to pain? And pain for me! for me was drain'd Gall's overflowing bowl; And shall one dropp to murmur bold Provoke my guilty soul? If pardon'd this, what cause, what crime Can indignation raise? The sun was lighted up to shine, And man was born to praise; And when to praise the man shall cease, Or sun to strike the view; A cloud dishonors both; but man's The blacker of the two: For oh! ingratitude how black! 86 With most profound amaze At love, which man belov'd o'erlooks, Astonish'd angels gaze. Praise cheers, and warms, like generous wine; Praise, more divine than prayer; Prayer points our ready path to heaven; Praise is already there. Let plausive resignation rise, And banish all complaint; All virtues thronging into one, It finishes the saint; Makes the man bless'd, as man can be; Life's labours renders light; Darts beams through fate's incumbent gloom, And lights our sun by night; 'T is nature's brightest ornament, The richest gift of grace, Rival of angels, and supreme Proprietor of peace; Nay, peace beyond, no small degree Of rapture 't will impart; Know, madam! when your heart's in heaven, 'All heaven is in your heart.' But who to heaven their hearts can raise? Denied divine support, All virtue dies; support divine The wise with ardour court: When prayer partakes the seraph's fire, 'T is mounted on his wing, Bursts thro' heaven's crystal gates, and Sure audience of its king: The labouring soul from sore distress That bless'd expedient frees; I see you far advanc'd in peace; 87 I see you on your knees: How on that posture has the beam Divine for ever shone! An humble heart, God's other seat! (58) The rival of his throne: And stoops Omnipotence so low! And condescends to dwell, Eternity's inhabitant, Well pleas'd, in such a cell? Such honour how shall we repay? How treat our guest divine? The sacrifice supreme be slain! Let self-will die: resign. Thus far, at large, on our disease; Now let the cause be shown, Whence rises, and will ever rise, The dismal human groan: What our sole fountain of distress? Strong passion for this scene; That trifles make important, things Of mighty moment mean: When earth's dark maxims poison shed On our polluted souls, Our hearts and interests fly as far Asunder, as the poles. Like princes in a cottage nurs'd, Unknown their royal race, With abject aims, and sordid joys, Our grandeur we disgrace; O! for an Archimedes new, Of moral powers possess'd, The world to move, and quite expel That traitor from the breast. 88 No small advantage may be reap'd From thought whence we descend; From weighing well, and prizing weigh'd Our origin, and end: From far above the glorious sun To this dim scene we came: And may, if wise, for ever bask In great Jehovah's beam: Let that bright beam on reason rous'd In awful lustre rise, Earth's giant ills are dwarf'd at once, And all disquiet dies. Earth's glories too their splendour lose, Those phantoms charm no more; Empire's a feather for a fool, And Indian mines are poor: Then levell'd quite, whilst yet alive, The monarch and his slave; Not wait enlighten'd minds to learn That lesson from the grave: A George the Third would then be low As Lewis in renown, Could he not boast of glory more Than sparkles from a crown. When human glory rises high As human glory can; When, though the king is truly great, Still greater is the man; The man is dead, where virtue fails; And though the monarch proud In grandeur shines, his gorgeous robe Is but a gaudy shroud. Wisdom! where art thou? None on earth, Though grasping wealth, fame, power, 89 But what, O death! through thy approach, Is wiser every hour; Approach how swift, how unconfin'd! Worms feast on viands rare, Those little epicures have kings To grace their bill of fare: From kings what resignation due To that almighty will, Which thrones bestows, and, when they fail, Can throne them higher still! Who truly great? The good and brave, The masters of a mind The will divine to do resolv'd, To suffer it resign'd. Madam! if that may give it weight, The trifle you receive Is dated from a solemn scene, The border of the grave; Where strongly strikes the trembling soul Eternity's dread power, As bursting on it through the thin Partition of an hour; Hear this, Voltaire! but this, from me, Runs hazard of your frown; However, spare it; ere you die, Such thoughts will be your own. In mercy to yourself forbear My notions to chastise, Lest unawares the gay Voltaire Should blame Voltaire the wise: Fame's trumpet rattling in your ear, Now, makes us disagree; When a far louder trumpet sounds, Voltaire will close with me: 90 How shocking is that modesty, Which keeps some honest men From urging what their hearts suggest, When brav'd by folly's pen. Assaulting truths, of which in all Is sown the sacred seed! Our constitution's orthodox, And closes with our creed: What then are they, whose proud conceits Superior wisdom boast? Wretches, who fight their own belief, And labour to be lost! Though vice by no superior joys Her heroes keeps in pay; Through pure disinterested love Of ruin they obey! Strict their devotion to the wrong, Though tempted by no prize; Hard their commandments, and their creed A magazine of lies From fancy's forge: gay fancy smiles At reason plain, and cool; Fancy, whose curious trade it is To make the finest fool. Voltaire! long life's the greatest curse That mortals can receive, When they imagine the chief end Of living is to live; Quite thoughtless of their day of death, That birthday of their sorrow! Knowing, it may be distant far, Nor crush them till-to-morrow. These are cold, northern thoughts, conceiv'd 91 Beneath an humble cot; Not mine, your genius, or your state, No castle is my lot:(59) But soon, quite level shall we lie; And, what pride most bemoans, Our parts, in rank so distant now, As level as our bones; Hear you that sound? Alarming sound! Prepare to meet your fate! One, who writes finis to our works, Is knocking at the gate; Far other works will soon be weigh'd; Far other judges sit; Far other crowns be lost or won, Than fire ambitious wit: Their wit far brightest will be prov'd, Who sunk it in good sense; And veneration most profound Of dread omnipotence. 'Tis that alone unlocks the gate Of blest eternity; O! mayst thou never, never lose That more than golden key! (60) Whate'er may seem too rough excuse, Your good I have at heart: Since from my soul I wish you well; As yet we must not part: Shall you, and I, in love with life, Life's future schemes contrive, The world in wonder not unjust, That we are still alive? What have we left? How mean in man A shadow's shade to crave! When life, so vain! is vainer still, 92 'Tis time to take your leave: Happier, than happiest life, is death, Who, falling in the field Of conflict with his rebel will, Writes vici, on his shield; So falling man, immortal heir Of an eternal prize; Undaunted at the gloomy grave, Descends into the skies. O! how disorder'd our machine, When contradictions mix! When nature strikes no less than twelve, And folly points at six! To mend the moments of your heart, How great is my delight Gently to wind your morals up, And set your hand aright! That hand, which spread your wisdom wide To poison distant lands: Repent, recant; the tainted age Your antidote demands; To Satan dreadfully resign'd, Whole herds rush down the steep Of folly, by lewd wits possess'd, And perish in the deep. Men's praise your vanity pursues; 'Tis well, pursue it still; But let it be of men deceas'd, And you'll resign the will; And how superior they to those At whose applause you aim; How very far superior they In number, and in name! 93 ~ Edward Young,

1467:Independence Happy the bard (though few such bards we find) Who, 'bove controlment, dares to speak his mind; Dares, unabash'd, in every place appear, And nothing fears, but what he ought to fear: Him Fashion cannot tempt, him abject Need Cannot compel, him Pride cannot mislead To be the slave of Greatness, to strike sail When, sweeping onward with her peacock's tail, Quality in full plumage passes by; He views her with a fix'd, contemptuous eye, And mocks the puppet, keeps his own due state, And is above conversing with the great. Perish those slaves, those minions of the quill, Who have conspired to seize that sacred hill Where the Nine Sisters pour a genuine strain, And sunk the mountain level with the plain; Who, with mean, private views, and servile art, No spark of virtue living in their heart, Have basely turn'd apostates; have debased Their dignity of office; have disgraced, Like Eli's sons, the altars where they stand, And caused their name to stink through all the land; Have stoop'd to prostitute their venal pen For the support of great, but guilty men; Have made the bard, of their own vile accord, Inferior to that thing we call a lord. What is a lord? Doth that plain simple word Contain some magic spell? As soon as heard, Like an alarum bell on Night's dull ear, Doth it strike louder, and more strong appear Than other words? Whether we will or no, Through Reason's court doth it unquestion'd go E'en on the mention, and of course transmit Notions of something excellent; of wit Pleasing, though keen; of humour free, though chaste; Of sterling genius, with sound judgment graced; Of virtue far above temptation's reach, And honour, which not malice can impeach? Believe it not--'twas Nature's first intent, 71 Before their rank became their punishment, They should have pass'd for men, nor blush'd to prize The blessings she bestow'd; she gave them eyes, And they could see; she gave them ears--they heard; The instruments of stirring, and they stirr'd; Like us, they were design'd to eat, to drink, To talk, and (every now and then) to think; Till they, by Pride corrupted, for the sake Of singularity, disclaim'd that make; Till they, disdaining Nature's vulgar mode, Flew off, and struck into another road, More fitting Quality, and to our view Came forth a species altogether new, Something we had not known, and could not know, Like nothing of God's making here below; Nature exclaim'd with wonder--'Lords are things, Which, never made by me, were made by kings.' A lord (nor let the honest and the brave, The true old noble, with the fool and knave Here mix his fame; cursed be that thought of mine, Which with a B---- and E---- should Grafton join), A lord (nor here let Censure rashly call My just contempt of some, abuse of all, And, as of late, when Sodom was my theme, Slander my purpose, and my Muse blaspheme, Because she stops not, rapid in her song, To make exceptions as she goes along, Though well she hopes to find, another year, A whole minority exceptions here), A mere, mere lord, with nothing but the name, Wealth all his worth, and title all his fame, Lives on another man, himself a blank, Thankless he lives, or must some grandsire thank For smuggled honours, and ill-gotten pelf; A bard owes all to Nature, and himself. Gods! how my soul is burnt up with disdain, When I see men, whom Phoebus in his train Might view with pride, lackey the heels of those Whom Genius ranks among her greatest foes! And what's the cause? Why, these same sons of Scorn, No thanks to them, were to a title born, And could not help it; by chance hither sent, 72 And only deities by accident. Had Fortune on our getting chanced to shine, Their birthright honours had been yours or mine, 'Twas a mere random stroke; and should the Throne Eye thee with favour, proud and lordly grown, Thou, though a bard, might'st be their fellow yet: But Felix never can be made a wit. No, in good faith--that's one of those few things Which Fate hath placed beyond the reach of kings: Bards may be lords, but 'tis not in the cards, Play how we will, to turn lords into bards. A bard!--a lord!--why, let them, hand in hand, Go forth as friends, and travel through the land; Observe which word the people can digest Most readily, which goes to market best, Which gets most credit, whether men will trust A bard, because they think he may be just, Or on a lord will chose to risk their gains, Though privilege in that point still remains. A bard!--a lord!--let Reason take her scales, And fairly weigh those words, see which prevails, Which in the balance lightly kicks the beam, And which, by sinking, we the victor deem. 'Tis done, and Hermes, by command of Jove, Summons a synod in the sacred grove, Gods throng with gods to take their chairs on high, And sit in state, the senate of the sky, Whilst, in a kind of parliament below, Men stare at those above, and want to know What they're transacting: Reason takes her stand Just in the midst, a balance in her hand, Which o'er and o'er she tries, and finds it true: From either side, conducted full in view, A man comes forth, of figure strange and queer; We now and then see something like them here. The first was meagre, flimsy, void of strength, But Nature kindly had made up in length What she in breadth denied; erect and proud, A head and shoulders taller than the crowd, He deem'd them pigmies all; loose hung his skin O'er his bare bones; his face so very thin, So very narrow, and so much beat out, 73 That physiognomists have made a doubt, Proportion lost, expression quite forgot, Whether it could be call'd a face or not; At end of it, howe'er, unbless'd with beard, Some twenty fathom length of chin appear'd; With legs, which we might well conceive that Fate Meant only to support a spider's weight, Firmly he strove to tread, and with a stride, Which show'd at once his weakness and his pride, Shaking himself to pieces, seem'd to cry, 'Observe, good people, how I shake the sky.' In his right hand a paper did he hold, On which, at large, in characters of gold, Distinct, and plain for those who run to see, Saint Archibald had wrote L, O, R, D. This, with an air of scorn, he from afar Twirl'd into Reason's scales, and on that bar, Which from his soul he hated, yet admired, Quick turn'd his back, and, as he came, retired. The judge to all around his name declared; Each goddess titter'd, each god laugh'd, Jove stared, And the whole people cried, with one accord, 'Good Heaven bless us all, is that a Lord!' Such was the first--the second was a man Whom Nature built on quite a different plan; A bear, whom, from the moment he was born, His dam despised, and left unlick'd in scorn; A Babel, which, the power of Art outdone, She could not finish when she had begun; An utter Chaos, out of which no might, But that of God, could strike one spark of light. Broad were his shoulders, and from blade to blade A H---- might at full length have laid; Vast were his bones, his muscles twisted strong; His face was short, but broader than 'twas long; His features, though by Nature they were large, Contentment had contrived to overcharge, And bury meaning, save that we might spy Sense lowering on the penthouse of his eye; His arms were two twin oaks; his legs so stout That they might bear a Mansion-house about; Nor were they, look but at his body there, 74 Design'd by Fate a much less weight to bear. O'er a brown cassock, which had once been black, Which hung in tatters on his brawny back, A sight most strange, and awkward to behold, He threw a covering of blue and gold. Just at that time of life, when man, by rule, The fop laid down, takes up the graver fool, He started up a fop, and, fond of show, Look'd like another Hercules turn'd beau, A subject met with only now and then, Much fitter for the pencil than the pen; Hogarth would draw him (Envy must allow) E'en to the life, was Hogarth living now. With such accoutrements, with such a form, Much like a porpoise just before a storm, Onward he roll'd; a laugh prevail'd around; E'en Jove was seen to simper; at the sound (Nor was the cause unknown, for from his youth Himself he studied by the glass of Truth) He joined their mirth; nor shall the gods condemn, If, whilst they laugh at him, he laugh'd at them. Judge Reason view'd him with an eye of grace, Look'd through his soul, and quite forgot his face, And, from his hand received, with fair regard Placed in her other scale the name of Bard. Then, (for she did as judges ought to do, She nothing of the case beforehand knew, Nor wish'd to know; she never stretch'd the laws, Nor, basely to anticipate a cause, Compell'd solicitors, no longer free, To show those briefs she had no right to see) Then she with equal hand her scales held out, Nor did the cause one moment hang in doubt; She held her scales out fair to public view, The Lord, as sparks fly upwards, upwards flew, More light than air, deceitful in the weight; The Bard, preponderating, kept his state; Reason approved, and with a voice, whose sound Shook earth, shook heaven, on the clearest ground Pronouncing for the Bards a full decree, Cried--'Those must honour them, who honour me; They from this present day, where'er I reign, 75 In their own right, precedence shall obtain; Merit rules here: be it enough that Birth Intoxicates, and sways the fools of earth.' Nor think that here, in hatred to a lord, I've forged a tale, or alter'd a record; Search when you will, (I am not now in sport) You'll find it register'd in Reason's court. Nor think that Envy here hath strung my lyre, That I depreciate what I most admire, And look on titles with an eye of scorn, Because I was not to a title born. By Him that made me, I am much more proud, More inly satisfied to have a crowd Point at me as I pass, and cry--'That's he-A poor but honest bard, who dares be free Amidst corruption,' than to have a train Of flickering levee slaves, to make me vain Of things I ought to blush for; to run, fly, And live but in the motion of my eye; When I am less than man, my faults to adore, And make me think that I am something more. Recall past times, bring back the days of old, When the great noble bore his honours bold, And in the face of peril, when he dared Things which his legal bastard, if declared, Might well discredit; faithful to his trust, In the extremest points of justice, just, Well knowing all, and loved by all he knew, True to his king, and to his country true; Honest at court, above the baits of gain, Plain in his dress, and in his manners plain; Moderate in wealth, generous, but not profuse, Well worthy riches, for he knew their use; Possessing much, and yet deserving more, Deserving those high honours which he wore With ease to all, and in return gain'd fame Which all men paid, because he did not claim. When the grim war was placed in dread array, Fierce as the lion roaring for his prey, Or lioness of royal whelps foredone; In peace, as mild as the departing sun, A general blessing wheresoe'er he turn'd, 76 Patron of learning, nor himself unlearn'd; Ever awake at Pity's tender call, A father of the poor, a friend to all; Recall such times, and from the grave bring back A worth like this, my heart shall bend, or crack, My stubborn pride give way, my tongue proclaim, And every Muse conspire to swell his fame, Till Envy shall to him that praise allow Which she cannot deny to Temple now. This justice claims, nor shall the bard forget, Delighted with the task, to pay that debt, To pay it like a man, and in his lays, Sounding such worth, prove his own right to praise. But let not pride and prejudice misdeem, And think that empty titles are my theme; Titles, with me, are vain, and nothing worth; I reverence virtue, but I laugh at birth. Give me a lord that's honest, frank, and brave, I am his friend, but cannot be his slave; Though none, indeed, but blockheads would pretend To make a slave, where they may make a friend; I love his virtues, and will make them known, Confess his rank, but can't forget my own. Give me a lord, who, to a title born, Boasts nothing else, I'll pay him scorn with scorn. What! shall my pride (and pride is virtue here) Tamely make way if such a wretch appear? Shall I uncover'd stand, and bend my knee To such a shadow of nobility, A shred, a remnant? he might rot unknown For any real merit of his own, And never had come forth to public note Had he not worn, by chance, his father's coat. To think a M---- worth my least regards, Is treason to the majesty of bards. By Nature form'd (when, for her honour's sake, She something more than common strove to make, When, overlooking each minute defect, And all too eager to be quite correct, In her full heat and vigour she impress'd Her stamp most strongly on the favour'd breast) The bard, (nor think too lightly that I mean 77 Those little, piddling witlings, who o'erween Of their small parts, the Murphys of the stage, The Masons and the Whiteheads of the age, Who all in raptures their own works rehearse, And drawl out measured prose, which they call verse) The real bard, whom native genius fires, Whom every maid of Castaly inspires, Let him consider wherefore he was meant, Let him but answer Nature's great intent, And fairly weigh himself with other men, Would ne'er debase the glories of his pen, Would in full state, like a true monarch, live, Nor bate one inch of his prerogative. Methinks I see old Wingate frowning here, (Wingate may in the season be a peer, Though now, against his will, of figures sick, He's forced to diet on arithmetic, E'en whilst he envies every Jew he meets, Who cries old clothes to sell about the streets) Methinks (his mind with future honours big, His Tyburn bob turn'd to a dress'd bag wig) I hear him cry--'What doth this jargon mean? Was ever such a damn'd dull blockhead seen? Majesty!--Bard!--Prerogative!--Disdain Hath got into, and turn'd the fellow's brain: To Bethlem with him--give him whips and straw-I'm very sensible he's mad in law. A saucy groom, who trades in reason, thus To set himself upon a par with us; If this _here's_ suffered, and if that _there_ fool, May, when he pleases, send us all to school, Why, then our only business is outright To take our caps, and bid the world good night. I've kept a bard myself this twenty years, But nothing of this kind in him appears; He, like a thorough true-bred spaniel, licks The hand which cuffs him, and the foot which kicks; He fetches and he carries, blacks my shoes, Nor thinks it a discredit to his Muse; A creature of the right chameleon hue, He wears my colours, yellow or true blue, Just as I wear them: 'tis all one to him 78 Whether I change through conscience, or through whim. Now this is something like; on such a plan A bard may find a friend in a great man; But this proud coxcomb--zounds, I thought that all Of this queer tribe had been like my old Paul.' Injurious thought! accursed be the tongue On which the vile insinuation hung, The heart where 'twas engender'd; cursed be those, Those bards, who not themselves alone expose, But me, but all, and make the very name By which they're call'd a standing mark of shame. Talk not of custom--'tis the coward's plea, Current with fools, but passes not with me; An old stale trick, which Guilt hath often tried By numbers to o'erpower the better side. Why tell me then that from the birth of Rhyme, No matter when, down to the present time, As by the original decree of Fate, Bards have protection sought amongst the great; Conscious of weakness, have applied to them As vines to elms, and, twining round their stem, Flourish'd on high; to gain this wish'd support E'en Virgil to Maecenas paid his court? As to the custom, 'tis a point agreed, But 'twas a foolish diffidence, not need, From which it rose; had bards but truly known That strength, which is most properly their own, Without a lord, unpropp'd they might have stood, And overtopp'd those giants of the wood. But why, when present times my care engage, Must I go back to the Augustan age? Why, anxious for the living, am I led Into the mansions of the ancient dead? Can they find patrons nowhere but at Rome, And must I seek Maecenas in the tomb? Name but a Wingate, twenty fools of note Start up, and from report Maecenas quote; Under his colours lords are proud to fight, Forgetting that Maecenas was a knight: They mention him, as if to use his name Was, in some measure, to partake his fame, Though Virgil, was he living, in the street 79 Might rot for them, or perish in the Fleet. See how they redden, and the charge disclaim-Virgil, and in the Fleet!--forbid it, Shame! Hence, ye vain boasters! to the Fleet repair, And ask, with blushes ask, if Lloyd is there! Patrons in days of yore were men of sense, Were men of taste, and had a fair pretence To rule in letters--some of them were heard To read off-hand, and never spell a word; Some of them, too, to such a monstrous height Was learning risen, for themselves could write, And kept their secretaries, as the great Do many other foolish things, for state. Our patrons are of quite a different strain, With neither sense nor taste; against the grain They patronise for Fashion's sake--no more-And keep a bard, just as they keep a whore. Melcombe (on such occasions I am loth To name the dead) was a rare proof of both. Some of them would be puzzled e'en to read, Nor could deserve their clergy by their creed; Others can write, but such a Pagan hand, A Willes should always at our elbow stand: Many, if begg'd, a Chancellor, of right, Would order into keeping at first sight. Those who stand fairest to the public view Take to themselves the praise to others due, They rob the very spital, and make free With those, alas! who've least to spare. We see ---- hath not had a word to say, Since winds and waves bore Singlespeech away. Patrons, in days of yore, like patrons now, Expected that the bard should make his bow At coming in, and every now and then Hint to the world that they were more than men; But, like the patrons of the present day, They never bilk'd the poet of his pay. Virgil loved rural ease, and, far from harm, Maecenas fix'd him in a neat, snug farm, Where he might, free from trouble, pass his days In his own way, and pay his rent in praise. Horace loved wine, and, through his friend at court, 80 Could buy it off the quay in every port: Horace loved mirth, Maecenas loved it too; They met, they laugh'd, as Goy and I may do, Nor in those moments paid the least regard To which was minister, and which was bard. Not so our patrons--grave as grave can be, They know themselves, they keep up dignity; Bards are a forward race, nor is it fit That men of fortune rank with men of wit: Wit, if familiar made, will find her strength-'Tis best to keep her weak, and at arm's length. 'Tis well enough for bards, if patrons give, From hand to mouth, the scanty means to live. Such is their language, and their practice such; They promise little, and they give not much. Let the weak bard, with prostituted strain, Praise that proud Scot whom all good men disdain; What's his reward? Why, his own fame undone, He may obtain a patent for the run Of his lord's kitchen, and have ample time, With offal fed, to court the cook in rhyme; Or (if he strives true patriots to disgrace) May at the second table get a place; With somewhat greater slaves allow'd to dine, And play at crambo o'er his gill of wine. And are there bards, who, on creation's file, Stand rank'd as men, who breathe in this fair isle The air of freedom, with so little gall, So low a spirit, prostrate thus to fall Before these idols, and without a groan Bear wrongs might call forth murmurs from a stone? Better, and much more noble, to abjure The sight of men, and in some cave, secure From all the outrages of Pride, to feast On Nature's salads, and be free at least. Better, (though that, to say the truth, is worse Than almost any other modern curse) Discard all sense, divorce the thankless Muse, Critics commence, and write in the Reviews; Write without tremor, Griffiths cannot read; No fool can fail, where Langhorne can succeed. But (not to make a brave and honest pride 81 Try those means first, she must disdain when tried) There are a thousand ways, a thousand arts, By which, and fairly, men of real parts May gain a living, gain what Nature craves; Let those, who pine for more, live, and be slaves. Our real wants in a small compass lie, But lawless appetite, with eager eye, Kept in a constant fever, more requires, And we are burnt up with our own desires. Hence our dependence, hence our slavery springs; Bards, if contented, are as great as kings. Ourselves are to ourselves the cause of ill; We may be independent, if we will. The man who suits his spirit to his state Stands on an equal footing with the great; Moguls themselves are not more rich, and he Who rules the English nation, not more free. Chains were not forged more durable and strong For bards than others, but they've worn them long, And therefore wear them still; they've quite forgot What Freedom is, and therefore prize her not. Could they, though in their sleep, could they but know The blessings which from Independence flow; Could they but have a short and transient gleam Of Liberty, though 'twas but in a dream, They would no more in bondage bend their knee, But, once made freemen, would be always free. The Muse, if she one moment freedom gains, Can nevermore submit to sing in chains. Bred in a cage, far from the feather'd throng, The bird repays his keeper with his song; But if some playful child sets wide the door, Abroad he flies, and thinks of home no more, With love of liberty begins to burn, And rather starves than to his cage return. Hail, Independence!--by true reason taught, How few have known, and prized thee as they ought! Some give thee up for riot; some, like boys, Resign thee, in their childish moods, for toys; Ambition some, some avarice, misleads, And in both cases Independence bleeds. Abroad, in quest of thee, how many roam, 82 Nor know they had thee in their reach at home; Some, though about their paths, their beds about, Have never had the sense to find thee out: Others, who know of what they are possess'd, Like fearful misers, lock thee in a chest, Nor have the resolution to produce, In these bad times, and bring thee forth for use. Hail, Independence!--though thy name's scarce known, Though thou, alas! art out of fashion grown, Though all despise thee, I will not despise, Nor live one moment longer than I prize Thy presence, and enjoy: by angry Fate Bow'd down, and almost crush'd, thou cam'st, though late, Thou cam'st upon me, like a second birth, And made me know what life was truly worth. Hail, Independence!--never may my cot, Till I forget thee, be by thee forgot: Thither, oh! thither, oftentimes repair; Cotes, whom thou lovest too, shall meet thee there. All thoughts but what arise from joy give o'er, Peace dwells within, and law shall guard the door. O'erweening Bard! Law guard thy door! What law? The law of England. To control and awe Those saucy hopes, to strike that spirit dumb, Behold, in state, Administration come! Why, let her come, in all her terrors too; I dare to suffer all she dares to do. I know her malice well, and know her pride, I know her strength, but will not change my side. This melting mass of flesh she may control With iron ribs--she cannot chain my soul. No--to the last resolved her worst to bear, I'm still at large, and independent there. Where is this minister? where is the band Of ready slaves, who at his elbow stand To hear, and to perform his wicked will? Why, for the first time, are they slow to ill? When some grand act 'gainst law is to be done, Doth ---- sleep; doth blood-hound ---- run To L----, and worry those small deer, When he might do more precious mischief here? Doth Webb turn tail? doth he refuse to draw 83 Illegal warrants, and to call them law? Doth ----, at Guildford kick'd, from Guildford run, With that cold lump of unbaked dough, his son, And, his more honest rival Ketch to cheat, Purchase a burial-place where three ways meet? Believe it not; ---- is ---- still, And never sleeps, when he should wake to ill: ---- doth lesser mischiefs by the by, The great ones till the term in _petto_ lie: ---- lives, and, to the strictest justice true, Scorns to defraud the hangman of his due. O my poor Country!--weak, and overpower'd By thine own sons--ate to the bone--devour'd By vipers, which, in thine own entrails bred, Prey on thy life, and with thy blood are fed, With unavailing grief thy wrongs I see, And, for myself not feeling, feel for thee. I grieve, but can't despair--for, lo! at hand Freedom presents a choice, but faithful band Of loyal patriots; men who greatly dare In such a noble cause; men fit to bear The weight of empires; Fortune, Rank, and Sense, Virtue and Knowledge, leagued with Eloquence, March in their ranks; Freedom from file to file Darts her delighted eye, and with a smile Approves her honest sons, whilst down her cheek, As 'twere by stealth, (her heart too full to speak) One tear in silence creeps, one honest tear, And seems to say, Why is not Granby here?' O ye brave few, in whom we still may find A love of virtue, freedom, and mankind! Go forth--in majesty of woe array'd, See at your feet your Country kneels for aid, And, (many of her children traitors grown) Kneels to those sons she still can call her own; Seeming to breathe her last in every breath, She kneels for freedom, or she begs for death-Fly, then, each duteous son, each English chief, And to your drooping parent bring relief. Go forth--nor let the siren voice of Ease Tempt ye to sleep, whilst tempests swell the seas; Go forth--nor let Hypocrisy, whose tongue 84 With many a fair, false, fatal art is hung, Like Bethel's fawning prophet, cross your way, When your great errand brooks not of delay; Nor let vain Fear, who cries to all she meets, Trembling and pale, 'A lion in the streets,' Damp your free spirits; let not threats affright, Nor bribes corrupt, nor flatteries delight: Be as one man--concord success ensures-There's not an English heart but what is yours. Go forth--and Virtue, ever in your sight, Shall be your guide by day, your guard by night-Go forth--the champions of your native land, And may the battle prosper in your hand-It may, it must--ye cannot be withstood-Be your hearts honest, as your cause is good! ~ Charles Churchill,

1468:Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax Within this sober Frame expect Work of no Forrain Architect; That unto Caves the Quarries drew, And Forrests did to Pastures hew; Who of his great Design in pain Did for a Model vault his Brain, Whose Columnes should so high be rais'd To arch the Brows that on them gaz'd. Why should of all things Man unrul'd Such unproportion'd dwellings build? The Beasts are by their Denns exprest: And Birds contrive an equal Nest; The low roof'd Tortoises do dwell In cases fit of Tortoise-shell: No Creature loves an empty space; Their Bodies measure out their Place. But He, superfluously spread, Demands more room alive then dead. And in his hollow Palace goes Where Winds as he themselves may lose. What need of all this Marble Crust T'impark the wanton Mose of Dust, That thinks by Breadth the World t'unite Though the first Builders fail'd in Height? But all things are composed here Like Nature, orderly and near: In which we the Dimensions find Of that more sober Age and Mind, When larger sized Men did stoop To enter at a narrow loop; As practising, in doors so strait, To strain themselves through Heavens Gate. And surely when the after Age Shall hither come in Pilgrimage, These sacred Places to adore, 188 By Vere and Fairfax trod before, Men will dispute how their Extent Within such dwarfish Confines went: And some will smile at this, as well As Romulus his Bee-like Cell. Humility alone designs Those short but admirable Lines, By which, ungirt and unconstrain'd, Things greater are in less contain'd. Let others vainly strive t'immure The Circle in the Quadrature! These holy Mathematics can In ev'ry Figure equal Man. Yet thus the laden House does sweat, And scarce indures the Master great: But where he comes the swelling Hall Stirs, and the Square grows Spherical; More by his Magnitude distrest, Then he is by its straitness prest: And too officiously it slights That in it self which him delights. So Honour better Lowness bears, Then That unwonted Greatness wears Height with a certain Grace does bend, But low Things clownishly ascend. And yet what needs there here Excuse, Where ev'ry Thing does answer Use? Where neatness nothing can condemn, Nor Pride invent what to contemn? A Stately Frontispice Of Poor Adorns without the open Door: Nor less the Rooms within commends Daily new Furniture Of Friends. The House was built upon the Place Only as for a Mark Of Grace; And for an Inn to entertain Its Lord a while, but not remain. 189 Him Bishops-Hill, or Denton may, Or Bilbrough, better hold then they: But Nature here hath been so free As if she said leave this to me. Art would more neatly have defac'd What she had laid so sweetly wast; In fragrant Gardens, shaddy Woods, Deep Meadows, and transparent Floods. While with slow Eyes we these survey, And on each pleasant footstep stay, We opportunly may relate The progress of this Houses Fate. A Nunnery first gave it birth. For Virgin Buildings oft brought forth. And all that Neighbour-Ruine shows The Quarries whence this dwelling rose. Near to this gloomy Cloysters Gates There dwelt the blooming Virgin Thwates, Fair beyond Measure, and an Heir Which might Deformity make fair. And oft She spent the Summer Suns Discoursing with the Suttle Nuns. Whence in these Words one to her weav'd, (As 'twere by Chance) Thoughts long conceiv'd. "Within this holy leisure we "Live innocently as you see. "these Walls restrain the World without, "But hedge our Liberty about. "These Bars inclose the wider Den "Of those wild Creatures, called Men. "The Cloyster outward shuts its Gates, "And, from us, locks on them the Grates. "Here we, in shining Armour white, "Like Virgin Amazons do fight. "And our chast Lamps we hourly trim, "Lest the great Bridegroom find them dim. "Our Orient Breaths perfumed are "With insense of incessant Pray'r. 190 "And Holy-water of our Tears "Most strangly our complexion clears. "Not Tears of Grief; but such as those "With which calm Pleasure overflows; "Or Pity, when we look on you "That live without this happy Vow. "How should we grieve that must be seen "Each one a Spouse, and each a Queen; "And can in Heaven hence behold "Our brighter Robes and Crowns of Gold? "When we have prayed all our Beads, "Some One the holy Legend reads; "While all the rest with Needles paint "The Face and Graces of the Saint. "But what the Linnen can't receive "They in their Lives do interweave "This work the Saints best represents; "That serves for Altar's Ornaments. "But much it to our work would add "If here your hand, your Face we had: "By it we would our Lady touch; "Yet thus She you resembles much. "Some of your Features, as we sow'd, "Through ev'ry Shrine should be bestow'd. "And in one Beauty we would take "Enough a thousand Saints to make. "And (for I dare not quench the Fire "That me does for your good inspire) "'Twere Sacriledge a Mant t'admit "To holy things, for Heaven fit. "I see the Angels in a Crown "On you the Lillies show'ring down: "And round about you Glory breaks, "That something more then humane speaks. "All Beauty, when at such a height, "Is so already consecrate. "Fairfax I know; and long ere this 191 "Have mark'd the Youth, and what he is. "But can he such a Rival seem "For whom you Heav'n should disesteem? "Ah, no! and 'twould more Honour prove "He your Devoto were, then Love. Here live beloved, and obey'd: Each one your Sister, each your Maid. "And, if our Rule seem strictly pend, "The Rule it self to you shall bend. "Our Abbess too, now far in Age, "Doth your succession near presage. "How soft the yoke on us would lye, "Might such fair Hands as yours it tye! "Your voice, the sweetest of the Quire, "Shall draw Heav'n nearer, raise us higher. "And your Example, if our Head, "Will soon us to perfection lead. "Those Virtues to us all so dear, "Will straight grow Sanctity when here: "And that, once sprung, increase so fast "Till Miracles it work at last. "Nor is our Order yet so nice, "Delight to banish as a Vice. "Here Pleasure Piety doth meet; "One perfecting the other Sweet. "So through the mortal fruit we boyl "The Sugars uncorrupting Oyl: "And that which perisht while we pull, "Is thus preserved clear and full. "For such indeed are all our Arts; "Still handling Natures finest Parts. "Flow'rs dress the Altars; for the Clothes, "The Sea-born Amber we compose; "Balms for the griv'd we draw; and pasts "We mold, as Baits for curious tasts. "What need is here of Man? unless "These as sweet Sins we should confess. 192 "Each Night among us to your side "Appoint a fresh and Virgin Bride; "Whom if Our Lord at midnight find, "Yet Neither should be left behind. "Where you may lye as chast in Bed, "As Pearls together billeted. "All Night embracing Arm in Arm, "Like Chrystal pure with Cotton warm. "But what is this to all the store "Of Joys you see, and may make more! "Try but a while, if you be wise: "The Tryal neither Costs, nor Tyes. Now Fairfax seek her promis'd faith: Religion that dispensed hath; Which She hence forward does begin; The Nuns smooth Tongue has suckt her in. Oft, though he knew it was in vain, Yet would he valiantly complain. "Is this that Sanctity so great, "An Art by which you finly'r cheat "Hypocrite Witches, hence Avant, "Who though in prison yet inchant! "Death only can such Theeves make fast, "As rob though in the Dungeon cast. "Were there but, when this House was made, "One Stone that a just Hand had laid, "It must have fall'n upon her Head "Who first Thee from thy Faith misled. "And yet, how well soever ment, "With them 'twould soon grow fraudulent "For like themselves they alter all, "And vice infects the very Wall. "But sure those Buildings last not long, "Founded by Folly, kept by Wrong. "I know what Fruit their Gardens yield, "When they it think by Night conceal'd. "Fly from their Vices. 'Tis thy state, "Not Thee, that they would consecrate. 193 "Fly from their Ruine. How I fear "Though guiltless lest thou perish there. What should he do? He would respect Religion, but not Right neglect: For first Religion taught him Right, And dazled not but clear'd his sight. Sometimes resolv'd his Sword he draws, But reverenceth then the Laws: "For Justice still that Courage led; First from a Judge, then Souldier bred. Small Honour would be in the Storm. The Court him grants the lawful Form; Which licens'd either Peace or Force, To hinder the unjust Divorce. Yet still the Nuns his Right debar'd, Standing upon their holy Guard. Ill-counsell'd Women, do you know Whom you resist, or what you do? Is not this he whose Offspring fierce Shall fight through all the Universe; And with successive Valour try France, Poland, either Germany; Till one, as long since prophecy'd, His Horse through conquer'd Britain ride? Yet, against Fate, his Spouse they kept; And the great Race would intercept. Some to the Breach against their Foes Their Wooden Saints in vain oppose Another bolder stands at push With their old Holy-Water Brush. While the disjointed Abbess threads The gingling Chain-shot of her Beads. But their lowd'st Cannon were their Lungs; And sharpest Weapons were their Tongues. But, waving these aside like Flyes, Young Fairfax through the Wall does rise. Then th' unfrequented Vault appear'd, 194 And superstitions vainly fear'd. The Relicks False were set to view; Only the Jewels there were true. But truly bright and holy Thwaites That weeping at the Altar waites. But the glad Youth away her bears, And to the Nuns bequeaths her Tears: Who guiltily their Prize bemoan, Like Gipsies that a Child hath stoln. Thenceforth (as when th' Inchantment ends The Castle vanishes or rends) The wasting Cloister with the rest Was in one instant dispossest. At the demolishing, this Seat To Fairfax fell as by Escheat. And what both Nuns and Founders will'd 'Tis likely better thus fulfill'd, For if the Virgin prov'd not theirs, The Cloyster yet remained hers. Though many a Nun there made her vow, 'Twas no Religious-House till now. From that blest Bed the Heroe came, Whom France and Poland yet does fame: Who, when retired here to Peace, His warlike Studies could not cease; But laid these Gardens out in sport In the just Figure of a Fort; And with five Bastions it did fence, As aiming one for ev'ry Sense. When in the East the Morning Ray Hangs out the Colours of the Day, The Bee through these known Allies hums, Beating the Dian with its Drumms. Then Flow'rs their drowsie Eylids raise, Their Silken Ensigns each displayes, And dries its Pan yet dank with Dew, And fills its Flask with Odours new. 195 These, as their Governour goes by, In fragrant Vollyes they let fly; And to salute their Governess Again as great a charge they press: None for the Virgin Nymph; for She Seems with the Flow'rs a Flow'r to be. And think so still! though not compare With Breath so sweet, or Cheek so faire. Well shot ye Fireman! Oh how sweet, And round your equal Fires do meet; Whose shrill report no Ear can tell, But Ecchoes to the Eye and smell. See how the Flow'rs, as at Parade, Under their Colours stand displaid: Each Regiment in order grows, That of the Tulip Pinke and Rose. But when the vigilant Patroul Of Stars walks round about the Pole, Their Leaves, that to the stalks are curl'd, Seem to their Staves the Ensigns furl'd. Then in some Flow'rs beloved Hut Each Bee as Sentinel is shut; And sleeps so too: but, if once stir'd, She runs you through, or askes The Word. Oh Thou, that dear and happy Isle The Garden of the World ere while, Thou Paradise of four Seas, Which Heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the World, did guard With watry if not flaming Sword; What luckless Apple did we tast, To make us Mortal, and The Wast. Unhappy! shall we never more That sweet Milltia restore, When Gardens only had their Towrs, And all the Garrisons were Flow'rs, When Roses only Arms might bear, And Men did rosie Garlands wear? 196 Tulips, in several Colours barr'd, Were then the Switzers of our Guard. The Gardiner had the Souldiers place, And his more gentle Forts did trace. The Nursery of all things green Was then the only Magazeen. The Winter Quarters were the Stoves, Where he the tender Plants removes. But War all this doth overgrow: We Ord'nance Plant and Powder sow. And yet their walks one on the Sod Who, had it pleased him and God, Might once have made our Gardens spring Fresh as his own and flourishing. But he preferr'd to the Cinque Ports These five imaginary Forts: And, in those half-dry Trenches, spann'd Pow'r which the Ocean might command. For he did, with his utmost Skill, Ambition weed, but Conscience till. Conscience, that Heaven-nursed Plant, Which most our Earthly Gardens want. A prickling leaf it bears, and such As that which shrinks at ev'ry touch; But Flow'rs eternal, and divine, That in the Crowns of Saints do shine. The sight does from these Bastions ply, Th' invisible Artilery; And at proud Cawood Castle seems To point the Battery of its Beams. As if it quarrell'd in the Seat Th' Ambition of its Prelate great. But ore the Meads below it plays, Or innocently seems to gaze. And now to the Abbyss I pass Of that unfathomable Grass, Where Men like Grashoppers appear, 197 But Grashoppers are Gyants there: They, in there squeking Laugh, contemn Us as we walk more low then them: And, from the Precipices tall Of the green spir's, to us do call. To see Men through this Meadow Dive, We wonder how they rise alive. As, under Water, none does know Whether he fall through it or go. But, as the Marriners that sound, And show upon their Lead the Ground, They bring up Flow'rs so to be seen, And prove they've at the Bottom been. No Scene that turns with Engines strange Does oftner then these Meadows change, For when the Sun the Grass hath vext, The tawny Mowers enter next; Who seem like Israaliies to be, Walking on foot through a green Sea. To them the Grassy Deeps divide, And crowd a Lane to either Side. With whistling Sithe, and Elbow strong, These Massacre the Grass along: While one, unknowing, carves the Rail, Whose yet unfeather'd Quils her fail. The Edge all bloody from its Breast He draws, and does his stroke detest; Fearing the Flesh untimely mow'd To him a Fate as black forebode. But bloody Thestylis, that waites To bring the mowing Camp their Cates, Greedy as Kites has trust it up, And forthwith means on it to sup: When on another quick She lights, And cryes, he call'd us Israelites; But now, to make his saying true, Rails rain for Quails, for Manna Dew. 198 Unhappy Birds! what does it boot To build below the Grasses Root; When Lowness is unsafe as Hight, And Chance o'retakes what scapeth spight? And now your Orphan Parents Call Sounds your untimely Funeral. Death-Trumpets creak in such a Note, And 'tis the Sourdine in their Throat. Or sooner hatch or higher build: The Mower now commands the Field; In whose new Traverse seemeth wrought A Camp of Battail newly fought: Where, as the Meads with Hay, the Plain Lyes quilted ore with Bodies slain: The Women that with forks it filing, Do represent the Pillaging. And now the careless Victors play, Dancing the Triumphs of the Hay; Where every Mowers wholesome Heat Smells like an Alexanders Sweat. Their Females fragrant as the Mead Which they in Fairy Circles tread: When at their Dances End they kiss, Their new-made Hay not sweeter is. When after this 'tis pil'd in Cocks, Like a calm Sea it shews the Rocks: We wondring in the River near How Boats among them safely steer. Or, like the Desert Memphis Sand, Short Pyramids of Hay do stand. And such the Roman Camps do rise In Hills for Soldiers Obsequies. This Scene again withdrawing brings A new and empty Face of things; A levell'd space, as smooth and plain, As Clothes for Lilly strecht to stain. The World when first created sure Was such a Table rase and pure. 199 Or rather such is the Toril Ere the Bulls enter at Madril. For to this naked equal Flat, Which Levellers take Pattern at, The Villagers in common chase Their Cattle, which it closer rase; And what below the Sith increast Is pincht yet nearer by the Breast. Such, in the painted World, appear'd Davenant with th'Universal Heard. They seem within the polisht Grass A landskip drawen in Looking-Glass. And shrunk in the huge Pasture show As spots, so shap'd, on Faces do. Such Fleas, ere they approach the Eye, In Multiplyiug Glasses lye. They feed so wide, so slowly move, As Constellatious do above. Then, to conclude these pleasant Acts, Denton sets ope its Cataracts; And makes the Meadow truly be (What it but seem'd before) a Sea. For, jealous of its Lords long stay, It try's t'invite him thus away. The River in it self is drown'd, And Isl's th' astonish Cattle round. Let others tell the Paradox, How Eels now bellow in the Ox; How Horses at their Tails do kick, Turn'd as they hang to Leeches quick; How Boats can over Bridges sail; And Fishes do the Stables scale. How Salmons trespassing are found; And Pikes are taken in the Pound. But I, retiring from the Flood, Take Sanctuary in the Wood; And, while it lasts, my self imbark 200 In this yet green, yet growing Ark; Where the first Carpenter might best Fit Timber for his Keel have Prest. And where all Creatures might have shares, Although in Armies, not in Paires. The double Wood of ancient Stocks Link'd in so thick, an Union locks, It like two Pedigrees appears, On one hand Fairfax, th' other Veres: Of whom though many fell in War, Yet more to Heaven shooting are: And, as they Natures Cradle deckt, Will in green Age her Hearse expect. When first the Eye this Forrest sees It seems indeed as Wood not Trees: As if their Neighbourhood so old To one great Trunk them all did mold. There the huge Bulk takes place, as ment To thrust up a Fifth Element; And stretches still so closely wedg'd As if the Night within were hedg'd. Dark all without it knits; within It opens passable and thin; And in as loose an order grows, As the Corinthean Porticoes. The Arching Boughs unite between The Columnes of the Temple green; And underneath the winged Quires Echo about their tuned Fires. The Nightingale does here make choice To sing the Tryals of her Voice. Low Shrubs she sits in, and adorns With Musick high the squatted Thorns. But highest Oakes stoop down to hear, And listning Elders prick the Ear. The Thorn, lest it should hurt her, draws Within the Skin its shrunken claws. 201 But I have for my Musick found A Sadder, yet more pleasing Sound: The Stock-doves whose fair necks are grac'd With Nuptial Rings their Ensigns chast; Yet always, for some Cause unknown, Sad pair unto the Elms they moan. O why should such a Couple mourn, That in so equal Flames do burn! Then as I carless on the Bed Of gelid Straw-berryes do tread, And through the Hazles thick espy The hatching Thrastles shining Eye, The Heron from the Ashes top, The eldest of its young lets drop, As if it Stork-like did pretend That Tribute to its Lord to send. But most the Hewel's wonders are, Who here has the Holt-felsters care. He walks still upright from the Root, Meas'ring the Timber with his Foot; And all the way, to keep it clean, Doth from the Bark the Wood-moths glean. He, with his Beak, examines well Which fit to stand and which to fell. The good he numbers up, and hacks; As if he mark'd them with the Ax. But where he, tinkling with his Beak, Does find the hollow Oak to speak, That for his building he designs, And through the tainted Side he mines. Who could have thought the tallest Oak Should fall by such a feeble Strok'! Nor would it, had the Tree not fed A Traitor-worm, within it bred. (As first our Flesh corrupt within Tempts impotent and bashful Sin. And yet that Worm triumphs not long, But serves to feed the Hewels young. 202 While the Oake seems to fall content, Viewing the Treason's Punishment. Thus I, easie Philosopher, Among the Birds and Trees confer: And little now to make me, wants Or of the Fowles, or of the Plants. Give me but Wings as they, and I Streight floting on the Air shall fly: Or turn me but, and you shall see I was but an inverted Tree. Already I begin to call In their most-learned Original: And where I Language want,my Signs The Bird upon the Bough divines; And more attentive there doth sit Then if She were with Lime-twigs knit. No Leaf does tremble in the Wind Which I returning cannot find. Out of these scatter'd Sibyls Leaves Strange Prophecies my Phancy weaves: And in one History consumes, Like Mexique Paintings, all the Plumes. What Rome, Greece, Palestine, ere said I in this light Mosaick read. Thrice happy he who, not mistook, Hath read in Natures mystick Book. And see how Chance's better Wit Could with a Mask my studies hit! The Oak-Leaves me embroyder all, Between which Caterpillars crawl: And Ivy, with familiar trails, Me licks, and clasps, and curles, and hales. Under this antick Cope I move Like some great Prelate of the Grove, Then, languishing with ease, I toss On Pallets swoln of Velvet Moss; While the Wind, cooling through the Boughs, 203 Flatters with Air my panting Brows. Thanks for my Rest ye Mossy Banks, And unto you cool Zephyr's Thanks, Who, as my Hair, my Thoughts too shed, And winnow from the Chaff my Head. How safe, methinks, and strong, behind These Trees have I incamp'd my Mind; Where Beauty, aiming at the Heart, Bends in some Tree its useless Dart; And where the World no certain Shot Can make, or me it toucheth not. But I on it securely play, And gaul its Horsemen all the Day. Bind me ye Woodbines in your 'twines, Curle me about ye gadding Vines, And Oh so close your Circles lace, That I may never leave this Place: But, lest your Fetters prove too weak, Ere I your Silken Bondage break, Do you, O Brambles, chain me too, And courteous Briars nail me though. Here in the Morning tye my Chain, Where the two Woods have made a Lane; While, like a Guard on either side, The Trees before their Lord divide; This, like a long and equal Thread, Betwixt two Labyrinths does lead. But, where the Floods did lately drown, There at the Ev'ning stake me down. For now the Waves are fal'n and dry'd, And now the Meadows fresher dy'd; Whose Grass, with moister colour dasht, Seems as green Silks but newly washt. No Serpent new nor Crocodile Remains behind our little Nile; Unless it self you will mistake, Among these Meads the only Snake. 204 See in what wanton harmless folds It ev'ry where the Meadow holds; And its yet muddy back doth lick, Till as a Chrystal Mirrour slick; Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt If they be in it or without. And for his shade which therein shines, Narcissus like, the Sun too pines. Oh what a Pleasure 'tis to hedge My Temples here with heavy sedge; Abandoning my lazy Side, Stretcht as a Bank unto the Tide; Or to suspend my sliding Foot On the Osiers undermined Root, And in its Branches tough to hang, While at my Lines the Fishes twang! But now away my Hooks, my Quills, And Angles, idle Utensils. The Young Maria walks to night: Hide trifling Youth thy Pleasures slight. 'Twere shame that such judicious Eyes Should with such Toyes a Man surprize; She that already is the Law Of all her Sex, her Ages Aw. See how loose Nature, in respect To her, it self doth recollect; And every thing so whisht and fine, Starts forth with to its Bonne Mine. The Sun himself, of Her aware, Seems to descend with greater Care, And lest She see him go to Bed, In blushing Clouds conceales his Head. So when the Shadows laid asleep From underneath these Banks do creep, And on the River as it flows With Eben Shuts begin to close; The modest Halcyon comes in sight, Flying betwixt the Day and Night; 205 And such an horror calm and dumb, Admiring Nature does benum. The viscous Air, wheres'ere She fly, Follows and sucks her Azure dy; The gellying Stream compacts below, If it might fix her shadow so; The Stupid Fishes hang, as plain As Flies in Chrystal overt'ane, And Men the silent Scene assist, Charm'd with the saphir-winged Mist. Maria such, and so doth hush The World, and through the Ev'ning rush. No new-born Comet such a Train Draws through the Skie, nor Star new-slain. For streight those giddy Rockets fail, Which from the putrid Earth exhale, But by her Flames, in Heaven try'd, Nature is wholly Vitrifi'd. 'Tis She that to these Gardens gave That wondrous Beauty which they have; She streightness on the Woods bestows; To Her the Meadow sweetness owes; Nothing could make the River be So Chrystal-pure but only She; She yet more Pure, Sweet, Streight, and Fair, Then Gardens, Woods, Meads, Rivers are. Therefore what first She on them spent, They gratefully again present. The Meadow Carpets where to tread; The Garden Flow'rs to Crown Her Head; And for a Glass the limpid Brook, Where She may all her Beautyes look; But, since She would not have them seen, The Wood about her draws a Skreen. For She, to higher Beauties rais'd, Disdains to be for lesser prais'd. She counts her Beauty to converse 206 In all the Languages as hers; Not yet in those her self imployes But for the Wisdome, not the Noyse; Nor yet that Wisdome would affect, But as 'tis Heavens Dialect. Blest Nymph! that couldst so soon prevent Those Trains by Youth against thee meant; Tears (watry Shot that pierce the Mind;) And Sighs (Loves Cannon charg'd with Wind;) True Praise (That breaks through all defence;) And feign'd complying Innocence; But knowing where this Ambush lay, She scap'd the safe, but roughest Way. This 'tis to have been from the first In a Domestick Heaven nurst, Under the Discipline severe Of Fairfax, and the starry Vere; Where not one object can come nigh But pure, and spotless as the Eye; And Goodness doth it self intail On Females, if there want a Male. Go now fond Sex that on your Face Do all your useless Study place, Nor once at Vice your Brows dare knit Lest the smooth Forehead wrinkled sit Yet your own Face shall at you grin, Thorough the Black-bag of your Skin; When knowledge only could have fill'd And Virtue all those Furows till'd. Hence She with Graces more divine Supplies beyond her Sex the Line; And, like a sprig of Misleto, On the Fairfacian Oak does grow; Whence, for some universal good, The Priest shall cut the sacred Bud; While her glad Parents most rejoice, And make their Destiny their Choice. 207 Mean time ye Fields, Springs, Bushes, Flow'rs, Where yet She leads her studious Hours, (Till Fate her worthily translates, And find a Fairfax for our Thwaites) Employ the means you have by Her, And in your kind your selves preferr; That, as all Virgins She preceds, So you all Woods, Streams, Gardens, Meads. For you Thessalian Tempe's Seat Shall now be scorn'd as obsolete; Aranjeuz, as less, disdain'd; The Bel-Retiro as constrain'd; But name not the Idalian Grove, For 'twas the Seat of wanton Love; Much less the Dead's Elysian Fields, Yet nor to them your Beauty yields. 'Tis not, what once it was, the World; But a rude heap together hurl'd; All negligently overthrown, Gulfes, Deserts, Precipices, Stone. Your lesser World contains the same. But in more decent Order tame; You Heaven's Center, Nature's Lap. And Paradice's only Map. But now the Salmon-Fishers moist Their Leathern Boats begin to hoist; And, like Antipodes in Shoes, Have shod their Heads in their Canoos. How Tortoise like, but not so slow, These rational Amphibii go? Let's in: for the dark Hemisphere Does now like one of them appear. ~ Andrew Marvell,

1469:The Dunciad: Book Iv Yet, yet a moment, one dim ray of light Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night! Of darkness visible so much be lent, As half to show, half veil, the deep intent. Ye pow'rs! whose mysteries restor'd I sing, To whom time bears me on his rapid wing, Suspend a while your force inertly strong, Then take at once the poet and the song. Now flam'd the Dog Star's unpropitious ray, Smote ev'ry brain, and wither'd every bay; Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bow'r. The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour: Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night, To blot out order, and extinguish light, Of dull and venal a new world to mould, And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold. She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd, In broad effulgence all below reveal'd; ('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines) Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines. Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains, And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains. There foam'd rebellious Logic , gagg'd and bound, There, stripp'd, fair Rhet'ric languish'd on the ground; His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne, And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn. Morality , by her false guardians drawn, Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord, And dies, when Dulness gives her page the word. Mad Mathesis alone was unconfin'd, Too mad for mere material chains to bind, Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare, Now running round the circle finds it square. But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie, Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flatt'ry's eye: 191 There to her heart sad Tragedy addres'd The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast; But sober History restrain'd her rage, And promised vengeance on a barb'rous age. There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead, Had not her sister Satire held her head: Nor couldst thou, Chesterfield! a tear refuse, Thou weptst, and with thee wept each gentle Muse. When lo! a harlot form soft sliding by, With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye; Foreign her air, her robe's discordant pride In patchwork flutt'ring, and her head aside: By singing peers upheld on either hand, She tripp'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand; Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look, Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke. 'O Cara! Cara! silence all that train: Joy to great Chaos! let Division reign: Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence, Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense: One trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage, Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage; To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore, And all thy yawning daughters cry, encore Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns, Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains. But soon, ah soon, Rebellion will commence, If Music meanly borrows aid from Sense. Strong in new arms, lo! Giant Handel stands, Like bold Briarerus, with a hundred hands; To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes, And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums. Arrest him, Empress, or you sleep no more-' She heard, and drove him to th' Hibernian shore. And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown, 192 And all the nations summoned to the throne. The young, the old, who feel her inward sway, One instinct seizes, and transports away. None need a guide, by sure attraction led, And strong impulsive gravity of head: None want a place, for all their centre found Hung to the Goddess, and coher'd around. Not closer, orb in orb, conglob'd are seen The buzzing bees about their dusky Queen. The gath'ring number, as it moves along, Involves a vast involuntary throng, Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less, Roll in her Vortex, and her pow'r confess. Not those alone who passive own her laws, But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause. Whate'er of dunce in college or in town Sneers at another, in toupee or gown; Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits, A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits. Nor absent they, no members of her state, Who pay her homage in her sons, the Great; Who false to Phoebus bow the knee to Baal; Or, impious, preach his Word without a call. Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead, Withhold the pension, and set up the head; Or vest dull Flattery in the sacred gown; Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown. And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit, Without the soul, the Muse's hypocrite. There march'd the bard and blockhead, side by side, Who rhym'd for hire, and patroniz'd for pride. Narcissus, prais'd with all a Parson's pow'r, Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a show'r. There mov'd Montalto with superior air; His stretch'd-out arm display'd a volume fair; Courtiers and Patriots in two ranks divide, Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side: But as in graceful act, with awful eye Compos'd he stood, bold Benson thrust him by: 193 On two unequal crutches propp'd he came, Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name. The decent knight retir'd with sober rage, Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page. But (happy for him as the times went then) Appear'd Apollo's mayor and aldermen, On whom three hundred gold-capp'd youths await, To lug the pond'rous volume off in state. When Dulness, smiling-'Thus revive the Wits! But murder first, and mince them all to bits; As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!) A new edition of old Aeson gave; Let standard authors, thus, like trophies born, Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn, And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade, Admire new light through holes yourselves have made. Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone, A page, a grave, that they can call their own; But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick, On passive paper, or on solid brick. So by each bard an Alderman shall sit, A heavy lord shall hang at ev'ry wit, And while on Fame's triumphal Car they ride, Some Slave of mine be pinion'd to their side.' Now crowds on crowds around the Goddess press, Each eager to present their first address. Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance, But fop shows fop superior complaisance, When lo! a spector rose, whose index hand Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand; His beaver'd brow a birchen garland wears, Dropping with infant's blood, and mother's tears. O'er every vein a shud'ring horror runs; Eton and Winton shake through all their sons. All flesh is humbl'd, Westminster's bold race Shrink, and confess the Genius of the place: The pale boy senator yet tingling stands, And holds his breeches close with both his hands. 194 Then thus. 'Since man from beast by words is known, Words are man's province, words we teach alone. When reason doubtful, like the Samian letter, Points him two ways, the narrower is the better. Plac'd at the door of learning, youth to guide, We never suffer it to stand too wide. To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence, As fancy opens the quick springs of sense, We ply the memory, we load the brain, Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain, Confine the thought, to exercise the breath; And keep them in the pale of words till death. Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd, We hang one jingling padlock on the mind: A Poet the first day, he dips his quill; And what the last? A very Poet still. Pity! the charm works only in our wall, Lost, lost too soon in yonder house or hall. There truant Wyndham every Muse gave o'er, There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more! How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast! How many Martials were in Pult'ney lost! Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise, In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days, Had reach'd the work, and All that mortal can; And South beheld that Masterpiece of Man.' 'Oh' (cried the Goddess) 'for some pedant Reign! Some gentle James, to bless the land again; To stick the Doctor's chair into the throne, Give law to words, or war with words alone, Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule, And turn the council to a grammar school! For sure, if Dulness sees a grateful day, 'Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway. O! if my sons may learn one earthly thing, Teach but that one, sufficient for a king; That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain, Which as it dies, or lives, we fall, or reign: May you, may Cam and Isis, preach it long! 'The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong'.' 195 Prompt at the call, around the Goddess roll Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal: Thick and more thick the black blockade extends, A hundred head of Aristotle's friends. Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day, Though Christ Church long kept prudishly away. Each staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock, Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke, Came whip and spur, and dash'd through thin and thick On German Crousaz, and Dutch Burgersdyck. As many quit the streams that murm'ring fall To lull the sons of Marg'ret and Clare Hall, Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport In troubled waters, but now sleeps in Port. Before them march'd that awful Aristarch; Plow'd was his front with many a deep remark: His hat, which never vail'd to human pride, Walker with rev'rence took, and laid aside. Low bowed the rest: He, kingly, did but nod; So upright Quakers please both man and God. 'Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne: Avaunt-is Aristarchus yet unknown? Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains Made Horace dull, and humbl'd Milton's strains. Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain, Critics like me shall make it prose again. Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better: Author of something yet more great than letter; While tow'ring o'er your alphabet, like Saul, Stands our Digamma, and o'ertops them all. 'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate, Disputes of Me or Te , of aut or at To sound or sink in 196 cano , O or A, Or give up Cicero to C or K. Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke, And Alsop never but like Horace joke: For me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny, Manilius or Solinus shall supply: For Attic Phrase in Plato let them seek, I poach in Suidas for unlicens'd Greek. In ancient sense if any needs will deal, Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal; What Gellius or Stobaeus hash'd before, Or chew'd by blind old Scholiasts o'er and o'er. The critic eye, that microscope of wit, Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit: How parts relate to parts, or they to whole, The body's harmony, the beaming soul, Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see, When man's whole frame is obvious to a Flea 'Ah, think not, Mistress! more true dulness lies In Folly's cap, than Wisdom's grave disguise. Like buoys, that never sink into the flood, On learning's surface we but lie and nod. Thine is the genuine head of many a house, And much Divinity without a Nous. Nor could a Barrow work on every block, Nor has one Atterbury spoil'd the flock. See! still thy own, the heavy canon roll, And metaphysic smokes involve the pole. For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, Goddess, and about it: So spins the silkworm small its slender store, And labours till it clouds itself all o'er. 'What tho' we let some better sort of fool Thrid ev'ry science, run through ev'ry school? Never by tumbler through the hoops was shown 197 Such skill in passing all, and touching none. He may indeed (if sober all this time) Plague with dispute, or persecute with rhyme. We only furnish what he cannot use, Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse: Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once, And petrify a Genius to a Dunce: Or set on metaphysic ground to prance, Show all his paces, not a step advance. With the same cement ever sure to bind, We bring to one dead level ev'ry mind. Then take him to develop, if you can, And hew the block off, and get out the man. But wherefore waste I words? I see advance Whore, pupil, and lac'd governor from France. Walker! our hat' -nor more he deign'd to say, But, stern as Ajax' spectre, strode away. In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race, And titt'ring push'd the Pedants off the place; Some would have spoken, but the voice was drown'd By the French horn, or by the op'ning hound. The first came forwards, with as easy mien, As if he saw St. James's and the Queen. When thus th' attendant Orator begun, Receive, great Empress! thy accomplish'd Son: Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod, A dauntless infant! never scar'd with God. The Sire saw, one by one, his Virtues wake: The Mother begg'd the blessing of a Rake. Thou gav'st that Ripeness, which so soon began, And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was Boy, nor Man, Thro' School and College, thy kind cloud o'ercast, Safe and unseen the young AEneas past: Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down, Stunn'd with his giddy Larum half the town. Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew: Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display, Thou, only thou, directing all our way! To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs, Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons; 198 Or Tyber, now no longer Roman, rolls, Vain of Italian Arts, Italian Souls: To happy Convents, bosom'd deep in vines, Where slumber Abbots, purple as their wines: To Isles of fragrance, lilly-silver'd vales, Diffusing languor in the panting gales: To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves, Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves. But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps, And Cupids ride the Lyon of the Deeps; Where, eas'd of Fleets, the Adriatic main Wafts the smooth Eunuch and enamour'd swain. Led by my hand, he saunter'd Europe round, And gather'd ev'ry Vice on Christian ground; Saw ev'ry Court, hear'd ev'ry King declare His royal Sense, of Op'ra's or the Fair; The Stews and Palace equally explor'd, Intrigu'd with glory, and with spirit whor'd; Try'd all hors-d' uvres, all Liqueurs defin'd, Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd; Dropt the dull lumber of the Latin store, Spoil'd his own Language, and acquir'd no more; All Classic learning lost on Classic ground; And last turn'd Air, the Eccho of a Sound! See now, half-cur'd, and perfectly well-bred, With nothing but a Solo in his head; As much Estate, and Principle, and Wit, As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit; Stol'n from a Duel, follow'd by a Nun, And, if a Borough chuse him, not undone; See, to my country happy I restore This glorious Youth, and add one Venus more. Her too receive (for her my soul adores) So may the sons of sons of sons of whores, Prop thine, O Empress! like each neighbour Throne, And make a long Posterity thy own. Pleas'd, she accepts the Hero, and the Dame, Wraps in her Veil, and frees from sense of Shame. Then look'd, and saw a lazy, lolling sort, Unseen at Church, at Senate, or at Court, Of ever-listless Loit'rers, that attend No Cause, no Trust, no Duty, and no Friend. 199 Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there, Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yawn confess The Pains and Penalties of Idleness. She pity'd! but her Pity only shed Benigner influence on thy nodding head. But Annius, crafty Seer, with ebon wand, And well-dissembl'd Em'rald on his hand, False as his Gems and canker'd as his Coins, Came, cramm'd with Capon, from where Pollio dines. Soft, as the wily Fox is seen to creep, Where bask on sunny banks the simple sheep, Walk round and round, now prying here, now there; So he; but pious, whisper'd first his pray'r. Grant, gracious Goddess! grant me still to cheat, O may thy cloud still cover the deceit! Thy choicer mists on this assembly shed, But pour them thickest on the noble head. So shall each youth, assisted by our eyes, See other C‘sars, other Homers rise; Thro' twilight ages hunt th'Athenian fowl, Which Chalcis Gods, and mortals call an Owl, Now see an Attys, now a Cecrops clear, Nay, Mahomet! the Pigeon at thine ear; Be rich in ancient brass, tho' not in gold, And keep his Lares, tho' his house be sold; To headless Ph be his fair bride postpone, Honour a Syrian Prince above his own; Lord of an Otho, if I vouch it true; Blest in one Niger, till he knows of two. Mummius o'erheard him; Mummius, Fool-renown'd, Who like his Cheops stinks above the ground, Fierce as a startled Adder, swell'd, and said, Rattling an ancient Sistrum at his head. Speak'st thou of Syrian Princes? Traitor base! Mine, Goddess! mine is all the horned race. True, he had wit, to make their value rise; From foolish Greeks to steal them, was as wise; More glorious yet, from barb'rous hands to keep, When Sallee Rovers chac'd him on the deep. Then taught by Hermes, and divinely bold, Down his own throat he risqu'd the Grecian gold; 200 Receiv'd each Demi-God, with pious care, Deep in his Entrails — I rever'd them there, I bought them, shrouded in that living shrine, And, at their second birth, they issue mine. Witness great Ammon! by whose horns I swore, (Reply'd soft Annius) this our paunch before Still bears them, faithful; and that thus I eat, Is to refund the Medals with the meat. To prove me, Goddess! clear of all design, Bid me with Pollio sup, as well as dine: There all the Learn'd shall at the labour stand, And Douglas lend his soft, obstetric hand. The Goddess smiling seem'd to give consent; So back to Pollio, hand in hand, they went. Then thick as Locusts black'ning all the ground, A tribe, with weeds and shells fantastic crown'd, Each with some wond'rous gift approach'd the Pow'r, A Nest, a Toad, a Fungus, or a Flow'r. But far the foremost, two, with earnest zeal, And aspect ardent to the Throne appeal. The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call, Great Queen, and common Mother of us all! Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this Flow'r, Suckled, and chear'd, with air, and sun, and show'r, Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, Bright with the gilded button tipt its head, Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline: Each Maid cry'd, charming! and each Youth, divine! Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays, Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze? Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline: No Maid cries, charming! and no Youth, divine! And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust Lay'd this gay daughter of the Spring in dust. Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades Dismiss my soul, where no Carnation fades. He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mien, Th'Accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen. Of all th'enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wing Waves to the tepid Zephyrs of the spring, Or swims along the fluid atmosphere, Once brightest shin'd this child of Heat and Air. 201 I saw, and started from its vernal bow'r The rising game, and chac'd from flow'r to flow'r. It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain; It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again. At last it fix'd, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd, And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seiz'd: Rose or Carnation was below my care; I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere. I tell the naked fact without disguise, And, to excuse it, need but shew the prize; Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye, Fair ev'n in death! this peerless Butterfly. My sons! (she answer'd) both have done your parts: Live happy both, and long promote our arts. But hear a Mother, when she recommends To your fraternal care, our sleeping friends. The common Soul, of Heav'n's more frugal make, Serves but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake: A drowzy Watchman, that just gives a knock, And breaks our rest, to tell us what's a clock. Yet by some object ev'ry brain is stirr'd; The dull may waken to a Humming-bird; The most recluse, discreetly open'd, find Congenial matter in the Cockle-kind; The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss, May wander in a wilderness of Moss; The head that turns at super-lunar things, Poiz'd with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings. 'O! would the sons of men once think their eyes And reason given them but to study flies ! See Nature in some partial narrow shape, And let the Author of the Whole escape: Learn but to trifle; or, who most observe, To wonder at their Maker, not to serve.' 'Be that my task' (replies a gloomy clerk, Sworn foe to Myst'ry, yet divinely dark; Whose pious hope aspires to see the day When Moral Evidence shall quite decay, And damns implicit faith, and holy lies, Prompt to impose, and fond to dogmatize): 'Let others creep by timid steps, and slow, On plain experience lay foundations low, 202 By common sense to common knowledge bred, And last, to Nature's Cause through Nature led. All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide, Mother of Arrogance, and Source of Pride! We nobly take the high Priori Road, And reason downward, till we doubt of God: Make Nature still encroach upon his plan; And shove him off as far as e'er we can: Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place; Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space. Or, at one bound o'erleaping all his laws, Make God man's image, man the final Cause, Find virtue local, all relation scorn See all in self , and but for self be born: Of naught so certain as our reason still, Of naught so doubtful as of soul and will . Oh hide the God still more! and make us see Such as Lucretius drew, a god like thee: Wrapp'd up in self, a god without a thought, Regardless of our merit or default. Or that bright image to our fancy draw, Which Theocles in raptur'd vision saw, While through poetic scenes the Genius roves, Or wanders wild in academic groves; That Nature our society adores, Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores.' Rous'd at his name up rose the bousy Sire, And shook from out his pipe the seeds of fire; Then snapp'd his box, and strok'd his belly down: Rosy and rev'rend, though without a gown. Bland and familiar to the throne he came, Led up the youth, and call'd the Goddess Dame . Then thus, 'From priestcraft happily set free, Lo! ev'ry finished Son returns to thee: First slave to words, then vassal to a name, Then dupe to party; child and man the same; Bounded by Nature, narrow'd still by art, A trifling head, and a contracted heart. Thus bred, thus taught, how many have I seen, Smiling on all, and smil'd on by a queen. Marked out for honours, honour'd for their birth, 203 To thee the most rebellious things on earth: Now to thy gentle shadow all are shrunk, All melted down, in pension, or in punk! So K-- so B-- sneak'd into the grave, A monarch's half, and half a harlot's slave. Poor W-- nipp'd in Folly's broadest bloom, Who praises now? his chaplain on his tomb. Then take them all, oh take them to thy breast! Thy Magus , Goddess! shall perform the rest.' With that, a Wizard old his Cup extends; Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends, Sire, ancestors, himself. One casts his eyes Up to a Star , and like Endymion dies: A Feather , shooting from another's head, Extracts his brain, and principle is fled, Lost is his God, his country, ev'rything; And nothing left but homage to a king! The vulgar herd turn off to roll with hogs, To run with horses, or to hunt with dogs; But, sad example! never to escape Their infamy, still keep the human shape. But she, good Goddess, sent to ev'ry child Firm impudence, or stupefaction mild; And straight succeeded, leaving shame no room, Cibberian forehead, or Cimmerian gloom. Kind self-conceit to somewhere glass applies, Which no one looks in with another's eyes: But as the flatt'rer or dependant paint, Beholds himself a patriot, chief, or saint. On others Int'rest her gay liv'ry flings, Int'rest that waves on party-colour'd wings: Turn'd to the sun, she casts a thousand dyes, And, as she turns, the colours fall or rise. Others the siren sisters warble round, And empty heads console with empty sound. No more, Alas! the voice of Fame they hear, The balm of Dulness trickling in their ear. Great C--, H--, P--, R--, K--, Why all your toils? your Sons have learn'd to sing. How quick ambition hastes to ridicule! The sire is made a peer, the son a fool. 204 On some, a Priest succinct in amice white Attends; all flesh is nothing in his sight! Beeves, at his touch, at once to jelly turn, And the huge boar is shrunk into an urn: The board with specious miracles he loads, Turns hares to larks, and pigeons into toads. Another (for in all what one can shine?) Explains the Seve and Verdeur of the vine. What cannot copious sacrifice atone? Thy truffles, Perigord! thy hams, Bayonne! With French libation, and Italian strain, Wash Bladen white, and expiate Hays's stain. Knight lifts the head, for what are crowds undone. To three essential partridges in one? Gone ev'ry blush, and silent all reproach, Contending princes mount them in their coach. Next, bidding all draw near on bended knees, The Queen confers her Titles and Degrees . Her children first of more distinguish'd sort, Who study Shakespeare at the Inns of Court, Impale a glowworm, or vertú profess, Shine in the dignity of F.R.S. Some, deep Freemasons, join the silent race Worthy to fill Pythagoras's place: Some botanists, or florists at the least, Or issue members of an annual feast. Nor pass'd the meanest unregarded, one Rose a Gregorian, one a Gormogon. The last, not least in honour or applause, Isis and Cam made Doctors of her Laws. Then, blessing all, 'Go, Children of my care! To practice now from theory repair. All my commands are easy, short, and full: My sons! be proud, be selfish, and be dull. Guard my prerogative, assert my throne: This nod confirms each privilege your own. The cap and switch be sacred to his Grace; 205 With staff and pumps the Marquis lead the race; From stage to stage the licens'd Earl may run, Pair'd with his fellow charioteer the sun; The learned Baron butterflies design, Or draw to silk Arachne's subtle line; The Judge to dance his brother Sergeant call; The Senator at cricket urge the ball; The Bishop stow (pontific luxury!) An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie; The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop, And drown his lands and manors in a soupe . Others import yet nobler arts from France, Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance. Perhaps more high some daring son may soar, Proud to my list to add one monarch more; And nobly conscious, princes are but things Born for first ministers, as slaves for kings, Tyrant supreme! shall three Estates command, And make one mighty Dunciad of the Land! More she had spoke, but yawn'd-All Nature nods: What mortal can resist the yawn of gods? Churches and Chapels instantly it reach'd; (St. James's first, for leaden Gilbert preach'd) Then catch'd the schools; the Hall scarce kept awake; The Convocation gap'd, but could not speak: Lost was the nation's sense, nor could be found, While the long solemn unison went round: Wide, and more wide, it spread o'er all the realm; Even Palinurus nodded at the helm: The vapour mild o'er each committee crept; Unfinish'd treaties in each office slept; And chiefless armies doz'd out the campaign; And navies yawn'd for orders on the main. O Muse! relate (for you can tell alone, Wits have short memories, and Dunces none), Relate, who first, who last resign'd to rest; Whose heads she partly, whose completely blest; What charms could faction, what ambition lull, The venal quiet, and entrance the dull; Till drown'd was sense, and shame, and right, and wrongO sing, and hush the nations with thy song! 206 In vain, in vain-the all-composing hour Resistless falls: The Muse obeys the Pow'r. She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old! Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain; As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand oppress'd, Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach, and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is Night. See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head! Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense ! See Mystery to Mathematics fly! In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. Religion blushing veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires. Nor public Flame, nor private , dares to shine; Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine ! Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal Darkness buries All. ~ Alexander Pope,

1470:lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a boarding school. At the age of nineteen, she left Haworth working as a governess between 1839 and 1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and in short succession she wrote two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall appeared in 1848. Anne's life was cut short with her death of pulmonary tuberculosis when she was 29 years old. ~ Anne Brontë is somewhat overshadowed by her more famous sisters, In the summer of 1824, Patrick sent his eldest daughters Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily to Crofton Hall in Crofton, West Yorkshire, and later to the Clergy Daughter's School, Cowan Bridge, Lancashire. When the two eldest siblings died of consumption in 1825, Maria on 6 May and Elizabeth on 15 June, Charlotte and Emily were immediately brought home. The unexpected deaths of Anne's two eldest sisters distressed the bereaved family enough that Patrick could not face sending them away again. For the next five years, all the Brontë children were educated at home, largely by their father and aunt. The young Brontës made little attempt to mix with others outside the parsonage, but relied upon each other for friendship and companionship. The bleak moors surrounding Haworth became their playground. Education Anne's studies at home included music and drawing. Anne, Emily and Branwell had piano lessons at the parsonage from the Keighley parish organist. The Brontë children received art lessons from John Bradley of Keighley and all of them drew with some skill. Their aunt tried to make sure the girls knew how to run a household, but their minds were more inclined to literature. Their father's well-stocked library was a main source of knowledge. Those readings fed the Brontës' imaginations. The children's creativity soared after their father presented Branwell with a set of toy soldiers in June 1826. They named the soldiers and developed their characters, which they called the "Twelves". This led to the creation of an imaginary world: the African kingdom of "Angria". That was illustrated with maps and watercolour renderings. The children kept themselves busy devising plots about the people of Angria, and its capital city, "Glass Town", later called Verreopolis, and finally, Verdopolis. These fantasy worlds and kingdoms gradually acquired all the characteristics of the real world—sovereigns, armies, heroes, outlaws, fugitives, inns, schools and publishers. For these peoples and lands the children created newspapers, magazines and chronicles, all of which were written out in extremely tiny books, with writing that was so small it was difficult to read without the aid of a magnifying glass. These juvenile creations and writings served as the apprenticeship of their later, literary talents. Juvenilia Around 1831, when Anne was eleven, she and her sister Emily broke away from Charlotte and Branwell in the creation and development of the fictional sagas of Angria establishing their own fantasy world of Gondal. Anne was at this time particularly close to Emily; the closeness of their relationship was reinforced by Charlotte's departure for Roe Head School, in January 1831. When Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey visited Haworth in 1833, she reported that Emily and Anne were "like twins", "inseparable companions". She described Anne at this time: "Anne, dear gentle Anne was quite different in appearance from the others, and she was her aunt's favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown, and fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet-blue eyes; fine pencilled eyebrows and a clear almost transparent complexion. She still pursued her studies and especially her sewing, under the surveillance of her aunt." Anne also took lessons from Charlotte, after she came back from the boarding school, at Roe Head. Later, Anne began more formal studies at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Huddersfield. Charlotte returned there on 29 July 1835 as a teacher. Emily accompanied her as a pupil; her tuition largely financed by Charlotte's teaching. Within a few months, Emily was unable to adapt to life at school, and by October, was physically ill from homesickness. She was withdrawn from the school and replaced by Anne. At fifteen, it was Anne's first time away from home, and she made few friends at Roe Head. She was quiet and hard working, and determined to stay and get the education that would allow her to support herself. Anne stayed for two years, winning a good-conduct medal in December 1836, and returning home only during Christmas and the summer holidays. Anne and Charlotte do not appear to have been close during their time at Roe Head (Charlotte's letters almost never mention Anne) but Charlotte was concerned about the health of her sister. At some point before December 1837, Anne became seriously ill with gastritis and underwent a religious crisis. A Moravian minister was called to see Anne several times during her illness, suggesting that her distress was caused, at least in part, by conflict with the local Anglican clergy. Charlotte was sufficiently concerned about Anne's illness to notify Patrick Brontë, and to take Anne home where she remained to recover. Employment at Blake Hall Little is known about Anne's life during 1838, but in 1839, a year after leaving the school and at the age of nineteen, she was actively looking for a teaching position. As the daughter of a poor clergyman, she needed to earn a living. Her father had no private income and the parsonage would revert to the church on his death. Teaching or being a governess in a private family were among the few options available to poor but educated women. In April, 1839, Anne began to work as a governess with the Ingham family at Blake Hall, near Mirfield. The children in Anne's charge were spoilt and wild, and persistently disobeyed and tormented her. She experienced great difficulty controlling them, and had almost no success in instilling any education. She was not empowered to inflict any punishment, and when she complained of their behaviour to their parents, she received no support, but was merely criticised for not being capable of her job. The Inghams, unsatisfied with their children's progress, dismissed Anne at the end of the year. She returned home at Christmas, 1839, joining Charlotte and Emily, who had left their positions, and Branwell. The whole episode at Blake Hall was so traumatic for Anne, that she reproduced it in almost perfect detail in her later novel, Agnes Grey. William Weightman At Anne's return to Haworth, she met William Weightman (1814–1842), Patrick's new curate, who began work in the parish in August 1839. Twenty-five years old, he had obtained a two-year licentiate in theology from the University of Durham. He quickly became welcome at the parsonage. Anne's acquaintance with William Weightman parallels the writing of a number of poems, which may suggest that she fell in love with him. There is considerable disagreement over this point. Not much outside evidence exists beyond a teasing anecdote of Charlotte's to Ellen Nussey in January 1842. It may or may not be relevant that the source of Agnes Grey 's renewed interest in poetry is the curate to whom she is attracted. As the person to whom Anne Brontë may have been attracted, William Weightman has aroused much curiosity. It seems clear that he was a good-looking, engaging young man, whose easy humour and kindness towards the Brontë sisters made a considerable impression. It is such a character that she portrays in Edward Weston, and that her heroine Agnes Grey finds deeply appealing. If Anne did form an attachment to Weightman, that does not imply that he, in turn, was attracted to her. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Weightman was no more aware of her than of her sisters or their friend Ellen Nussey. Nor does it follow that Anne believed him to be interested in her. If anything, her poems suggest just the opposite–they speak of quietly experienced but intensely felt emotions, intentionally hidden from others, without any indication of their being requited. It is also possible that an initially mild attraction to Weightman assumed increasing importance to Anne over time, in the absence of other opportunities for love, marriage, and children. Anne would have seen William Weightman on her holidays at home, particularly during the summer of 1842, when her sisters were away. He died of cholera in the same year. Anne expressed her grief for his death in her poem "I will not mourn thee, lovely one", in which she called him "our darling". Governess Anne soon obtained a second post: this time as a governess to the children of the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife Lydia, at Thorp Green, a wealthy country house near York. Thorp Green appeared later as Horton Lodge in her novel Agnes Grey. Anne was to have four pupils: Lydia, age 15, Elizabeth, age 13, Mary, age 12, and Edmund, age 8. Initially, she encountered the same problems with the unruly children that she had experienced at Blake Hall. Anne missed her home and family, commenting in a diary paper in 1841 that she did not like her situation and wished to leave it. Her own quiet, gentle disposition did not help matters. However, despite her outwardly placid appearance, Anne was determined and with the experience she gradually gained, she eventually made a success of her position, becoming well liked by her new employers. Her charges, the Robinson girls, ultimately became her lifelong friends. For the next five years, Anne spent no more than five or six weeks a year with her family, during holidays at Christmas and in June. The rest of her time she was with the Robinsons at their home Thorp Green. She was also obliged to accompany the family on their annual holidays to Scarborough. Between 1840 and 1844, Anne spent around five weeks each summer at the resort, and loved the place. A number of locations in Scarborough formed the setting for Agnes Grey 's final scenes. During the time working for the Robinsons, Anne and her sisters considered the possibility of setting-up their own school. Various locations, including their own home, the parsonage, were considered as places to establish it. The project never materialised and Anne chose repeatedly to return to Thorp Green. She came home at the death of her aunt in early November 1842, while her sisters were away in Brussels. Elizabeth Branwell left a £350 legacy for each of her nieces. Anne returned to Thorp Green in January 1843. She secured a position for Branwell with her employers: he was to take over from her as tutor to the Robinsons' son, Edmund, the only boy in the family, who was growing too old to be under Anne's care. However Branwell did not live in the house with the Robinson family, as Anne did. Anne's vaunted calm appears to have been the result of hard-fought battles, balancing deeply felt emotions with careful thought, a sense of responsibility, and resolute determination. All three Brontë sisters had spent time working as governesses or teachers, and all had experienced problems controlling their charges, gaining support from their employers, and coping with homesickness—but Anne was the only one who persevered and made a success of her work. Back at The Parsonage Anne and Branwell continued to teach at Thorp Green for the next three years. However, Branwell was enticed into a secret relationship with his employer's wife, Lydia Robinson. When Anne and her brother returned home for the holidays in June 1846, she resigned her position. While Anne gave no reason for leaving Thorp Green, it is generally thought that she wanted to leave upon becoming aware of the relationship between her brother and Mrs. Robinson. Branwell was sternly dismissed when his employer found out about his relationship with his wife. In spite of her brother's behaviour, Anne retained close ties to Elizabeth and Mary Robinson, exchanging frequent letters with them even after Branwell's disgrace. The Robinson sisters came to visit Anne in December 1848. Once free of her position as a governess, Anne took Emily to visit some of the places she had come to know and love in the past five years. An initial plan of going to the sea at Scarborough fell through, and the sisters went instead to York, where Anne showed her sister the York Minster. A Book of Poems In the summer of 1845, all four of the Brontës were at home with their father Patrick. None of the four had any immediate prospect of employment. It was at this point that Charlotte came across Emily's poems. They had been shared only with Anne, her partner in the world of Gondal. Charlotte proposed that they be published. Anne also revealed her own poems. Charlotte's reaction was characteristically patronising: "I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own". Eventually, though not easily, the sisters reached an agreement. They told neither Branwell, nor their father, nor their friends about what they were doing. Anne and Emily each contributed 21 poems and Charlotte with nineteen. With Aunt Branwell's money, the Brontë sisters paid to have the collection published. Afraid that their work would be judged differently if they revealed their identity as women, the book appeared under their three chosen pseudonyms—or pennames, the initials of which were the same as their own. Charlotte became Currer Bell, Emily became Ellis Bell and Anne became Acton Bell. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was available for sale in May 1846. The cost of publication was about ¾ of Anne's annual salary at Thorp Green. On 7 May 1846, the first three copies of the book were delivered to Haworth Parsonage. The volume achieved three somewhat favourable reviews, but was a dismal failure, with only two copies being sold during the first year. Anne, however, began to find a market for her more recent poetry. Both the Leeds Intelligencer and Fraser's Magazine published her poem "The Narrow Way" under her pseudonym, Acton Bell. Four months earlier, in August, Fraser's Magazine had also published her poem "The Three Guides". Novelist Agnes Grey Even before the fate of the book of poems became apparent, the three sisters were working on a new project. They began to work on their first novels. Charlotte wrote The Professor, Emily Wuthering Heights, and Anne Agnes Grey. By July 1846, a package with the three manuscripts was making the rounds of London publishers. After a number of rejections, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were accepted by a publisher in London, but Charlotte's novel was rejected by every other publisher to whom it was sent. However, Charlotte was not long in completing her second novel, the now famous Jane Eyre, and this was immediately accepted by Smith, Elder & Co., a different publisher from Anne's and Emily's though also located in London. However, Jane Eyre was the first to appear in print. While Anne and Emily's novels 'lingered in the press', Charlotte's second novel was an immediate and resounding success. Meanwhile, Anne and Emily were obliged to pay fifty pounds to help meet the publishing costs. Their publisher, urged on by the success of Jane Eyre, finally published Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey in December 1847. These two sold exceptionally well, but Agnes Grey was distinctly outshone by Emily's much more dramatic Wuthering Heights. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in the last week of June 1848. It was an instant, phenomenal success; within six weeks it was sold out. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is perhaps the most shocking of the Brontës' novels. In seeking to present the truth in literature, Anne's depiction of alcoholism and debauchery was profoundly disturbing to nineteenth-century readers. Helen Graham, the tenant of the title, intrigues Gilbert Markham and gradually she reveals her mysterious past as an artist and wife of the dissipated Arthur Huntingdon. The book's brilliance lies in its revelation of the position of women at the time, and its multi-layered plot. It is easy today to underestimate the extent to which the novel challenged existing social and legal structures. May Sinclair, in 1913, said that the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England. Anne's heroine eventually leaves her husband to protect their young son from his influence. She supports herself and her son by painting, while living in hiding, fearful of discovery. In doing so, she violates not only social conventions, but also English law. At the time, a married woman had no independent legal existence, apart from her husband; could not own her own property, sue for divorce, or control custody of her children. If she attempted to live apart from him, her husband had the right to reclaim her. If she took their child with her, she was liable for kidnapping. In living off her own earnings, she was held to be stealing her husband's property, since any income she made was legally his. London Visit In July 1848, in order to dispel the rumour that the three "Bell brothers" were all the same person, Charlotte and Anne went to London to reveal their identities to the publisher George Smith. The women spent several days in his company. Many years after Anne's death, he wrote in the Cornhill Magazine his impressions of her, describing her as: "...a gentle, quiet, rather subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance. Her manner was curiously expressive of a wish for protection and encouragement, a kind of constant appeal which invited sympathy." In the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which appeared in August 1848, Anne clearly stated her intentions in writing it. She presented a forceful rebuttal to critics who considered her portrayal of Huntingdon overly graphic and disturbing. (Charlotte was among them.) When we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light, is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts–this whispering 'Peace, peace', when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience." Anne also sharply castigated reviewers who speculated on the sex of the authors, and the appropriateness of their writing to their sex, in words that do little to reinforce the stereotype of Anne as meek and gentle. I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man." The increasing popularity of the Bells' work led to renewed interest in the Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, originally published by Aylott and Jones. The remaining print run was purchased by Smith and Elder, and reissued under new covers in November 1848. It still sold poorly. Family Tragedies Only in their late twenties, a highly successful literary career appeared a certainty for Anne and her sisters. However, an impending tragedy was to engulf the family. Within the next ten months, three of the siblings, including Anne, would be dead. Branwell's health had gradually deteriorated over the previous two years, but its seriousness was half disguised by his persistent drunkenness. He died on the morning of 24 September 1848. His sudden death came as a shock to the family. He was aged just thirty-one. The cause was recorded as chronic bronchitis – marasmus; though, through his recorded symptoms, it is now believed that he was also suffering from tuberculosis. The whole family had suffered from coughs and colds during the winter of 1848 and it was Emily who next became severely ill. She deteriorated rapidly over a two month period, persistently refusing all medical aid until the morning of 19 December, when, being so weak, she declared: "if you will send for a doctor, I will see him now". It was far too late. At about two o'clock that afternoon, after a hard, short conflict in which she struggled desperately to hang on to life, she died, aged just thirty. Emily's death deeply affected Anne and her grief further undermined her physical health. Over Christmas, Anne caught influenza. Her symptoms intensified, and in early January, her father sent for a Leeds physician, who diagnosed her condition as consumption, and intimated that it was quite advanced leaving little hope of a recovery. Anne met the news with characteristic determination and self-control. Unlike Emily, Anne took all the recommended medicines, and responded to all 10 the advice she was given. That same month Anne wrote her last poem, " A dreadful darkness closes in", in which she deals with the realisation of being terminally ill. Her health fluctuated as the months passed, but she progressively grew thinner and weaker. Death In February 1849, Anne seemed somewhat better. By this time, she had decided to make a return visit to Scarborough in the hope that the change of location and fresh sea air might initiate a recovery, and give her a chance to live. On 24 May 1849, Anne said her goodbyes to her father and the servants at Haworth, and set off for Scarborough with Charlotte and their friend Ellen Nussey. En route, the three spent a day and a night in York, where, escorting Anne around in a wheelchair, they did some shopping, and at Anne's request, visited York Minster. However, it was clear that Anne had little strength left. On Sunday, 27 May, Anne asked Charlotte whether it would be easier for her if she return home to die instead of remaining at Scarborough. A doctor, consulted the next day, indicated that death was already close. Anne received the news quietly. She expressed her love and concern for Ellen and Charlotte, and seeing Charlotte's distress, whispered to her to "take courage". Conscious and calm, Anne died at about two o'clock in the afternoon, Monday, 28 May 1849. Over the following few days, Charlotte made the decision to "lay the flower where it had fallen". Anne was buried not in Haworth with the rest of her family, but in Scarborough. The funeral was held on Wednesday, 30 May, which did not allow time for Patrick Brontë to make the 70-mile (110 km) trip to Scarborough, had he wished to do so. The former schoolmistress at Roe Head, Miss Wooler, was also in Scarborough at this time, and she was the only other mourner at Anne's funeral. She was buried in St. Mary's churchyard, beneath the castle walls, and overlooking the bay. Charlotte commissioned a stone to be placed over her grave, with the simple inscription "Here lie the remains of ~ Anne Brontë , daughter of the Revd. P. Brontë, Incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire. She died, Aged 28, 28 May 1849". Anne was actually twenty-nine at the time of her death. Reputation A year after Anne's death, further editions of her novels were required; however, Charlotte prevented re-publication of Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In 1850, Charlotte wrote damningly "Wildfell Hall it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring 11 inexperienced writer." This act was the predominant cause of Anne's relegation to the back seat of the Brontë bandwagon. Anne's novel was daring for the Victorian era with its depiction of scenes of mental and physical cruelty and approach to divorce. The consequence was that Charlotte's novels, along with Emily's Wuthering Heights, continued to be published, firmly launching these two sisters into literary stardom, while Anne's work was consigned to oblivion. Further, Anne was only twenty-eight when she wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; at a comparable age, Charlotte had produced only The Professor. The general view has been that Anne is a mere shadow compared with Charlotte, the family's most prolific writer, and Emily, the genius. This has occurred to a large extent because Anne was very different, as a person and as a writer, from Charlotte and Emily. The controlled, reflective camera eye of Agnes Grey is closer to Jane Austen's Persuasion than to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. The painstaking realism and social criticism of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall directly counters the romanticised violence of Wuthering Heights. Anne's religious concerns, reflected in her books and expressed directly in her poems, were not concerns shared by her sisters. Anne's subtle prose has a fine ironic edge; her novels also reveal Anne to be the most socially radical of the three. Now, with increasing critical interest in female authors, her life is being reexamined, and her work reevaluated. A re-appraisal of Anne's work has begun, gradually leading to her acceptance, not as a minor Brontë, but as a major literary figure in her own right. 12 A Fragment 'Maiden, thou wert thoughtless once Of beauty or of grace, Simple and homely in attire Careless of form and face. Then whence this change, and why so oft Dost smooth thy hazel hair? And wherefore deck thy youthful form With such unwearied care? 'Tell us ­- and cease to tire our ears With yonder hackneyed strain ­Why wilt thou play those simple tunes So often o'er again?' 'Nay, gentle friends, I can but say That childhood's thoughts are gone. Each year its own new feelings brings And years move swiftly on, And for these little simple airs, I love to play them o'er ­So much I dare not promise now To play them never more.' I answered and it was enough; They turned them to depart; They could not read my secret thoughts Nor see my throbbing heart. I've noticed many a youthful form Upon whose changeful face The inmost workings of the soul The gazer's eye might trace. The speaking eye, the changing lip, The ready blushing cheek, The smiling or beclouded brow Their different feelings speak. But, thank God! you might gaze on mine For hours and never know The secret changes of my soul From joy to bitter woe. 13 Last night, as we sat round the fire Conversing merrily, We heard without approaching steps Of one well known to me. There was no trembling in my voice, No blush upon my cheek, No lustrous sparkle in my eyes, Of hope or joy to speak; But O my spirit burned within, My heart beat thick and fast. He came not nigh ­- he went away And then my joy was past. And yet my comrades marked it not, My voice was still the same; They saw me smile, and o'er my face ­No signs of sadness came; They little knew my hidden thoughts And they will never know The anguish of my drooping heart, The bitter aching woe! Olivia Vernon. ~ Anne Brontë,

1471:A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS Translated from the Original Doric 'Choose Reform or Civil War, When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.' DRAMATIS PERSONAE Tyrant Swellfoot, King of Thebes. Iona Taurina, his Queen. Mammon, Arch-Priest of Famine. Purganax Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot. Dakry Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot. Laoctonos Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot. The Gadfly. The Leech. The Rat. Moses, the Sow-gelder. Solomon, the Porkman. Zephaniah, Pig-butcher. The Minotaur. Chorus of the Swinish Multitude. Guards, Attendants, Priests, etc., etc. SCENE.--THEBES ACT I. Scene I.-- A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death's-heads, and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of Boars, Sows, and Sucking-Pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple. Enter Swellfoot, in his Royal robes, without perceiving the Pigs. Swellfoot. Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array [He contemplates himself with satisfaction. Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze, And these most sacred nether promontories Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid, (Nor with less toil were their foundations laid)[1], Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain, That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing! Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors, Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers, Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army Of those fat martyrs to the persecution Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils, Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres Of their Eleusis, hail! The Swine.             Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!             Swellfoot.                          Ha! what are ye, Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies, Cling round this sacred shrine? Swine.                  Aigh! aigh! aigh!                  Swellfoot.                           What! ye that are The very beasts that, offered at her altar With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards, Ever propitiate her reluctant will When taxes are withheld? Swine.              Ugh! ugh! ugh!              Swellfoot.                      What! ye who grub With filthy snouts my red potatoes up In Allan's rushy bog? Who eat the oats Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides? Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather, Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you? The Swine.Semichorus I. The same, alas! the same; Though only now the name Of Pig remains to me. Semichorus II. If 'twere your kingly will Us wretched Swine to kill, What should we yield to thee? Swellfoot. Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar. Chorus of Swine. I have heard your Laureate sing, That pity was a royal thing; Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew, And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too; But now our sties are fallen in, we catch The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch; Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, And then we seek the shelter of a ditch; Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none Has yet been ours since your reign begun. First Sow. My Pigs, 'tis in vain to tug. Second Sow. I could almost eat my litter. First Pig. I suck, but no milk will come from the dug. Second Pig. Our skin and our bones would be bitter. The Boars. We fight for this rag of greasy rug, Though a trough of wash would be fitter. Semichorus.   Happier Swine were they than we,   Drowned in the Gadarean sea I wish that pity would drive out the devils, Which in your royal bosom hold their revels, And sink us in the waves of thy compassion! Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation! Now if your Majesty would have our bristles To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles, In policyask else your royal Solons You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw, And sties well thatched; besides it is the law! Swellfoot. This is sedition, and rank blasphemy! Ho! there, my guards! Enter a Guard. Guard.            Your sacred Majesty.            Swellfoot. Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman, Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah The hog-butcher. Guard.          They are in waiting, Sire.          Enter Solomon, Moses, and Zephaniah. Swellfoot. Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows [The Pigs run about in consternation. That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep. Moral restraint I see has no effect, Nor prostitution, nor our own example, Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy Cut close and deep, good Moses. Moses.                  Let your Majesty Keep the Boars quiet, else Swellfoot.                Zephaniah, cut That fat Hog's throat, the brute seems overfed; Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains. Zephaniah. Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy; We shall find pints of hydatids in's liver, He has not half an inch of wholesome fat Upon his carious ribs Swellfoot.             'Tis all the same, He'll serve instead of riot money, when Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' streets; And January winds, after a day Of butchering, will make them relish carrion. Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump The whole kit of them. Solomon.             Why, your Majesty, I could not give Swellfoot.           Kill them out of the way, That shall be price enough, and let me hear Their everlasting grunts and whines no more! [Exeunt, driving in the Swine. Enter Mammon, the Arch-Priest; and Purganax, Chief of the Council of Wizards. Purganax. The future looks as black as death, a cloud, Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it The troops grow mutinousthe revenue fails There's something rotten in usfor the level Of the State slopes, its very bases topple, The boldest turn their backs upon themselves! Mammon. Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now? Do the troops mutiny?decimate some regiments; Does money fail?come to my mintcoin paper, Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed To show his bilious face, go purge himself, In emulation of her vestal whiteness. Purganax. Oh, would that this were all! The oracle!! Mammon. Why it was I who spoke that oracle, And whether I was dead drunk or inspired, I cannot well remember; nor, in truth, The oracle itself! Purganax.           The words went thus: 'Boeotia, choose reform or civil war! When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs, Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.' Mammon. Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold This sad alternative, it must arrive, Or not, and so it must now that it has; And whether I was urged by grace divine Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words, Which must, as all words must, be false or true, It matters not: for the same Power made all, Oracle, wine, and me and youor none 'Tis the same thing. If you knew as much Of oracles as I do Purganax.            You arch-priests Believe in nothing; if you were to dream Of a particular number in the Lottery, You would not buy the ticket? Mammon.                 Yet our tickets Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken? For prophecies, when once they get abroad, Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends, Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue, Do the same actions that the virtuous do, Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona Wellyou know what the chaste Pasiphae did, Wife to that most religious King of Crete, And still how popular the tale is here; And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent From the free Minotaur. You know they still Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate, And everything relating to a Bull Is popular and respectable in Thebes. Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules; They think their strength consists in eating beef, Now there were danger in the precedent If Queen Iona Purganax.         I have taken good care That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare! And from a cavern full of ugly shapes I chose a Leech, a Gadfly, and a Rat. The Gadfly was the same which Juno sent To agitate Io[2], and which Ezekiel[3] mentions That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains Of utmost Aethiopia, to torment Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee, His crookd tail is barbed with many stings, Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each Immedicable; from his convex eyes He sees fair things in many hideous shapes, And trumpets all his falsehood to the world. Like other beetles he is fed on dung He has eleven feet with which he crawls, Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul beast Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits, From isle to isle, from city unto city, Urging her flight from the far Chersonese To fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle, Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock, And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez, Aeolia and Elysium, and thy shores, Parthenope, which now, alas! are free! And through the fortunate Saturnian land, Into the darkness of the West. Mammon.                 But if This Gadfly should drive Iona hither? Purganax. Gods! what an if! but there is my gray Rat: So thin with want, he can crawl in and out Of any narrow chink and filthy hole, And he shall creep into her dressing-room, And Mammon.    My dear friend, where are your wits? as if She does not always toast a piece of cheese And bait the trap? and rats, when lean enough To crawl through such chinks Purganax.                 But my Leecha leech Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings, Capaciously expatiative, which make His little body like a red balloon, As full of blood as that of hydrogen, Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he sucks And clings and pullsa horse-leech, whose deep maw The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill, And who, till full, will cling for ever. Mammon.                       This For Queen Iona would suffice, and less; But 'tis the Swinish multitude I fear, And in that fear I have Purganax.               Done what?               Mammon.                    Disinherited My eldest son Chrysaor, because he Attended public meetings, and would always Stand prating there of commerce, public faith, Economy, and unadulterate coin, And other topics, ultra-radical; And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's Paradise, And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills, Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina, And married her to the gallows[4]. Purganax.                   A good match!                   Mammon. A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom Is of a very ancient family, Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop, And has great influence in both Houses;oh! He makes the fondest husband; nay, too fond, New-married people should not kiss in public; But the poor souls love one another so! And then my little grandchildren, the gibbets, Promising children as you ever saw, The young playing at hanging, the elder learning How to hold radicals. They are well taught too, For every gibbet says its catechism And reads a select chapter in the Bible Before it goes to play. [A most tremendous humming is heard. Purganax.             Ha! what do I hear?             Enter the Gadfly. Mammon. Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding. Gadfly.   Hum! hum! hum! From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps Of the mountains, I come!   Hum! hum! hum! From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces Of golden Byzantium; From the temples divine of old Palestine, From Athens and Rome, With a ha! and a hum! I come! I come!   All inn-doors and windows   Were open to me: I saw all that sin does,   Which lamps hardly see That burn in the night by the curtained bed, The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red, Dinging and singing, From slumber I rung her, Loud as the clank of an ironmonger;    Hum! hum! hum!     Far, far, far! With the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips, I drove herafar! Far, far, far! From city to city, abandoned of pity, A ship without needle or star; Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast, Seeking peace, finding war; She is here in her car, From afar, and afar;   Hum! hum!    I have stung her and wrung her,   The venom is working; And if you had hung her   With canting and quirking, She could not be deader than she will be soon; I have driven her close to you, under the moon, Night and day, hum! hum! ha! I have hummed her and drummed her From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her,    Hum! hum! hum!    Enter the Leech and the Rat. Leech. I will suck Blood or muck! The disease of the state is a plethory, Who so fit to reduce it as I? Rat. I'll slily seize and Let blood from her weasand, Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny, With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny. Purganax. Aroint ye! thou unprofitable worm! [To the Leech. And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell! [To the Gadfly. To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings, And the ox-headed Io Swine (within).             Ugh, ugh, ugh! Hail! Iona the divine, We will be no longer Swine, But Bulls with horns and dewlaps. Rat.                   For, You know, my lord, the Minotaur Purganax (fiercely). Be silent! get to hell! or I will call The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord Mammon, This is a pretty business. [Exit the Rat. Mammon.               I will go And spell some scheme to make it ugly then. [Exit. Enter Swellfoot. Swellfoot. She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes, When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell! Oh, Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy, And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings The torch of Discord with its fiery hair; This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens! Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea, The very name of wife had conjugal rights; Her cursd image ate, drank, slept with me, And in the arms of Adiposa oft Her memory has received a husband's [A loud tumult, and cries of 'Iona for ever!No Swellfoot!'!                     Hark! How the Swine cry Iona Taurina; I suffer the real presence; Purganax, Off with her head! Purganax.           But I must first impanel A jury of the Pigs. Swellfoot.           Pack them then.           Purganax. Or fattening some few in two separate sties, And giving them clean straw, tying some bits Of ribbon round their legsgiving their Sows Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass, And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers Between the ears of the old ones; and when They are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs, Good Lord! they'd rip each other's bellies up, Not to say, help us in destroying her. Swellfoot. This plan might be tried too;where's General Laoctonos? Enter Laoctonos and Dakry.      It is my royal pleasure That you, Lord General, bring the head and body, If separate it would please me better, hither Of Queen Iona. Laoctonos.        That pleasure I well knew, And made a charge with those battalions bold, Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes, Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square Enclosed her, and received the first attack Like so many rhinoceroses, and then Retreating in good order, with bare tusks And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe, Bore her in triumph to the public sty. What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin, And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry, 'Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!' Purganax.                      Hark!                      The Swine (without). Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot! Dakry.                     I Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower, Which overlooks the sty, and made a long Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine, Of delicacy, mercy, judgement, law, Morals, and precedents, and purity, Adultery, destitution, and divorce, Piety, faith, and state necessity, And how I loved the Queen!and then I wept With the pathos of my own eloquence, And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made A slough of blood and brains upon the place, Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up, And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air, With dust and stones. Enter Mammon. Mammon.             I wonder that gray wizards Like you should be so beardless in their schemes; It had been but a point of policy To keep Iona and the Swine apart. Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction Between two parties who will govern you But for my art.Behold this BAG! it is The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge, On which our spies skulked in ovation through The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead: A bane so much the deadlier fills it now As calumny is worse than death,for here The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled, Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch; All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud, Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor, And over it the Primate of all Hell Murmured this pious baptism:'Be thou called The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine: That thy contents, on whomsoever poured, Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. Let all baptized by thy infernal dew Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch! No name left out which orthodoxy loves, Court Journal or legitimate Review! Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover Of other wives and husbands than their own The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps! Wither they to a ghastly caricature Of what was human!let not man or beast Behold their face with unaverted eyes! Or hear their names with ears that tingle not With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!' This is a perilous liquor;good my Lords. [Swellfoot approaches to touch the GREEN BAG. Beware! for God's sake, beware!if you should break The seal, and touch the fatal liquor Purganax.                      There, Give it to me. I have been used to handle All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty Only desires to see the colour of it. Mammon. Now, with a little common sense, my Lords, Only undoing all that has been done (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), Our victory is assured. We must entice Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG Are the true test of guilt or innocence. And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her To manifest deformity like guilt. If innocent, she will become transfigured Into an angel, such as they say she is; And they will see her flying through the air, So bright that she will dim the noonday sun; Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits. This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties, With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps Of one another's ears between their teeth, To catch the coming hail of comfits in. You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab, Make them a solemn speech to this effect: I go to put in readiness the feast Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine, Where, for more glory, let the ceremony Take place of the uglification of the Queen. Dakry (to Swellfoot). I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, Humbly remind your Majesty that the care Of your high office, as Man-milliner To red Bellona, should not be deferred. Purganax. All part, in happier plight to meet again. [Exeunt. END OF THE FIRST ACT. ACT II Scene I. The Public Sty. The Boars in full Assembly. Enter Purganax. Purganax. Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars, Ye, by whose patience under public burthens The glorious constitution of these sties Subsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates Grow with the growing populace of Swine, The taxes, that true source of Piggishness (How can I find a more appropriate term To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty, And all that fit Boeotia as a nation To teach the other nations how to live?), Increase with Piggishness itself; and still Does the revenue, that great spring of all The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments, Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes, Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, All the land's produce will be merged in taxes, And the revenue will amount tonothing! The failure of a foreign market for Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings, And such home manufactures, is but partial; And, that the population of the Pigs, Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw And water, is a fact which isyou know That isit is a state-necessity Temporary, of course. Those impious Pigs, Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn The settled Swellfoot system, or to make Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. Things being in this happy state, the Queen Iona [A loud cry from the Pigs.    She is innocent! most innocent!    Purganax. That is the very thing that I was saying, Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes, And the lean Sows and Boars collect about her, Wishing to make her think that we believe (I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw) That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been Your immemorial right, and which I will Maintain you in to the last drop of A Boar (interrupting him).                     What Does any one accuse her of? Purganax.                Why, no one Makes any positive accusation;but There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards Conceived that it became them to advise His Majesty to investigate their truth; Not for his own sake; he could be content To let his wife play any pranks she pleased, If, by that sufferance, he could please the Pigs; But then he fears the morals of the Swine, The Sows especially, and what effect It might produce upon the purity and Religion of the rising generation Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected That Queen Iona [A pause. First Boar.          Well, go on; we long To hear what she can possibly have done. Purganax. Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull Thus much is known:the milk-white Bulls that feed Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath Loading the morning winds until they faint With living fragrance, are so beautiful! Well, I say nothing;but Europa rode On such a one from Asia into Crete, And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae, Iona's grandmother,but she is innocent! And that both you and I, and all assert. First Boar. Most innocent! Purganax.        Behold this BAG; a bag        Second Boar. Oh! no GREEN BAGS!! Jealousy's eyes are green, Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts, And verdigris, and Purganax.            Honourable Swine, In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign? Allow me to remind you, grass is green All flesh is grass;no bacon but is flesh Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG (Which is not green, but only bacon colour) Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er A woman guilty ofwe all know what Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind She never can commit the like again. If innocent, she will turn into an angel, And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal Is to convert her sacred Majesty Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do), By pouring on her head this mystic water.[Showing the Bag. I know that she is innocent; I wish Only to prove her so to all the world. First Boar. Excellent, just, and noble Purganax. Second Boar. How glorious it will be to see her Majesty Flying above our heads, her petticoats Streaming likelikelike Third Boar.                Anything.                Purganax.                     Oh no! But like a standard of an admiral's ship, Or like the banner of a conquering host, Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day, Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain; Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane, Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice Scattered upon the wind. First Boar.              Or a cow's tail.              Second Boar. Or anything, as the learned Boar observed. Purganax. Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution, That her most sacred Majesty should be Invited to attend the feast of Famine, And to receive upon her chaste white body Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG. [A great confusion is heard of the Pigs out of Doors, which communicates itself to those within. During the first Strophe, the doors of the Sty are staved in, and a number of exceedingly leanPigs and Sows and Boars rush in. Semichorus I. No! Yes! Semichorus II. Yes! No! Semichorus I. A law! Semichorus II. A flaw! Semichorus I. Porkers, we shall lose our wash, Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs! First Boar. Order! order! be not rash! Was there ever such a scene, Pigs! An old Sow (rushing in). I never saw so fine a dash Since I first began to wean Pigs. Second Boar (solemnly). The Queen will be an angel time enough. I vote, in form of an amendment, that Purganax rub a little of that stuff Upon his face. Purganax (his heart is seen to beat through his waistcoat).          Gods! What would ye be at?          Semichorus I. Purganax has plainly shown a Cloven foot and jackdaw feather. Semichorus II. I vote Swellfoot and Iona Try the magic test together; Whenever royal spouses bicker, Both should try the magic liquor. An old Boar (aside). A miserable state is that of Pigs, For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs, The Swine must bite each other's ear therefore. An old Sow (aside). A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine, Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they dine On bacon, and whip Sucking-Pigs the more. Chorus.   Hog-wash has been ta'en away:    If the Bull-Queen is divested,   We shall be in every way    Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested;   Let us do whate'er we may,    That she shall not be arrested. Queen, we entrench you with walls of brawn, And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet: Place your most sacred person here. We pawn Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.   Those who wrong you, wrong us;   Those who hate you, hate us;   Those who sting you, sting us;   Those who bait you, bait us; The oracle is now about to be Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny; Which says: 'Thebes, choose reform or civil war, When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs, Riding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR.' Enter Iona Taurina. Iona Taurina (coming forward). Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs, The tender heart of every Boar acquits Their Queen, of any act incongruous With native Piggishness, and she, reposing With confidence upon the grunting nation, Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all, Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms; Nor has the expectation been deceived Of finding shelter there. Yet know, great Boars, (For such whoever lives among you finds you, And so do I), the innocent are proud! I have accepted your protection only In compliment of your kind love and care, Not for necessity. The innocent Are safest there where trials and dangers wait; Innocent Queens o'er white-hot ploughshares tread Unsinged, and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it[5], Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still, Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway, Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry, White-boys and Orange-boys, and constables, Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured! Thus I! Lord Purganax, I do commit myself Into your custody, and am prepared To stand the test, whatever it may be! Purganax. This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty Must please the Pigs. You cannot fail of being A heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of glass, Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration Will blind your wondering eyes. An old Boar (aside).                  Take care, my Lord, They do not smoke you first. Purganax.                At the approaching feast Of Famine, let the expiation be. Swine. Content! content! Iona Taurina (aside).          I, most content of all, Know that my foes even thus prepare their fall! [Exeunt omnes. Scene II. The interior of the Temple of Famine. The statue of the Goddess, a skeleton clothed in parti-coloured rags, seated upon a heap of skulls and loaves intermingled. A number of exceedingly fat Priests in black garments arrayed on each side, with marrow-bones and cleavers in their hands. [Solomon, the Court Porkman.] A flourish of trumpets. Enter Mammon as arch-priest, Swellfoot, Dakry, Purganax, Laoctonos, followed by Iona Taurina guarded. On the other side enter the Swine. Chorus of Priests, accompanied by the Court Porkman on marrow-bones and cleavers.   Goddess bare, and gaunt, and pale,   Empress of the world, all hail!   What though Cretans old called thee   City-crested Cybele?    We call thee Famine! Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming! Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords, Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words, The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits, Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat, Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean, Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that! And let things be as they have ever been;   At least while we remain thy priests,   And proclaim thy fasts and feasts. Through thee the sacred Swellfoot dynasty Is based upon a rock amid that sea Whose waves are Swineso let it ever be! [Swellfoot, etc., seat themselves at a table magnificently covered at the upper end of the Temple. Attendants pass over the stage with hog-wash in pails. A number of Pigs, exceedingly lean, follow them licking up the wash. Mammon. I fear your sacred Majesty has lost The appetite which you were used to have. Allow me now to recommend this dish A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook, Such as is served at the great King's second table. The price and pains which its ingredients cost Might have maintained some dozen families A winter or twonot moreso plain a dish Could scarcely disagree. Swellfoot.               After the trial, And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps I may recover my lost appetite, I feel the gout flying about my stomach Give me a glass of Maraschino punch. Purganax (filling his glass, and standing up). The glorious Constitution of the Pigs! All. A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three! Dakry. No heel-tapsdarken daylights! Laoctonos.                   Claret, somehow, Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret! Swellfoot. Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment, But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine, And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes. [To Purganax. For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs! Purganax. We dare not, Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege. Chorus of Swine. Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine! Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags; Thou devil which livest on damning; Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS, Till in pity and terror thou risest, Confounding the schemes of the wisest; When thou liftest thy skeleton form, When the loaves and the skulls roll about, We will greet theethe voice of a storm Would be lost in our terrible shout! Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine! Hail to thee, Empress of Earth! When thou risest, dividing possessions; When thou risest, uprooting oppressions, In the pride of thy ghastly mirth; Over palaces, temples, and graves, We will rush as thy minister-slaves, Trampling behind in thy train, Till all be made level again! Mammon. I hear a crackling of the giant bones Of the dread image, and in the black pits Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames. These prodigies are oracular, and show The presence of the unseen Deity. Mighty events are hastening to their doom! Swellfoot. I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine Grunting about the temple. Dakry.               In a crisis Of such exceeding delicacy, I think We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen, Upon her trial without delay. Mammon.                 THE BAG Is here. Purganax.     I have rehearsed the entire scene With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater, On Lady P-; it cannot fail. (Taking up the Bag.) Your Majesty [To Swellfoot. In such a filthy business had better Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you. A spot or two on me would do no harm, Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell, Upon my browwhich would stain all its seas, But which those seas could never wash away! Iona Taurina. My Lord, I am readynay, I am impatient To undergo the test. [A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed through the Temple; the word LIBERTY is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire upon its forehead. Its words are almost drowned in the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business of the trial. She kneels on the steps of the Altar, and speaks in tones at first faint and low, but which ever become louder and louder.   Mighty Empress! Death's white wife!   Ghastly mother-in-law of Life!   By the God who made thee such,   By the magic of thy touch,   By the starving and the cramming Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine! I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude, Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood. The earth did never mean her foison For those who crown life's cup with poison Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge But for those radiant spirits, who are still The standard-bearers in the van of Change. Be they th'appointed stewards, to fill The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age! Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage! Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low Freedom calls Famine,her eternal foe, To brief alliance, hollow truce.Rise now! [Whilst the Veiled Figure has been chanting this strophe, Mammon, Dakry, Laoctonos, and Swellfoot, have surrounded Iona Taurina, who, with her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business, in perfect confidence of her innocence. [Purganax, after unsealing the Green Bag, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over Swellfoot and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple. The image of Famine then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar. The image of Famine sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a Minotaur rises. Minotaur. I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest Of all Europa's taurine progeny I am the old traditional Man-Bull; And from my ancestors having been Ionian, I am called Ion, which, by interpretation, Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say, My name's John Bull; I am a famous hunter, And can leap any gate in all Boeotia, Even the palings of the royal park, Or double ditch about the new enclosures; And if your Majesty will deign to mount me, At least till you have hunted down your game, I will not throw you. Iona Taurina. (During this speech she has been putting on boots and spurs, and a hunting-cap, buckishly cocked on one side, and tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on his back.)            Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho! Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down, These stinking foxes, these devouring otters, These hares, these wolves, these anything but men. Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs, Now let your noses be as keen as beagles', Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries More dulcet and symphonious than the bells Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday; Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music. Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?) But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho! Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert, Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho! Full Chorus of Iona and the Swine. Tallyho! tallyho! Through rain, hail, and snow, Through brake, gorse, and briar, Through fen, flood, and mire, We go! we go!   Tallyho! tallyho! Through pond, ditch, and slough, Wind them, and find them, Like the Devil behind them, Tallyho! tallyho! [Exeunt, in full cry; Iona driving on the Swine, with the empty Green Bag. THE END 'Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819; published anonymously by J. Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C. F. Seyfang,) 1820. On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered the whole impression, seven copies -- the total number sold -- excepted. Oedipus does not appear in the first edition of the Poetical Works, 1839, but it was included by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of that year.' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot The Tyrant ,

1472:The woods were long austere with snow: at last Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fast Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes, Brightened, "as in the slumbrous heart o' the woods "Our buried year, a witch, grew young again "To placid incantations, and that stain "About were from her cauldron, green smoke blent "With those black pines"so Eglamor gave vent To a chance fancy. Whence a just rebuke From his companion; brother Naddo shook The solemnest of brows: "Beware," he said, "Of setting up conceits in nature's stead!" Forth wandered our Sordello. Nought so sure As that to-day's adventure will secure Palma, the visioned ladyonly pass O'er you damp mound and its exhausted grass, Under that brake where sundawn feeds the stalks Of withered fern with gold, into those walks Of pine and take her! Buoyantly he went. Again his stooping forehead was besprent With dew-drops from the skirting ferns. Then wide Opened the great morass, shot every side With flashing water through and through; a-shine, Thick-steaming, all-alive. Whose shape divine, Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapour, glanced Athwart the flying herons? He advanced, But warily; though Mincio leaped no more, Each foot-fall burst up in the marish-floor A diamond jet: and if he stopped to pick Rose-lichen, or molest the leeches quick, And circling blood-worms, minnow, newt or loach, A sudden pond would silently encroach This way and that. On Palma passed. The verge Of a new wood was gained. She will emerge Flushed, now, and panting,crowds to see,will own She loves himBoniface to hear, to groan, To leave his suit! One screen of pine-trees still Opposes: butthe startling spectacle Mantua, this time! Under the wallsa crowd Indeed, real men and women, gay and loud Round a pavilion. How he stood!                  In truth No prophecy had come to pass: his youth In its prime nowand where was homage poured Upon Sordello?born to be adored, And suddenly discovered weak, scarce made To cope with any, cast into the shade By this and this. Yet something seemed to prick And tingle in his blood; a sleighta trick And much would be explained. It went for nought The best of their endowments were ill bought With his identity: nay, the conceit, That this day's roving led to Palma's feet Was not so vainlist! The word, "Palma!" Steal Aside, and die, Sordello; this is real, And thisabjure!          What next? The curtains see Dividing! She is there; and presently He will be therethe proper You, at length In your own cherished dress of grace and strength: Most like, the very Boniface!                Not so. It was a showy man advanced; but though A glad cry welcomed him, then every sound Sank and the crowd disposed themselves around, "This is not he," Sordello felt; while, "Place "For the best Troubadour of Boniface!" Hollaed the Jongleurs,"Eglamor, whose lay "Concludes his patron's Court of Love to-day!" Obsequious Naddo strung the master's lute With the new lute-string, "Elys," named to suit The song: he stealthily at watch, the while, Biting his lip to keep down a great smile Of pride: then up he struck. Sordello's brain Swam; for he knew a sometime deed again; So, could supply each foolish gap and chasm The minstrel left in his enthusiasm, Mistaking its true versionwas the tale Not of Apollo? Only, what avail Luring her down, that Elys an he pleased, If the man dared no further? Has he ceased And, lo, the people's frank applause half done, Sordello was beside him, had begun (Spite of indignant twitchings from his friend The Trouvere) the true lay with the true end, Taking the other's names and time and place For his. On flew the song, a giddy race, After the flying story; word made leap Out word, rhymerhyme; the lay could barely keep Pace with the action visibly rushing past: Both ended. Back fell Naddo more aghast Than some Egyptian from the harassed bull That wheeled abrupt and, bellowing, fronted full His plague, who spied a scarab 'neath the tongue, And found 't was Apis' flank his hasty prong Insulted. But the peoplebut the cries, The crowding round, and proffering the prize! For he had gained some prize. He seemed to shrink Into a sleepy cloud, just at whose brink One sight withheld him. There sat Adelaide, Silent; but at her knees the very maid Of the North Chamber, her red lips as rich, The same pure fleecy hair; one weft of which, Golden and great, quite touched his cheek as o'er She leant, speaking some six words and no more. He answered something, anything; and she Unbound a scarf and laid it heavily Upon him, her neck's warmth and all. Again Moved the arrested magic; in his brain Noises grew, and a light that turned to glare, And greater glare, until the intense flare Engulfed him, shut the whole scene from his sense. And when he woke 't was many a furlong thence, At home; the sun shining his ruddy wont; The customary birds'-chirp; but his front Was crownedwas crowned! Her scented scarf around His neck! Whose gorgeous vesture heaps the ground? A prize? He turned, and peeringly on him Brooded the women-faces, kind and dim, Ready to talk"The Jongleurs in a troop "Had brought him back, Naddo and Squarcialupe "And Tagliafer; how strange! a childhood spent "In taking, well for him, so brave a bent! "Since Eglamor," they heard, "was dead with spite, "And Palma chose him for her minstrel."                      Light Sordello roseto think, now; hitherto He had perceived. Sure, a discovery grew Out of it all! Best live from first to last The transport o'er again. A week he passed, Sucking the sweet out of each circumstance, From the bard's outbreak to the luscious trance Bounding his own achievement. Strange! A man Recounted an adventure, but began Imperfectly; his own task was to fill The frame-work up, sing well what he sung ill, Supply the necessary points, set loose As many incidents of little use More imbecile the other, not to see Their relative importance clear as he! But, for a special pleasure in the act Of singinghad he ever turned, in fact, From Elys, to sing Elys?from each fit Of rapture to contrive a song of it? True, this snatch or the other seemed to wind Into a treasure, helped himself to find A beauty in himself; for, see, he soared By means of that mere snatch, to many a hoard Of fancies; as some falling cone bears soft The eye along the fir-tree-spire, aloft To a dove's nest. Then, how divine the cause Why such performance should exact applause From men, if they had fancies too? Did fate Decree they found a beauty separate In the poor snatch itself?"Take Elys, there, "'Her head that 's sharp and perfect like a pear, "'So close and smooth are laid the few fine locks "'Coloured like honey oozed from topmost rocks "'Sun-blanched the livelong summer'if they heard "Just those two rhymes, assented at my word, "And loved them as I love them who have run "These fingers through those pale locks, let the sun "Into the white cool skinwho first could clutch, "Then praiseI needs must be a god to such. "Or what if some, above themselves, and yet "Beneath me, like their Eglamor, have set "An impress on our gift? So, men believe "And worship what they know not, nor receive "Delight from. Have they fanciesslow, perchance, "Not at their beck, which indistinctly glance "Until, by song, each floating part be linked "To each, and all grow palpable, distinct?" He pondered this.          Meanwhile, sounds low and drear Stole on him, and a noise of footsteps, near And nearer, while the underwood was pushed Aside, the larches grazed, the dead leaves crushed At the approach of men. The wind seemed laid; Only, the trees shrunk slightly and a shade Came o'er the sky although 't was midday yet: You saw each half-shut downcast floweret Flutter"a Roman bride, when they 'd dispart "Her unbound tresses with the Sabine dart, "Holding that famous rape in memory still, "Felt creep into her curls the iron chill, "And looked thus," Eglamor would sayindeed 'T is Eglamor, no other, these precede Home hither in the woods. "'T were surely sweet "Far from the scene of one's forlorn defeat "To sleep!" judged Naddo, who in person led Jongleurs and Trouveres, chanting at their head, A scanty company; for, sooth to say, Our beaten Troubadour had seen his day. Old worshippers were something shamed, old friends Nigh weary; still the death proposed amends. "Let us but get them safely through my song "And home again!" quoth Naddo.                 All along, This man (they rest the bier upon the sand) This calm corpse with the loose flowers in his hand, Eglamor, lived Sordello's opposite. For him indeed was Naddo's notion right, And verse a temple-worship vague and vast, A ceremony that withdrew the last Opposing bolt, looped back the lingering veil Which hid the holy place: should one so frail Stand there without such effort? or repine If much was blank, uncertain at the shrine He knelt before, till, soothed by many a rite, The power responded, and some sound or sight Grew up, his own forever, to be fixed, In rhyme, the beautiful, forever!mixed With his own life, unloosed when he should please, Having it safe at hand, ready to ease All pain, remove all trouble; every time He loosed that fancy from its bonds of rhyme, (Like Perseus when he loosed his naked love) Faltering; so distinct and far above Himself, these fancies! He, no genius rare, Transfiguring in fire or wave or air At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered up In some rock-chamber with his agate cup, His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these few And their arrangement finds enough to do For his best art. Then, how he loved that art! The calling marking him a man apart From menone not to care, take counsel for Cold hearts, comfortless faces(Eglamor Was neediest of his tribe)since verse, the gift, Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shift Without it, e'en content themselves with wealth And pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth. So, Eglamor was not without his pride! The sorriest bat which cowers throughout noontide While other birds are jocund, has one time When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime Of earth is his to claim, nor find a peer; And Eglamor was noblest poet here He well knew, 'mid those April woods he cast Conceits upon in plenty as he passed, That Naddo might suppose him not to think Entirely on the coming triumph: wink At the one weakness! 'T was a fervid child, That song of his; no brother of the guild Had e'er conceived its like. The rest you know, The exaltation and the overthrow: Our poet lost his purpose, lost his rank, His lifeto that it came. Yet envy sank Within him, as he heard Sordello out, And, for the first time, shoutedtried to shout Like others, not from any zeal to show Pleasure that way: the common sort did so, What else was Eglamor? who, bending down As they, placed his beneath Sordello's crown, Printed a kiss on his successor's hand, Left one great tear on it, then joined his band In time; for some were watching at the door: Who knows what envy may effect? "Give o'er, "Nor charm his lips, nor craze him!" (here one spied And disengaged the withered crown)"Beside "His crown? How prompt and clear those verses rang "To answer yours! nay, sing them!" And he sang Them calmly. Home he went; friends used to wait His coming, zealous to congratulate; But, to a manso quickly runs report Could do no less than leave him, and escort His rival. That eve, then, bred many a thought: What must his future life be? was he brought So low, who stood so lofty this Spring morn? At length he said, "Best sleep now with my scorn, "And by to-morrow I devise some plain "Expedient!" So, he slept, nor woke again. They found as much, those friends, when they returned O'erflowing with the marvels they had learned About Sordello's paradise, his roves Among the hills and vales and plains and groves, Wherein, no doubt, this lay was roughly cast, Polished by slow degrees, completed last To Eglamor's discomfiture and death. Such form the chanters now, and, out of breath, They lay the beaten man in his abode, Naddo reciting that same luckless ode, Doleful to hear. Sordello could explore By means of it, however, one step more In joy; and, mastering the round at length, Learnt how to live in weakness as in strength, When from his covert forth he stood, addressed Eglamor, bade the tender ferns invest, Primval pines o'ercanopy his couch, And, most of all, his fame(shall I avouch Eglamor heard it, dead though he might look, And laughed as from his brow Sordello took The crown, and laid on the bard's breast, and said It was a crown, now, fit for poet's head?) Continue. Nor the prayer quite fruitless fell. A plant they have, yielding a three-leaved bell Which whitens at the heart ere noon, and ails Till evening; evening gives it to her gales To clear away with such forgotten things As are an eyesore to the morn: this brings Him to their mind, and bears his very name. So much for Eglamor. My own month came; 'T was a sunrise of blossoming and May. Beneath a flowering laurel thicket lay Sordello; each new sprinkle of white stars That smell fainter of wine than Massic jars Dug up at Bai, when the south wind shed The ripest, made him happier; filleted And robed the same, only a lute beside Lay on the turf. Before him far and wide The country stretched: Goito slept behind The castle and its covert, which confined Him with his hopes and fears; so fain of old To leave the story of his birth untold. At intervals, 'spite the fantastic glow Of his Apollo-life, a certain low And wretched whisper, winding through the bliss, Admonished, no such fortune could be his, All was quite false and sure to fade one day: The closelier drew he round him his array Of brilliance to expel the truth. But when A reason for his difference from men Surprised him at the grave, he took no rest While aught of that old life, superbly dressed Down to its meanest incident, remained A mystery: alas, they soon explained Away Apollo! and the tale amounts To this: when at Vicenza both her counts Banished the Vivaresi kith and kin, Those Maltraversi hung on Ecelin, Reviled him as he followed; he for spite Must fire their quarter, though that self-same night Among the flames young Ecelin was born Of Adelaide, there too, and barely torn From the roused populace hard on the rear, By a poor archer when his chieftain's fear Grew high; into the thick Elcorte leapt, Saved her, and died; no creature left except His child to thank. And when the full escape Was knownhow men impaled from chine to nape Unlucky Prata, all to pieces spurned Bishop Pistore's concubines, and burned Taurello's entire household, flesh and fell, Missing the sweeter preysuch courage well Might claim reward. The orphan, ever since, Sordello, had been nurtured by his prince Within a blind retreat where Adelaide (For, once this notable discovery made, The past at every point was understood) Might harbour easily when times were rude, When Azzo schemed for Palma, to retrieve That pledge of Agnes Esteloth to leave Mantua unguarded with a vigilant eye, While there Taurello bode ambiguously He who could have no motive now to moil For his own fortunes since their utter spoil As it were worth while yet (went the report) To disengage himself from her. In short, Apollo vanished; a mean youth, just named His lady's minstrel, was to be proclaimed How shall I phrase it?Monarch of the World! For, on the day when that array was furled Forever, and in place of one a slave To longings, wild indeed, but longings save In dreams as wild, suppressedone daring not Assume the mastery such dreams allot, Until a magical equipment, strength, Grace, wisdom, decked him too,he chose at length, Content with unproved wits and failing frame, In virtue of his simple will, to claim That mastery, no lessto do his best With means so limited, and let the rest Go by,the seal was set: never again Sordello could in his own sight remain One of the many, one with hopes and cares And interests nowise distinct from theirs, Only peculiar in a thriveless store Of fancies, which were fancies and no more; Never again for him and for the crowd A common law was challenged and allowed If calmly reasoned of, howe'er denied By a mad impulse nothing justified Short of Apollo's presence. The divorce Is clear: why needs Sordello square his course By any known example? Men no more Compete with him than tree and flower before. Himself, inactive, yet is greater far Than such as act, each stooping to his star, Acquiring thence his function; he has gained The same result with meaner mortals trained To strength or beauty, moulded to express Each the idea that rules him; since no less He comprehends that function, but can still Embrace the others, take of might his fill With Richard as of grace with Palma, mix Their qualities, or for a moment fix On one; abiding free meantime, uncramped By any partial organ, never stamped Strong, and to strength turning all energies Wise, and restricted to becoming wise That is, he loves not, nor possesses One Idea that, star-like over, lures him on To its exclusive purpose. "Fortunate! "This flesh of mine ne'er strove to emulate "A soul so varioustook no casual mould "Of the first fancy and, contracted, cold, "Clogged her foreversoul averse to change "As flesh: whereas flesh leaves soul free to range, "Remains itself a blank, cast into shade, "Encumbers little, if it cannot aid. "So, range, free soul!who, by self-consciousness, "The last drop of all beauty dost express "The grace of seeing grace, a quintessence "For thee: while for the world, that can dispense "Wonder on men who, themselves, wondermake "A shift to love at second-hand, and take "For idols those who do but idolize, "Themselves,the world that counts men strong or wise, "Who, themselves, court strength, wisdom,it shall bow "Surely in unexampled worship now, "Discerning me!"          (Dear monarch, I beseech, Notice how lamentably wide a breach Is here: discovering this, discover too What our poor world has possibly to do With it! As pigmy natures as you please So much the better for you; take your ease, Look on, and laugh; style yourself God alone; Strangle some day with a cross olive-stone! All that is right enough: but why want us To know that you yourself know thus and thus?) "The world shall bow to me conceiving all "Man's life, who see its blisses, great and small, "Afarnot tasting any; no machine "To exercise my utmost will is mine: "Be mine mere consciousness! Let men perceive "What I could do, a mastery believe, "Asserted and established to the throng "By their selected evidence of song "Which now shall prove, whate'er they are, or seek "To be, I amwhose words, not actions speak, "Who change no standards of perfection, vex "With no strange forms created to perplex, "But just perform their bidding and no more, "At their own satiating-point give o'er, "While each shall love in me the love that leads "His soul to power's perfection." Song, not deeds, (For we get tired) was chosen. Fate would brook Mankind no other organ; he would look For not another channel to dispense His own volition by, receive men's sense Of its supremacywould live content, Obstructed else, with merely verse for vent. Nor should, for instance, strength an outlet seek And, striving, be admired: nor grace bespeak Wonder, displayed in gracious attitudes: Nor wisdom, poured forth, change unseemly moods; But he would give and take on song's one point. Like some huge throbbing stone that, poised a-joint, Sounds, to affect on its basaltic bed, Must sue in just one accent; tempests shed Thunder, and raves the windstorm: only let That key by any little noise be set The far benighted hunter's halloo pitch On that, the hungry curlew chance to scritch Or serpent hiss it, rustling through the rift, However loud, however lowall lift The groaning monster, stricken to the heart. Lo ye, the world's concernment, for its part, And this, for his, will hardly interfere! Its businesses in blood and blaze this year But wile the hour awaya pastime slight Till he shall step upon the platform: right! And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough, Proved feasible, be counselled! thought enough, Slumber, Sordello! any day will serve: Were it a less digested plan! how swerve To-morrow? Meanwhile eat these sun-dried grapes, And watch the soaring hawk there! Life escapes Merrily thus.        He thoroughly read o'er His truchman Naddo's missive six times more, Praying him visit Mantua and supply A famished world.          The evening star was high When he reached Mantua, but his fame arrived Before him: friends applauded, foes connived, And Naddo looked an angel, and the rest Angels, and all these angels would be blest Supremely by a songthe thrice-renowned Goito-manufacture. Then he found (Casting about to satisfy the crowd) That happy vehicle, so late allowed, A sore annoyance; 't was the song's effect He cared for, scarce the song itself: reflect! In the past life, what might be singing's use? Just to delight his Delians, whose profuse Praise, not the toilsome process which procured That praise, enticed Apollo: dreams abjured, No overleaping means for endstake both For granted or take neither! I am loth To say the rhymes at last were Eglamor's; But Naddo, chuckling, bade competitors Go pine; "the master certes meant to waste "No effort, cautiously had probed the taste "He 'd please anon: true bard, in short,disturb "His title if they could; nor spur nor curb, "Fancy nor reason, wanting in him; whence "The staple of his verses, common sense: "He built on man's broad naturegift of gifts, "That power to build! The world contented shifts "With counterfeits enough, a dreary sort "Of warriors, statesmen, ere it can extort "Its poet-soulthat 's, after all, a freak "(The having eyes to see and tongue to speak) "With our herd's stupid sterling happiness "So plainly incompatible thatyes "Yesshould a son of his improve the breed "And turn out poet, he were cursed indeed!" "Well, there 's Goito and its woods anon, "If the worst happen; best go stoutly on "Now!" thought Sordello.              Ay, and goes on yet! You pother with your glossaries to get A notion of the Troubadour's intent In rondel, tenzon, virlai or sirvent Much as you study arras how to twirl His angelot, plaything of page and girl Once; but you surely reach, at last,or, no! Never quite reach what struck the people so, As from the welter of their time he drew Its elements successively to view, Followed all actions backward on their course, And catching up, unmingled at the source, Such a strength, such a weakness, added then A touch or two, and turned them into men. Virtue took form, nor vice refused a shape; Here heaven opened, there was hell agape, As Saint this simpered past in sanctity, Sinner the other flared portentous by A greedy people. Then why stop, surprised At his success? The scheme was realized Too suddenly in one respect: a crowd Praising, eyes quick to see, and lips as loud To speak, delicious homage to receive, The woman's breath to feel upon his sleeve, Who said, "But Anafestwhy asks he less "Than Lucio, in your verses? how confess, "It seemed too much but yestereve!"the youth, Who bade him earnestly, "Avow the truth! "You love Bianca, surely, from your song; "I knew I was unworthy!"soft or strong, In poured such tributes ere he had arranged Ethereal ways to take them, sorted, changed, Digested. Courted thus at unawares, In spite of his pretensions and his cares, He caught himself shamefully hankering After the obvious petty joys that spring From true life, fain relinquish pedestal And condescend with pleasuresone and all To be renounced, no doubt; for, thus to chain Himself to single joys and so refrain From tasting their quintessence, frustrates, sure, His prime design; each joy must he abjure Even for love of it.            He laughed: what sage But perishes if from his magic page He look because, at the first line, a proof 'T was heard salutes him from the cavern roof? "On! Give yourself, excluding aught beside, "To the day's task; compel your slave provide "Its utmost at the soonest; turn the leaf "Thoroughly conned. These lays of yours, in brief "Cannot men bear, now, something better?fly "A pitch beyond this unreal pageantry "Of essences? the period sure has ceased "For such: present us with ourselves, at least, "Not portions of ourselves, mere loves and hates "Made flesh: wait not!"             Awhile the poet waits However. The first trial was enough: He left imagining, to try the stuff That held the imaged thing, and, let it writhe Never so fiercely, scarce allowed a tithe To reach the lighthis Language. How he sought The cause, conceived a cure, and slow re-wrought That Language,welding words into the crude Mass from the new speech round him, till a rude Armour was hammered out, in time to be Approved beyond the Roman panoply Melted to make it,boots not. This obtained With some ado, no obstacle remained To using it; accordingly he took An action with its actors, quite forsook Himself to live in each, returned anon With the resulta creature, and, by one And one, proceeded leisurely to equip Its limbs in harness of his workmanship. "Accomplished! Listen, Mantuans!" Fond essay! Piece after piece that armour broke away, Because perceptions whole, like that he sought To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought As language: thought may take perception's place But hardly co-exist in any case, Being its mere presentmentof the whole By parts, the simultaneous and the sole By the successive and the many. Lacks The crowd perception? painfully it tacks Thought to thought, which Sordello, needing such, Has rent perception into: it's to clutch And reconstructhis office to diffuse, Destroy: as hard, then, to obtain a Muse As to become Apollo. "For the rest, "E'en if some wondrous vehicle expressed "The whole dream, what impertinence in me "So to express it, who myself can be "The dream! nor, on the other hand, are those "I sing to, over-likely to suppose "A higher than the highest I present "Now, which they praise already: be content "Both parties, ratherthey with the old verse, "And I with the old praisefar go, fare worse!" A few adhering rivets loosed, upsprings The angel, sparkles off his mail, which rings Whirled from each delicatest limb it warps; So might Apollo from the sudden corpse Of Hyacinth have cast his luckless quoits. He set to celebrating the exploits Of Montfort o'er the Mountaineers.                   Then came The world's revenge: their pleasure, now his aim Merely,what was it? "Not to play the fool "So much as learn our lesson in your school!" Replied the world. He found that, every time He gained applause by any ballad-rhyme, His auditory recognized no jot As he intended, and, mistaking not Him for his meanest hero, ne'er was dunce Sufficient to believe himall, at once. His will . . . conceive it caring for his will! Mantuans, the main of them, admiring still How a mere singer, ugly, stunted, weak, Had Montfort at completely (so to speak) His fingers' ends; while past the praise-tide swept To Montfort, either's share distinctly kept: The true meed for true merit!his abates Into a sort he most repudiates, And on them angrily he turns. Who were The Mantuans, after all, that he should care About their recognition, ay or no? In spite of the convention months ago, (Why blink the truth?) was not he forced to help This same ungrateful audience, every whelp Of Naddo's litter, make them pass for peers With the bright band of old Goito years, As erst he toiled for flower or tree? Why, there Sat Palma! Adelaide's funereal hair Ennobled the next corner. Ay, he strewed A fairy dust upon that multitude, Although he feigned to take them by themselves; His giants dignified those puny elves, Sublimed their faint applause. In short, he found Himself still footing a delusive round, Remote as ever from the self-display He meant to compass, hampered every way By what he hoped assistance. Wherefore then Continue, make believe to find in men A use he found not?           Weeks, months, years went by And lo, Sordello vanished utterly, Sundered in twain; each spectral part at strife With each; one jarred against another life; The Poet thwarting hopelessly the Man Who, fooled no longer, free in fancy ran Here, there: let slip no opportunities As pitiful, forsooth, beside the prize To drop on him some no-time and acquit His constant faith (the Poet-half's to wit That waiving any compromise between No joy and all joy kept the hunger keen Beyond most methods)of incurring scoff From the Man-portionnot to be put off With self-reflectings by the Poet's scheme, Though ne'er so bright. Who sauntered forth in dream, Dressed any how, nor waited mystic frames, Immeasurable gifts, astounding claims, But just his sorry self?who yet might be Sorrier for aught he in reality Achieved, so pinioned Man's the Poet-part, Fondling, in turn of fancy, verse; the Art Developing his soul a thousand ways Potent, by its assistance, to amaze The multitude with majesties, convince Each sort of nature that the nature's prince Accosted it. Language, the makeshift, grew Into a bravest of expedients, too; Apollo, seemed it now, perverse had thrown Quiver and bow away, the lyre alone Sufficed. While, out of dream, his day's work went To tune a crazy tenzon or sirvent So hampered him the Man-part, thrust to judge Between the bard and the bard's audience, grudge A minute's toil that missed its due reward! But the complete Sordello, Man and Bard, John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on the land, That on the sea, with, open in his hand, A bitter-sweetling of a bookwas gone. Then, if internal struggles to be one, Which frittered him incessantly piecemeal, Referred, ne'er so obliquely, to the real Intruding Mantuans! ever with some call To action while he pondered, once for all, Which looked the easier effortto pursue This course, still leap o'er paltry joys, yearn through The present ill-appreciated stage Of self-revealment, and compel the age Know himor else, forswearing bard-craft, wake From out his lethargy and nobly shake Off timid habits of denial, mix With men, enjoy like men. Ere he could fix On aught, in rushed the Mantuans; much they cared For his perplexity! Thus unprepared, The obvious if not only shelter lay In deeds, the dull conventions of his day Prescribed the like of him: why not be glad 'T is settled Palma's minstrel, good or bad, Submits to this and that established rule? Let Vidal change, or any other fool, His murrey-coloured robe for filamot, And crop his hair; too skin-deep, is it not, Such vigour? Then, a sorrow to the heart, His talk! Whatever topics they might start Had to be groped for in his consciousness Straight, and as straight delivered them by guess. Only obliged to ask himself, "What was," A speedy answer followed; but, alas, One of God's large ones, tardy to condense Itself into a period; answers whence A tangle of conclusions must be stripped At any risk ere, trim to pattern clipped, They matched rare specimens the Mantuan flock Regaled him with, each talker from his stock Of sorted-o'er opinions, every stage, Juicy in youth or desiccate with age, Fruits like the fig-tree's, rathe-ripe, rotten-rich, Sweet-sour, all tastes to take: a practice which He too had not impossibly attained, Once either of those fancy-flights restrained; (For, at conjecture how might words appear To others, playing there what happened here, And occupied abroad by what he spurned At home, 't was slipped, the occasion he returned To seize he 'd strike that lyre adroitlyspeech, Would but a twenty-cubit plectre reach; A clever hand, consummate instrument, Were both brought close; each excellency went For nothing, else. The question Naddo asked, Had just a lifetime moderately tasked To answer, Naddo's fashion. More disgust And more: why move his soul, since move it must At minute's notice or as good it failed To move at all? The end was, he retailed Some ready-made opinion, put to use This quip, that maxim, ventured reproduce Gestures and tonesat any folly caught Serving to finish with, nor too much sought If false or true 't was spoken; praise and blame Of what he said grew pretty nigh the same Meantime awards to meantime acts: his soul, Unequal to the compassing a whole, Saw, in a tenth part, less and less to strive About. And as for men in turn . . . contrive Who could to take eternal interest In them, so hate the worst, so love the best, Though, in pursuance of his passive plan, He hailed, decried, the proper way.                    As Man So figured he; and how as Poet? Verse Came only not to a stand-still. The worse, That his poor piece of daily work to do Wasnot sink under any rivals; who Loudly and long enough, without these qualms, Turned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms, To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with, "As knops that stud some almug to the pith "Prickd for gum, wry thence, and crinkld worse "Than pursd eyelids of a river-horse "Sunning himself o' the slime when whirrs the breese" Gad-fly, that is. He might compete with these! Butbut      "Observe a pompion-twine afloat; "Pluck me one cup from off the castle-moat! "Along with cup you raise leaf, stalk and root, "The entire surface of the pool to boot. "So could I pluck a cup, put in one song "A single sight, did not my hand, too strong, "Twitch in the least the root-strings of the whole. "How should externals satisfy my soul?" "Why that's precise the error Squarcialupe" (Hazarded Naddo) "finds; 'the man can't stoop "'To sing us out,' quoth he, 'a mere romance; "'He'd fain do better than the best, enhance "'The subjects' rarity, work problems out "'Therewith.' Now, you 're a bard, a bard past doubt, "And no philosopher; why introduce "Crotchets like these? fine, surely, but no use "In poetrywhich still must be, to strike, "Based upon common sense; there's nothing like "Appealing to our nature! what beside "Was your first poetry? No tricks were tried "In that, no hollow thrills, affected throes! "'The man,' said we, 'tells his own joys and woes: "'We'll trust him.' Would you have your songs endure? "Build on the human heart!why, to be sure "Yours is one sort of heartbut I mean theirs, "Ours, every one's, the healthy heart one cares "To build on! Central peace, mother of strength, "That's father of . . . nay, go yourself that length, "Ask those calm-hearted doers what they do "When they have got their calm! And is it true, "Fire rankles at the heart of every globe? "Perhaps. But these are matters one may probe "Too deeply for poetic purposes: "Rather select a theory that . . . yes, "Laugh! what does that prove?stations you midway "And saves some little o'er-refining. Nay, "That's rank injustice done me! I restrict "The poet? Don't I hold the poet picked "Out of a host of warriors, statesmen . . . did "I tell you? Very like! As well you hid "That sense of power, you have! True bards believe "All able to achieve what they achieve "That is, just nothingin one point abide "Profounder simpletons than all beside. "Oh, ay! The knowledge that you are a bard "Must constitute your prime, nay sole, reward!" So prattled Naddo, busiest of the tribe Of genius-hauntershow shall I describe What grubs or nips or rubs or ripsyour louse For love, your flea for hate, magnanimous, Malignant, Pappacoda, Tagliafer, Picking a sustenance from wear and tear By implements it sedulous employs To undertake, lay down, mete out, o'er-toise Sordello? Fifty creepers to elude At once! They settled staunchly; shame ensued: Behold the monarch of mankind succumb To the last fool who turned him round his thumb, As Naddo styled it! 'T was not worth oppose The matter of a moment, gainsay those He aimed at getting rid of; better think Their thoughts and speak their speech, secure to slink Back expeditiously to his safe place, And chew the cudwhat he and what his race Were really, each of them. Yet even this Conformity was partial. He would miss Some point, brought into contact with them ere Assured in what small segment of the sphere Of his existence they attended him; Whence blunders, falsehoods rectifieda grim Listslur it over! How? If dreams were tried, His will swayed sicklily from side to side, Nor merely neutralized his waking act But tended e'en in fancy to distract The intermediate will, the choice of means. He lost the art of dreaming: Mantuan scenes Supplied a baron, say, he sang before, Handsomely reckless, full to running-o'er Of gallantries; "abjure the soul, content "With body, therefore!" Scarcely had he bent Himself in dream thus low, when matter fast Cried out, he found, for spirit to contrast And task it duly; by advances slight, The simple stuff becoming composite, Count Lori grew Apollo: best recall His fancy! Then would some rough peasant-Paul, Like those old Ecelin confers with, glance His gay apparel o'er; that countenance Gathered his shattered fancies into one, And, body clean abolished, soul alone Sufficed the grey Paulician: by and by, To balance the ethereality, Passions were needed; foiled he sank again. Meanwhile the world rejoiced ('t is time explain) Because a sudden sickness set it free From Adelaide. Missing the mother-bee, Her mountain-hive Romano swarmed; at once A rustle-forth of daughters and of sons Blackened the valley. "I am sick too, old, "Half-crazed I think; what good's the Kaiser's gold "To such an one? God help me! for I catch "My children's greedy sparkling eyes at watch "'He bears that double breastplate on,' they say, "'So many minutes less than yesterday!' "Beside, Monk Hilary is on his knees "Now, sworn to kneel and pray till God shall please "Exact a punishment for many things "You know, and some you never knew; which brings "To memory, Azzo's sister Beatrix "And Richard's Giglia are my Alberic's "And Ecelin's betrothed; the Count himself "Must get my Palma: Ghibellin and Guelf "Mean to embrace each other." So began Romano's missive to his fighting man Taurelloon the Tuscan's death, away With Friedrich sworn to sail from Naples' bay Next month for Syria. Never thunder-clap Out of Vesuvius' throat, like this mishap Startled him. "That accursed Vicenza! I "Absent, and she selects this time to die! "Ho, fellows, for Vicenza!" Half a score Of horses ridden dead, he stood before Romano in his reeking spurs: too late "Boniface urged me, Este could not wait," The chieftain stammered; "let me die in peace "Forget me! Was it I who craved increase "Of rule? Do you and Friedrich plot your worst "Against the Father: as you found me first "So leave me now. Forgive me! Palma, sure, "Is at Goito still. Retain that lure "Only be pacified!"           The country rung With such a piece of news: on every tongue, How Ecelin's great servant, congeed off, Had done a long day's service, so, might doff The green and yellow, and recover breath At Mantua, whither,since Retrude's death, (The girlish slip of a Sicilian bride From Otho's house, he carried to reside At Mantua till the Ferrarese should pile A structure worthy her imperial style, The gardens raise, the statues there enshrine, She never lived to see)although his line Was ancient in her archives and she took A pride in him, that city, nor forsook Her child when he forsook himself and spent A prowess on Romano surely meant For his own growthwhither he ne'er resorts If wholly satisfied (to trust reports) With Ecelin. So, forward in a trice Were shows to greet him. "Take a friend's advice," Quoth Naddo to Sordello, "nor be rash "Because your rivals (nothing can abash "Some folks) demur that we pronounced you best "To sound the great man's welcome; 't is a test, "Remember! Strojavacca looks asquint, "The rough fat sloven; and there 's plenty hint "Your pinions have received of late a shock "Outsoar them, cobswan of the silver flock! "Sing well!" A signal wonder, song 's no whit Facilitated.       Fast the minutes flit; Another day, Sordello finds, will bring The soldier, and he cannot choose but sing; So, a last shift, quits Mantuaslow, alone: Out of that aching brain, a very stone, Song must be struck. What occupies that front? Just how he was more awkward than his wont The night before, when Naddo, who had seen Taurello on his progress, praised the mien For dignity no crosses could affect Such was a joy, and might not he detect A satisfaction if established joys Were proved imposture? Poetry annoys Its utmost: wherefore fret? Verses may come Or keep away! And thus he wandered, dumb Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent, On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went, Yielding himself up as to an embrace. The moon came out; like features of a face, A querulous fraternity of pines, Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines Also came out, made gradually up The picture; 't was Goito's mountain-cup And castle. He had dropped through one defile He never dared explore, the Chief erewhile Had vanished by. Back rushed the dream, enwrapped Him wholly. 'T was Apollo now they lapped, Those mountains, not a pettish minstrel meant To wear his soul away in discontent, Brooding on fortune's malice. Heart and brain Swelled; he expanded to himself again, As some thin seedling spice-tree starved and frail, Pushing between cat's head and ibis' tail Crusted into the porphyry pavement smooth, Suffered remain just as it sprung, to soothe The Soldan's pining daughter, never yet Well in her chilly green-glazed minaret, When rooted up, the sunny day she died, And flung into the common court beside Its parent tree. Come home, Sordello! Soon Was he low muttering, beneath the moon, Of sorrow saved, of quiet evermore, Since from the purpose, he maintained before, Only resulted wailing and hot tears. Ah, the slim castle! dwindled of late years, But more mysterious; gone to ruintrails Of vine through every loop-hole. Nought avails The night as, torch in hand, he must explore The maple chamber: did I say, its floor Was made of intersecting cedar beams? Worn now with gaps so large, there blew cold streams Of air quite from the dungeon; lay your ear Close and 't is like, one after one, you hear In the blind darkness water drop. The nests And nooks retain their long ranged vesture-chests Empty and smelling of the iris root The Tuscan grated o'er them to recruit Her wasted wits. Palma was gone that day, Said the remaining women. Last, he lay Beside the Carian group reserved and still. The Body, the Machine for Acting Will, Had been at the commencement proved unfit; That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it, Mankindno fitter: was the Will Itself In fault?      His forehead pressed the moonlit shelf Beside the youngest marble maid awhile; Then, raising it, he thought, with a long smile, "I shall be king again!" as he withdrew The envied scarf; into the font he threw His crown      Next day, no poet! "Wherefore?" asked Taurello, when the dance of Jongleurs, masked As devils, ended; "don't a song come next?" The master of the pageant looked perplexed Till Naddo's whisper came to his relief. "His Highness knew what poets were: in brief, "Had not the tetchy race prescriptive right "To peevishness, caprice? or, call it spite, "One must receive their nature in its length "And breadth, expect the weakness with the strength!" So phrasing, till, his stock of phrases spent, The easy-natured soldier smiled assent, Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin, And nodded that the bull-bait might begin. ~ Robert Browning, Sordello - Book the Second ,

1473:Meantime Ferrara lay in rueful case; The lady-city, for whose sole embrace Her pair of suitors struggled, felt their arms A brawny mischief to the fragile charms They tugged forone discovering that to twist Her tresses twice or thrice about his wrist Secured a point of vantageone, how best He 'd parry that by planting in her breast His elbow spikeeach party too intent For noticing, howe'er the battle went, The conqueror would but have a corpse to kiss. "May Boniface be duly damned for this!" Howled some old Ghibellin, as up he turned, From the wet heap of rubbish where they burned His house, a little skull with dazzling teeth: "A boon, sweet Christlet Salinguerra seethe "In hell for ever, Christ, and let myself "Be there to laugh at him!"moaned some young Guelf Stumbling upon a shrivelled hand nailed fast To the charred lintel of the doorway, last His father stood within to bid him speed. The thoroughfares were overrun with weed Docks, quitchgrass, loathy mallows no man plants. The stranger, none of its inhabitants Crept out of doors to taste fresh air again, And ask the purpose of a splendid train Admitted on a morning; every town Of the East League was come by envoy down To treat for Richard's ransom: here you saw The Vicentine, here snowy oxen draw The Paduan carroch, its vermilion cross On its white field. A-tiptoe o'er the fosse Looked Legate Montelungo wistfully After the flock of steeples he might spy In Este's time, gone (doubts he) long ago To mend the ramparts: sure the laggards know The Pope's as good as here! They paced the streets More soberly. At last, "Taurello greets "The League," announced a pursuivant,"will match "Its courtesy, and labours to dispatch "At earliest Tito, Friedrich's Pretor, sent "On pressing matters from his post at Trent, "With Mainard Count of Tyrol,simply waits "Their going to receive the delegates." "Tito!" Our delegates exchanged a glance, And, keeping the main way, admired askance The lazy engines of outlandish birth, Couched like a king each on its bank of earth Arbalist, manganel and catapult; While stationed by, as waiting a result, Lean silent gangs of mercenaries ceased Working to watch the strangers. "This, at least, "Were better spared; he scarce presumes gainsay "The League's decision! Get our friend away "And profit for the future: how else teach "Fools 't is not safe to stray within claw's reach "Ere Salinguerra's final gasp be blown? "Those mere convulsive scratches find the bone. "Who bade him bloody the spent osprey's nare?" The carrochs halted in the public square. Pennons of every blazon once a-flaunt, Men prattled, freelier than the crested gaunt White ostrich with a horse-shoe in her beak Was missing, and whoever chose might speak "Ecelin" boldly out: so,"Ecelin "Needed his wife to swallow half the sin "And sickens by himself: the devil's whelp, "He styles his son, dwindles away, no help "From conserves, your fine triple-curded froth "Of virgin's blood, your Venice viper-broth "Eh? Jubilate!""Peace! no little word "You utter here that 's not distinctly heard "Up at Oliero: he was absent sick "When we besieged Bassanowho, i' the thick "O' the work, perceived the progress Azzo made, "Like Ecelin, through his witch Adelaide? "She managed it so well that, night by night "At their bed-foot stood up a soldier-sprite, "First fresh, pale by-and-by without a wound, "And, when it came with eyes filmed as in swound, "They knew the place was taken.""Ominous "That Ghibellins should get what cautelous "Old Redbeard sought from Azzo's sire to wrench "Vainly; Saint George contrived his town a trench "O' the marshes, an impermeable bar." "Young Ecelin is meant the tutelar "Of Padua, rather; veins embrace upon "His hand like Brenta and Bacchiglion." What now?"The founts! God's bread, touch not a plank! "A crawling hell of carrionevery tank "Choke-full!found out just now to Cino's cost "The same who gave Taurello up for lost, "And, making no account of fortune's freaks, "Refused to budge from Padua then, but sneaks "Back now with Concorezzi: 'faith! they drag "Their carroch to San Vitale, plant the flag "On his own palace, so adroitly razed "He knew it not; a sort of Guelf folk gazed "And laughed apart; Cino disliked their air "Must pluck up spirit, show he does not care "Seats himself on the tank's edgewill begin "To hum, za, za, Cavaler Ecelin "A silence; he gets warmer, clinks to chime, "Now both feet plough the ground, deeper each time, "At last, za, za and up with a fierce kick "Comes his own mother's face caught by the thick "Grey hair about his spur!"                Which means, they lift The covering, Salinguerra made a shift To stretch upon the truth; as well avoid Further disclosures; leave them thus employed. Our dropping Autumn morning clears apace, And poor Ferrara puts a softened face On her misfortunes. Let us scale this tall Huge foursquare line of red brick garden-wall Bastioned within by trees of every sort On three sides, slender, spreading, long and short; Each grew as it contrived, the poplar ramped, The fig-tree reared itself,but stark and cramped, Made fools of, like tamed lions: whence, on the edge, Running 'twixt trunk and trunk to smooth one ledge Of shade, were shrubs inserted, warp and woof, Which smothered up that variance. Scale the roof Of solid tops, and o'er the slope you slide Down to a grassy space level and wide, Here and there dotted with a tree, but trees Of rarer leaf, each foreigner at ease, Set by itself: and in the centre spreads, Borne upon three uneasy leopards' heads, A laver, broad and shallow, one bright spirt Of water bubbles in. The walls begirt With trees leave off on either hand; pursue Your path along a wondrous avenue Those walls abut on, heaped of gleamy stone, With aloes leering everywhere, grey-grown From many a Moorish summer: how they wind Out of the fissures! likelier to bind The building than those rusted cramps which drop Already in the eating sunshine. Stop, You fleeting shapes above there! Ah, the pride Or else despair of the whole country-side! A range of statues, swarming o'er with wasps, God, goddess, woman, man, the Greek rough-rasps In crumbling Naples marblemeant to look Like those Messina marbles Constance took Delight in, or Taurello's self conveyed To Mantua for his mistress, Adelaide, A certain font with caryatides Since cloistered at Goito; only, these Are up and doing, not abashed, a troop Able to right themselveswho see you, stoop Their arms o' the instant after you! Unplucked By this or that, you pass; for they conduct To terrace raised on terrace, and, between, Creatures of brighter mould and braver mien Than any yet, the choicest of the Isle No doubt. Here, left a sullen breathing-while, Up-gathered on himself the Fighter stood For his last fight, and, wiping treacherous blood Out of the eyelids just held ope beneath Those shading fingers in their iron sheath, Steadied his strengths amid the buzz and stir Of the dusk hideous amphitheatre At the announcement of his over-match To wind the day's diversion up, dispatch The pertinactious Gaul: while, limbs one heap, The Slave, no breath in her round mouth, watched leap Dart after dart forth, as her hero's car Clove dizzily the solid of the war Let coil about his knees for pride in him. We reach the farthest terrace, and the grim San Pietro Palace stops us.                Such the state Of Salinguerra's plan to emulate Sicilian marvels, that his girlish wife Retrude still might lead her ancient life In her new home: whereat enlarged so much Neighbours upon the novel princely touch He took,who here imprisons Boniface. Here must the Envoys come to sue for grace; And here, emerging from the labyrinth Below, Sordello paused beside the plinth Of the door-pillar.           He had really left Verona for the cornfields (a poor theft From the morass) where Este's camp was made; The Envoys' march, the Legate's cavalcade All had been seen by him, but scarce as when, Eager for cause to stand aloof from men At every point save the fantastic tie Acknowledged in his boyish sophistry, He made account of such. A crowd,he meant To task the whole of it; each part's intent Concerned him therefore: and, the more he pried, The less became Sordello satisfied With his own figure at the moment. Sought He respite from his task? Descried he aught Novel in the anticipated sight Of all these livers upon all delight? This phalanx, as of myriad points combined, Whereby he still had imaged the mankind His youth was passed in dreams of rivalling, His agein plans to prove at least such thing Had been so dreamed,which now he must impress With his own will, effect a happiness By theirs,supply a body to his soul Thence, and become eventually whole With them as he had hoped to be without Made these the mankind he once raved about? Because a few of them were notable, Should all be figured worthy note? As well Expect to find Taurello's triple line Of trees a single and prodigious pine. Real pines rose here and there; but, close among, Thrust into and mixed up with pines, a throng Of shrubs, he saw,a nameless common sort O'erpast in dreams, left out of the report And hurried into corners, or at best Admitted to be fancied like the rest. Reckon that morning's proper chiefshow few! And yet the people grew, the people grew, Grew ever, as if the many there indeed, More left behind and most who should succeed, Simply in virtue of their mouths and eyes, Petty enjoyments and huge miseries, Mingled with, and made veritably great Those chiefs: he overlooked not Mainard's state Nor Concorezzi's station, but instead Of stopping there, each dwindled to be head Of infinite and absent Tyrolese Or Paduans; startling all the more, that these Seemed passive and disposed of, uncared for, Yet doubtless on the whole (like Eglamor) Smiling; for if a wealthy man decays And out of store of robes must wear, all days, One tattered suit, alike in sun and shade, 'T is commonly some tarnished gay brocade Fit for a feast-night's flourish and no more: Nor otherwise poor Misery from her store Of looks is fain upgather, keep unfurled For common wear as she goes through the world, The faint remainder of some worn-out smile Meant for a feast-night's service merely. While Crowd upon crowd rose on Sordello thus, (Crowds no way interfering to discuss, Much less dispute, life's joys with one employed In envying them,or, if they aught enjoyed, Where lingered something indefinable In every look and tone, the mirth as well As woe, that fixed at once his estimate Of the result, their good or bad estate) Old memories returned with new effect: And the new body, ere he could suspect, Cohered, mankind and he were really fused, The new self seemed impatient to be used By him, but utterly another way Than that anticipated: strange to say, They were too much below him, more in thrall Than he, the adjunct than the principal. What booted scattered units?here a mind And there, which might repay his own to find, And stamp, and use?a few, howe'er august, If all the rest were grovelling in the dust? No: first a mighty equilibrium, sure, Should he establish, privilege procure For all, the few had long possessed! He felt An error, an exceeding error melt: While he was occupied with Mantuan chants, Behoved him think of men, and take their wants, Such as he now distinguished every side, As his own want which might be satisfied, And, after that, think of rare qualities Of his own soul demanding exercise. It followed naturally, through no claim On their part, which made virtue of the aim At serving them, on his,that, past retrieve, He felt now in their toils, theirsnor could leave Wonder how, in the eagerness to rule, Impress his will on mankind, he (the fool!) Had never even entertained the thought That this his last arrangement might be fraught with incidental good to them as well, And that mankind's delight would help to swell His own. So, if he sighed, as formerly Because the merry time of life must fleet, 'T was deeplier now,for could the crowds repeat Their poor experiences? His hand that shook Was twice to be deplored. "The Legate, look! "With eyes, like fresh-blown thrush-eggs on a thread, "Faint-blue and loosely floating in his head, "Large tongue, moist open mouth; and this long while "That owner of the idiotic smile "Serves them!"        He fortunately saw in time His fault however, and since the office prime Includes the secondarybest accept Both offices; Taurello, its adept, Could teach him the preparatory one, And how to do what he had fancied done Long previously, ere take the greater task. How render first these people happy? Ask The people's friends: for there must be one good One way to itthe Cause! He understood The meaning now of Palma; why the jar Else, the ado, the trouble wide and far Of Guelfs and Ghibellins, the Lombard hope And Rome's despair?'twixt Emperor and Pope The confused shifting sort of Eden tale Hardihood still recurring, still to fail That foreign interloping fiend, this free And native overbrooding deity: Yet a dire fascination o'er the palms The Kaiser ruined, troubling even the calms Of paradise; or, on the other hand, The Pontiff, as the Kaisers understand, One snake-like cursed of God to love the ground, Whose heavy length breaks in the noon profound Some saving treewhich needs the Kaiser, dressed As the dislodging angel of that pest: Yet flames that pest bedropped, flat head, full fold, With coruscating dower of dyes. "Behold "The secret, so to speak, and master-spring "O' the contest!which of the two Powers shall bring "Men good, perchance the most good: ay, it may "Be that!the question, which best knows the way." And hereupon Count Mainard strutted past Out of San Pietro; never seemed the last Of archers, slingers: and our friend began To recollect strange modes of serving man Arbalist, catapult, brake, manganel, And more. "This way of theirs may,who can tell? "Need perfecting," said he: "let all be solved "At once! Taurello 't is, the task devolved "On late: confront Taurello!"                And at last He did confront him. Scarce an hour had past When forth Sordello came, older by years Than at his entry. Unexampled fears Oppressed him, and he staggered off, blind, mute And deaf, like some fresh-mutilated brute, Into Ferraranot the empty town That morning witnessed: he went up and down Streets whence the veil had been stript shred by shred, So that, in place of huddling with their dead Indoors, to answer Salinguerra's ends, Townsfolk make shift to crawl forth, sit like friends With any one. A woman gave him choice Of her two daughters, the infantile voice Or the dimpled knee, for half a chain, his throat Was clasped with; but an archer knew the coat Its blue cross and eight lilies,bade beware One dogging him in concert with the pair Though thrumming on the sleeve that hid his knife. Night set in early, autumn dews were rife, They kindled great fires while the Leaguers' mass Began at every carroch: he must pass Between the kneeling people. Presently The carroch of Verona caught his eye With purple trappings; silently he bent Over its fire, when voices violent Began, "Affirm not whom the youth was like "That struck me from the porch: I did not strike "Again: I too have chestnut hair; my kin "Hate Azzo and stand up for Ecelin. "Here, minstrel, drive bad thoughts away! Sing! Take "My glove for guerdon!" And for that man's sake He turned: "A song of Eglamor's!"scarce named, When, "Our Sordello's rather!"all exclaimed; "Is not Sordello famousest for rhyme?" He had been happy to deny, this time, Profess as heretofore the aching head And failing heart,suspect that in his stead Some true Apollo had the charge of them, Was champion to reward or to condemn, So his intolerable risk might shift Or share itself; but Naddo's precious gift Of gifts, he owned, be certain! At the close "I made that," said he to a youth who rose As if to hear: 't was Palma through the band Conducted him in silence by her hand. Back now for Salinguerra. Tito of Trent Gave place to Palma and her friend, who went In turn at Montelungo's visit: one After the other were they come and gone, These spokesmen for the Kaiser and the Pope, This incarnation of the People's hope, Sordello,all the say of each was said; And Salinguerra sat,himself instead Of these to talk with, lingered musing yet. 'T was a drear vast presence-chamber roughly set In order for the morning's use; full face, The Kaiser's ominous sign-mark had first place, The crowned grim twy-necked eagle, coarsely-blacked With ochre on the naked wall; nor lacked Romano's green and yellow either side; But the new token Tito brought had tried The Legate's patiencenay, if Palma knew What Salinguerra almost meant to do Until the sight of her restored his lip A certain half-smile, three months' chieftainship Had banished! Afterward, the Legate found No change in him, nor asked what badge he wound And unwound carelessly. Now sat the Chief Silent as when our couple left, whose brief Encounter wrought so opportune effect In thoughts he summoned not, nor would reject, Though time 't was now if ever, to pausefix On any sort of ending: wiles and tricks Exhausted, judge! his charge, the crazy town, Just managed to be hindered crashing down His last sound troops rangedcare observed to post His best of the maimed soldiers innermost So much was plain enough, but somehow struck Him not before. And now with this strange luck Of Tito's news, rewarding his address So well, what thought he of?how the success With Friedrich's rescript there, would either hush Old Ecelin's scruples, bring the manly flush To his young son's white cheek, or, last, exempt Himself from telling what there was to tempt? No: that this minstrel was Romano's last Servanthimself the first! Could he contrast The whole!that minstrel's thirty years just spent In doing nought, their notablest event This morning's journey hither, as I told Who yet was lean, outworn and really old, A stammering awkward man that scarce dared raise His eye before the magisterial gaze And Salinguerra with his fears and hopes Of sixty years, his Emperors and Popes, Cares and contrivances, yet, you would say, 'T was a youth nonchalantly looked away Through the embrasure northward o'er the sick Expostulating treesso agile, quick And graceful turned the head on the broad chest Encased in pliant steel, his constant vest, Whence split the sun off in a spray of fire Across the room; and, loosened of its tire Of steel, that head let breathe the comely brown Large massive locks discoloured as if a crown Encircled them, so frayed the basnet where A sharp white line divided clean the hair; Glossy above, glossy below, it swept Curling and fine about a brow thus kept Calm, laid coat upon coat, marble and sound: This was the mystic mark the Tuscan found, Mused of, turned over books about. Square-faced, No lion more; two vivid eyes, enchased In hollows filled with many a shade and streak Settling from the bold nose and bearded cheek. Nor might the half-smile reach them that deformed A lip supremely perfect elseunwarmed, Unwidened, less or more; indifferent Whether on trees or men his thoughts were bent, Thoughts rarely, after all, in trim and train As now a period was fulfilled again: Of such, a series made his life, compressed In each, one story serving for the rest How his life-streams rolling arrived at last At the barrier, whence, were it once overpast, They would emerge, a river to the end, Gathered themselves up, paused, bade fate befriend, Took the leap, hung a minute at the height, Then fell back to oblivion infinite: Therefore he smiled. Beyond stretched garden-grounds Where late the adversary, breaking bounds, Had gained him an occasion, That above, That eagle, testified he could improve Effectually. The Kaiser's symbol lay Beside his rescript, a new badge by way Of baldric; while,another thing that marred Alike emprise, achievement and reward, Ecelin's missive was conspicuous too. What past life did those flying thoughts pursue? As his, few names in Mantua half so old; But at Ferrara, where his sires enrolled It latterly, the Adelardi spared No pains to rival them: both factions shared Ferrara, so that, counted out, 't would yield A product very like the city's shield, Half black and white, or Ghibellin and Guelf As after Salinguerra styled himself And Este who, till Marchesalla died, (Last of the Adelardi)never tried His fortune there: with Marchesalla's child Would pass,could Blacks and Whites be reconciled And young Taurello wed Linguetta,wealth And sway to a sole grasp. Each treats by stealth Already: when the Guelfs, the Ravennese Arrive, assault the Pietro quarter, seize Linguetta, and are gone! Men's first dismay Abated somewhat, hurries down, to lay The after indignation, Boniface, This Richard's father. "Learn the full disgrace "Averted, ere you blame us Guelfs, who rate "Your Salinguerra, your sole potentate "That might have been, 'mongst Este's valvassors "Ay, Azzo'swho, not privy to, abhors "Our step; but we were zealous." Azzo then To do with! Straight a meeting of old men: "Old Salinguerra dead, his heir a boy, "What if we change our ruler and decoy "The Lombard Eagle of the azure sphere "With Italy to build in, fix him here, "Settle the city's troubles in a trice? "For private wrong, let public good suffice!" In fine, young Salinguerra's staunchest friends Talked of the townsmen making him amends, Gave him a goshawk, and affirmed there was Rare sport, one morning, over the green grass A mile or so. He sauntered through the plain, Was restless, fell to thinking, turned again In time for Azzo's entry with the bride; Count Boniface rode smirking at their side; "She brings him half Ferrara," whispers flew, "And all Ancona! If the stripling knew!" Anon the stripling was in Sicily Where Heinrich ruled in right of Constance; he Was gracious nor his guest incapable; Each understood the other. So it fell, One Spring, when Azzo, thoroughly at ease, Had near forgotten by what precise degrees He crept at first to such a downy seat, The Count trudged over in a special heat To bid him of God's love dislodge from each Of Salinguerra's palaces,a breach Might yawn else, not so readily to shut, For who was just arrived at Mantua but The youngster, sword on thigh and tuft on chin, With tokens for Celano, Ecelin, Pistore, and the like! Next news,no whit Do any of Ferrara's domes befit His wife of Heinrich's very blood: a band Of foreigners assemble, understand Garden-constructing, level and surround, Build up and bury in. A last news crowned The consternation: since his infant's birth, He only waits they end his wondrous girth Of trees that link San Pietro with Tom, To visit Mantua. When the Podest Ecelin, at Vicenza, called his friend Taurello thither, what could be their end But to restore the Ghibellins' late Head, The Kaiser helping? He with most to dread From vengeance and reprisal, Azzo, there With Boniface beforehand, as aware Of plots in progress, gave alarm, expelled Both plotters: but the Guelfs in triumph yelled Too hastily. The burning and the flight, And how Taurello, occupied that night With Ecelin, lost wife and son, I told: Not how he bore the blow, retained his hold, Got friends safe through, left enemies the worst O' the fray, and hardly seemed to care at first: But afterward men heard not constantly Of Salinguerra's House so sure to be! Though Azzo simply gained by the event A shifting of his plaguesthe first, content To fall behind the second and estrange So far his nature, suffer such a change That in Romano sought he wife and child, And for Romano's sake seemed reconciled To losing individual life, which shrunk As the other prosperedmortised in his trunk; Like a dwarf palm which wanton Arabs foil Of bearing its own proper wine and oil, By grafting into it the stranger-vine, Which sucks its heart out, sly and serpentine, Till forth one vine-palm feathers to the root, And red drops moisten the insipid fruit. Once Adelaide set on,the subtle mate Of the weak soldier, urged to emulate The Church's valiant women deed for deed, And paragon her namesake, win the meed O' the great Matilda,soon they overbore The rest of Lombardy,not as before By an instinctive truculence, but patched The Kaiser's strategy until it matched The Pontiff's, sought old ends by novel means. "Only, why is it Salinguerra screens "Himself behind Romano?him we bade "Enjoy our shine i' the front, not seek the shade!" Asked Heinrich, somewhat of the tardiest To comprehend. Nor Philip acquiesced At once in the arrangement; reasoned, plied His friend with offers of another bride, A statelier functionfruitlessly: 't was plain Taurello through some weakness must remain Obscure. And Otho, free to judge of both Ecelin the unready, harsh and loth, And this more plausible and facile wight With every point a-sparklechose the right, Admiring how his predecessors harped On the wrong man: "thus," quoth he, "wits are warped "By outsides!" Carelessly, meanwhile, his life Suffered its many turns of peace and strife In many landsyou hardly could surprise The man; who shamed Sordello (recognize!) In this as much beside, that, unconcerned What qualities were natural or earned, With no ideal of graces, as they came He took them, singularly well the same Speaking the Greek's own language, just because Your Greek eludes you, leave the least of flaws In contracts with him; while, since Arab lore Holds the stars' secrettake one trouble more And master it! 'T is done, and now deter Who may the Tuscan, once Jove trined for her, From Friedrich's path!Friedrich, whose pilgrimage The same man puts aside, whom he 'll engage To leave next year John Brienne in the lurch, Come to Bassano, see Saint Francis' church And judge of Guido the Bolognian's piece Which,lend Taurello credit,rivals Greece Angels, with aureoles like golden quoits Pitched home, applauding Ecelin's exploits. For elegance, he strung the angelot, Made rhymes thereto; for prowess, clove he not Tiso, last siege, from crest to crupper? Why Detail you thus a varied mastery But to show how Taurello, on the watch For men, to read their hearts and thereby catch Their capabilities and purposes, Displayed himself so far as displayed these: While our Sordello only cared to know About men as a means whereby he 'd show Himself, and men had much or little worth According as they kept in or drew forth That self; the other's choicest instruments Surmised him shallow.            Meantime, malcontents Dropped off, town after town grew wiser. "How "Change the world's face?" asked people; "as 't is now "It has been, will be ever: very fine "Subjecting things profane to things divine, "In talk! This contumacy will fatigue "The vigilance of Este and the League! "The Ghibellins gain on us!"as it happed. Old Azzo and old Boniface, entrapped By Ponte Alto, both in one month's space Slept at Verona: either left a brace Of sonsbut, three years after, either's pair Lost Guglielm and Aldobrand its heir: Azzo remained and Richardall the stay Of Este and Saint Boniface, at bay As 't were. Then, either Ecelin grew old Or his brain alterednot o' the proper mould For new applianceshis old palm-stock Endured no influx of strange strengths. He 'd rock As in a drunkenness, or chuckle low As proud of the completeness of his woe, Then weep real tears;now make some mad onslaught On Este, heedless of the lesson taught So painfully,now cringe for peace, sue peace At price of past gain, bar of fresh increase To the fortunes of Romano. Up at last Rose Este, down Romano sank as fast. And men remarked these freaks of peace and war Happened while Salinguerra was afar: Whence every friend besought him, all in vain, To use his old adherent's wits again. Not he!"who had advisers in his sons, "Could plot himself, nor needed any one's "Advice." 'T was Adelaide's remaining staunch Prevented his destruction root and branch Forthwith; but when she died, doom fell, for gay He made alliances, gave lands away To whom it pleased accept them, and withdrew For ever from the world. Taurello, who Was summoned to the convent, then refused A word at the wicket, patience thus abused, Promptly threw off alike his imbecile Ally's yoke, and his own frank, foolish smile. Soon a few movements of the happier sort Changed matters, put himself in men's report As heretofore; he had to fight, beside, And that became him ever. So, in pride And flushing of this kind of second youth, He dealt a good-will blow. Este in truth Lay proneand men remembered, somewhat late, A laughing old outrageous stifled hate He bore to Estehow it would outbreak At times spite of disguise, like an earthquake In sunny weatheras that noted day When with his hundred friends he tried to slay Azzo before the Kaiser's face: and how, On Azzo's calm refusal to allow A liegeman's challenge, straight he too was calmed: As if his hate could bear to lie embalmed, Bricked up, the moody Pharaoh, and survive All intermediate crumblings, to arrive At earth's catastrophe't was Este's crash Not Azzo's he demanded, so, no rash Procedure! Este's true antagonist Rose out of Ecelin: all voices whist, All eyes were sharpened, wits predicted. He 'T was, leaned in the embrasure absently, Amused with his own efforts, now, to trace With his steel-sheathed forefinger Friedrich's face I' the dust: but as the trees waved sere, his smile Deepened, and words expressed its thought erewhile. "Ay, fairly housed at last, my old compeer? "That we should stick together, all the year "I kept Vicenza!How old Boniface, "Old Azzo caught us in its market-place, "He by that pillar, I at this,caught each "In mid swing, more than fury of his speech, "Egging the rabble on to disavow "Allegiance to their MarquisBacchus, how "They boasted! Ecelin must turn their drudge, "Nor, if released, will Salinguerra grudge "Paying arrears of tribute due long since "Bacchus! My man could promise then, nor wince "The bones-and-muscles! Sound of wind and limb, "Spoke he the set excuse I framed for him: "And now he sits me, slavering and mute, "Intent on chafing each starved purple foot "Benumbed past aching with the altar slab: "Will no vein throb there when some monk shall blab "Spitefully to the circle of bald scalps, "'Friedrich 's affirmed to be our side the Alps' "Eh, brother Lactance, brother Anaclet? "Sworn to abjure the world, its fume and fret, "God's own now? Drop the dormitory bar, "Enfold the scanty grey serge scapular "Twice o'er the cowl to muffle memories out! "So! But the midnight whisper turns a shout, "Eyes wink, mouths open, pulses circulate "In the stone walls: the past, the world you hate "Is with you, ambush, open fieldor see "The surging flamewe fire Vicenzaglee! "Follow, let Pilio and Bernardo chafe! "Bring up the Mantuansthrough San Biagiosafe! "Ah, the mad people waken? Ah, they writhe "And reach us? If they block the gate? No tithe "Can passkeep back, you Bassanese! The edge, "Use the edgeshear, thrust, hew, melt down the wedge, "Let out the black of those black upturned eyes! "Hellare they sprinkling fire too? The blood fries "And hisses on your brass gloves as they tear "Those upturned faces choking with despair. "Brave! Slidder through the reeking gate! `How now? "'You six had charge of her?' And then the vow "Comes, and the foam spirts, hair's plucked, till one shriek "(I hear it) and you flingyou cannot speak "Your gold-flowered basnet to a man who haled "The Adelaide he dared scarce view unveiled "This morn, naked across the fire: how crown "The archer that exhausted lays you down "Your infant, smiling at the flame, and dies? "While one, while mine . . .                "Bacchus! I think there lies "More than one corpse there" (and he paced the room) "Another cinder somewhere: 't was my doom "Beside, my doom! If Adelaide is dead, "I live the same, this Azzo lives instead "Of that to me, and we pull, any how, "Este into a heap: the matter 's now "At the true juncture slipping us so oft. "Ay, Heinrich died and Otho, please you, doffed "His crown at such a juncture! Still, if hold "Our Friedrich's purpose, if this chain enfold "The neck of . . . who but this same Ecelin "That must recoil when the best days begin! "Recoil? that 's nought; if the recoiler leaves "His name for me to fight with, no one grieves: "But he must interfere, forsooth, unlock "His cloister to become my stumbling-block "Just as of old! Ay, ay, there 't is again "The land's inevitable Headexplain "The reverences that subject us! Count "These Ecelins now! Not to say as fount, "Originating power of thought,from twelve "That drop i' the trenches they joined hands to delve, "Six shall surpass him, but . . . why men must twine "Somehow with something! Ecelin 's a fine "Clear name! 'Twere simpler, doubtless, twine with me "At once: our cloistered friend's capacity "Was of a sort! I had to share myself "In fifty portions, like an o'ertasked elf "That 's forced illume in fifty points the vast "Rare vapour he 's environed by. At last "My strengths, though sorely frittered, e'en converge "And crown . . . no, Bacchus, they have yet to urge "The man be crowned!            "That aloe, an he durst, "Would climb! Just such a bloated sprawler first "I noted in Messina's castle-court "The day I came, when Heinrich asked in sport "If I would pledge my faith to win him back "His right in Lombardy: 'for, once bid pack "Marauders,' he continued, `in my stead "'You rule, Taurello!' and upon this head `Laid the silk glove of ConstanceI see her "Too, mantled head to foot in miniver, "Retrude following!           "I am absolved "From further toil: the empery devolved "On me, 't was Tito's word: I have to lay "For once my plan, pursue my plan my way, "Prompt nobody, and render an account "Taurello to Taurello! Nay, I mount "To Friedrich: he conceives the post I kept, "Who did true service, able or inept, "Who 's worthy guerdon, Ecelin or I. "Me guerdoned, counsel follows: would he vie "With the Pope really? Azzo, Boniface "Compose a right-arm Hohenstauffen's race "Must break ere govern Lombardy. I point "How easy 't were to twist, once out of joint, "The socket from the bone: my Azzo's stare "Meanwhile! for I, this idle strap to wear, "Shallfret myself abundantly, what end "To serve? There 's left me twenty years to spend "How better than my old way? Had I one "Who laboured overthrow my worka son "Hatching with Azzo superb treachery, "To root my pines up and then poison me, "Suppose't were worth while frustrate that! Beside, "Another life's ordained me: the world's tide "Rolls, and what hope of parting from the press "Of waves, a single wave though weariness "Gently lifted aside, laid upon shore? "My life must be lived out in foam and roar, "No question. Fifty years the province held "Taurello; troubles raised, and troubles quelled, "He in the midstwho leaves this quaint stone place, "These trees a year or two, then not a trace "Of him! How obtain hold, fetter men's tongues "Like this poor minstrel with the foolish songs "To which, despite our bustle, he is linked? "Flowers one may teaze, that never grow extinct. "Ay, that patch, surely, green as ever, where "I set Her Moorish lentisk, by the stair, "To overawe the aloes; and we trod "Those flowers, how call you such?into the sod; "A stately foreignera world of pain "To make it thrive, arrest rough windsall vain! "It would decline; these would not be destroyed: "And now, where is it? where can you avoid "The flowers? I frighten children twenty years "Longer!which way, too, Ecelin appears "To thwart me, for his son's besotted youth "Gives promise of the proper tigertooth: "They feel it at Vicenza! Fate, fate, fate, "My fine Taurello! Go you, promulgate "Friedrich's decree, and here 's shall aggrandise "Young Ecelinyour Prefect's badge! a prize "Too precious, certainly.              "How now? Compete "With my old comrade? shuffle from their seat "His children? Paltry dealing! Do n't I know "Ecelin? now, I think, and years ago! "What 's changedthe weakness? did not I compound "For that, and undertake to keep him sound "Despite it? Here 's Taurello hankering "After a boy's prefermentthis plaything "To carry, Bacchus!" And he laughed.                    Remark Why schemes wherein cold-blooded men embark Prosper, when your enthusiastic sort Fail: while these last are ever stopping short (So much they shouldso little they can do!) The careless tribe see nothing to pursue If they desist; meantime their scheme succeeds. Thoughts were caprices in the course of deeds Methodic with Taurello; so, he turned, Enough amused by fancies fairly earned Of Este's horror-struck submitted neck, And Richard, the cowed braggart, at his beck, To his own petty but immediate doubt If he could pacify the League without Conceding Richard; just to this was brought That interval of vain discursive thought! As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black Enormous watercourse which guides him back To his own tribe again, where he is king; And laughs because he guesses, numbering The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch Of the first lizard wrested from its couch Under the slime (whose skin, the while, he strips To cure his nostril with, and festered lips, And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert-blast) That he has reached its boundary, at last May breathe;thinks o'er enchantments of the South Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth, Eyes, nails, and hair; but, these enchantments tried In fancy, puts them soberly aside For truth, projects a cool return with friends, The likelihood of winning mere amends Ere long; thinks that, takes comfort silently, Then, from the river's brink, his wrongs and he, Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon Off-striding for the Mountains of the Moon. Midnight: the watcher nodded on his spear, Since clouds dispersing left a passage clear For any meagre and discoloured moon To venture forth; and such was peering soon Above the harassed cityher close lanes Closer, not half so tapering her fanes, As though she shrunk into herself to keep What little life was saved, more safely. Heap By heap the watch-fires mouldered, and beside The blackest spoke Sordello and replied Palma with none to listen. "'T is your cause: "What makes a Ghibellin? There should be laws "(Remember how my youth escaped! I trust "To you for manhood, Palma! tell me just "As any child)there must be laws at work "Explaining this. Assure me, good may lurk "Under the bad,my multitude has part "In your designs, their welfare is at heart "With Salinguerra, to their interest "Refer the deeds he dwelt on,so divest "Our conference of much that scared me. Why "Affect that heartless tone to Tito? I "Esteemed myself, yes, in my inmost mind "This morn, a recreant to my racemankind "O'erlooked till now: why boast my spirit's force, "Such force denied its object? why divorce "These, then admire my spirit's flight the same "As though it bore up, helped some half-orbed flame "Else quenched in the dead void, to living space? "That orb cast off to chaos and disgrace, "Why vaunt so much my unencumbered dance, "Making a feat's facilities enhance "Its marvel? But I front Taurello, one "Of happier fate, and all I should have done, "He does; the people's good being paramount "With him, their progress may perhaps account "For his abiding still; whereas you heard "The talk with Titothe excuse preferred "For burning those five hostages,and broached "By way of blind, as you and I approached, "I do believe."         She spoke: then he, "My thought "Plainlier expressed! All to your profitnought "Meantime of these, of conquests to achieve "For them, of wretchedness he might relieve "While profiting your party. Azzo, too, "Supports a cause: what cause? Do Guelfs pursue "Their ends by means like yours, or better?"                        When The Guelfs were proved alike, men weighed with men, And deed with deed, blaze, blood, with blood and blaze, Morn broke: "Once more, Sordello, meet its gaze "Proudlythe people's charge against thee fails "In every point, while either party quails! "These are the busy ones: be silent thou! "Two parties take the world up, and allow "No third, yet have one principle, subsist "By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist "With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes. "So there is one less quarrel to compose: "The Guelf, the Ghibellin may be to curse "I have done nothing, but both sides do worse "Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft "Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left "The notion of a serviceha? What lured "Me here, what mighty aim was I assured "Must move Taurello? What if there remained "A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained "For me, its true discoverer?"                 Some one pressed Before them here, a watcher, to suggest The subject for a ballad: "They must know "The tale of the dead worthy, long ago "Consul of Romethat 's long ago for us, "Minstrels and bowmen, idly squabbling thus `In the world's cornerbut too late no doubt, "For the brave time he sought to bring about. "Not know Crescentius Nomentanus?" Then He cast about for terms to tell him, when Sordello disavowed it, how they used Whenever their Superior introduced A novice to the Brotherhood("for I "Was just a brown-sleeve brother, merrily "Appointed too," quoth he, "till Innocent "Bade me relinquish, to my small content, "My wife or my brown sleeves")some brother spoke Ere nocturns of Crescentius, to revoke The edict issued, after his demise, Which blotted fame alike and effigies, All out except a floating power, a name Including, tending to produce the same Great act. Rome, dead, forgotten, lived at least Within that brain, though to a vulgar priest And a vile stranger,two not worth a slave Of Rome's, Pope John, King Otho,fortune gave The rule there: so, Crescentius, haply dressed In white, called Roman Consul for a jest, Taking the people at their word, forth stepped As upon Brutus' heel, nor ever kept Rome waiting,stood erect, and from his brain Gave Rome out on its ancient place again, Ay, bade proceed with Brutus' Rome, Kings styled Themselves mere citizens of, and, beguiled Into great thoughts thereby, would choose the gem Out of a lapfull, spoil their diadem The Senate's cypher was so hard to scratch He flashes like a phanal, all men catch The flame, Rome 's just accomplished! when returned Otho, with John, the Consul's step had spurned, And Hugo Lord of Este, to redress The wrongs of each. Crescentius in the stress Of adverse fortune bent. "They crucified "Their Consul in the Forum; and abide "E'er since such slaves at Rome, that I(for I "Was once a brown-sleeve brother, merrily "Appointed)I had option to keep wife "Or keep brown sleeves, and managed in the strife "Lose both. A song of Rome!"                And Rome, indeed, Robed at Goito in fantastic weed, The Mother-City of his Mantuan days, Looked an established point of light whence rays Traversed the world; for, all the clustered homes Beside of men, seemed bent on being Romes In their degree; the question was, how each Should most resemble Rome, clean out of reach. Nor, of the Two, did either principle Struggle to change, but to possess Rome,still Guelf Rome or Ghibellin Rome.                Let Rome advance! Rome, as she struck Sordello's ignorance How could he doubt one moment? Rome 's the Cause! Rome of the Pandects, all the world's new laws Of the Capitol, of Castle Angelo; New structures, that inordinately glow, Subdued, brought back to harmony, made ripe By many a relic of the archetype Extant for wonder; every upstart church That hoped to leave old temples in the lurch, Corrected by the Theatre forlorn That,as a mundane shell, its world late born, Lay and o'ershadowed it. These hints combined, Rome typifies the scheme to put mankind Once more in full possession of their rights. "Let us have Rome again! On me it lights "To build up Romeon me, the first and last: "For such a future was endured the past!" And thus, in the grey twilight, forth he sprung To give his thought consistency among The very Peoplelet their facts avail Finish the dream grown from the archer's tale. ~ Robert Browning, Sordello - Book the Fourth ,

1474:The Door Of Humility ENGLAND We lead the blind by voice and hand, And not by light they cannot see; We are not framed to understand The How and Why of such as He; But natured only to rejoice At every sound or sign of hope, And, guided by the still small voice, In patience through the darkness grope; Until our finer sense expands, And we exchange for holier sight The earthly help of voice and hands, And in His light behold the Light. Let there be Light! The self-same Power That out of formless dark and void Endued with life's mysterious dower Planet, and star, and asteroid; That moved upon the waters' face, And, breathing on them His intent, Divided, and assigned their place To, ocean, air, and firmament; That bade the land appear, and bring Forth herb and leaf, both fruit and flower, Cattle that graze, and birds that sing, Ordained the sunshine and the shower; That, moulding man and woman, breathed In them an active soul at birth In His own image, and bequeathed To them dominion over Earth; That, by whatever is, decreed 418 His Will and Word shall be obeyed, From loftiest star to lowliest seed;The worm and me He also made. And when, for nuptials of the Spring With Summer, on the vestal thorn The bridal veil hung flowering, A cry was heard, and I was born. II To be by blood and long descent A member of a mighty State, Whose greatness, sea-girt, but unpent By ocean, makes the world more great; That, ranging limitless, hath won A Rule more wide than that of Rome, And, journeying onward with the sun, In every zone hath found a home; That, keeping old traditions fast, Still hails the things that are to be, And, firmly rooted in the Past, On Law hath grafted Liberty;That is a birthright nobler far Than princely claim or Right Divine From far-off rapine, wanton war, And I could feel this birthright mine. And not the lowliest hand that drives Or share or loom, if so it be Of British strain, but thence derives A patent of nobility. III The guiding of the infant years Onward to good, away from guile, A mother's humanising tears, A father's philosophic smile; 419 Refining beauty, gentle ways, The admonitions of the wise, The love that watches, helps, and prays, And pities, but doth ne'er despise; An ancient Faith, abiding hope, The charity that suffers long, But flames with sacred zeal to cope With man's injustice, nature's wrong; Melodious leisure, learnëd shelf, Discourse of earnest, temperate mind, The playful wit that of itself Flashes, but leaves no wound behind; The knowledge gleaned from Greece and Rome, From studious Teuton, sprightly Gaul, The lettered page, the mellow tome, And poets' wisdom more than all;These, when no lips severe upbraid, But counsel rather than control, In budding boyhood lend their aid To sensibility of soul. IV But, more than mentor, mother, sire, Can lend to shape the future man With help of learning or of lyre, Of ancient rule, or modern plan, Is that which with our breath we bring Into the world, we know not whence, That needs nor care nor fostering, Because an instinct and a sense. And days and years are all forgot When Nature's aspect, growth, and grace, And veering moods, to me were not The features of the Loved One's face. 420 The The The The cloud whose shadow skims the lake, shimmering haze of summer noon, voice of April in the brake, silence of the mounting moon, Swaying of bracken on the hill, The murmur of the vagrant stream, These motions of some unseen Will, These babblings of some heavenly dream, Seemed tokens of divine desire To hold discourse with me, and so To touch my lips with hallowed fire, And tell me things I ought to know. I gazed and listened, all intent, As to the face and voice of Fate, But what they said, or what they meant, I could surmise not, nor translate. They did but lure me to unrest, Unanswered questioning, longings vain, As when one scans some palimpsest No erudition can explain; But left me with a deep distaste For common speech, that still did seem More meaningless than mountain waste, Less human than the far-off stream. So that a stranger in the land Wherein I moved, where'er I went, I dwelt, whom none could understand, Or exorcise my discontent. And I to them, and they to me Seemed from two different planets come, And, save to flower and wild-bird's glee, My heart was deaf, my soul was dumb. 421 But slowly dawned a happier time When I began to apprehend, And catch, as in some poet's rhyme, The intimations of a friend; When Nature spake no unknown tongue, But language kindred to my thought, Till everything She said, I sung, In notes unforced, in words unsought. And I to Her so closely drew, The seasons round, in mind and mood, I felt at length as if we knew Self-same affection, self-same feud: That both alike scorned worldly aim, Profit, applause, parade, and pride, Whereby the love of generous fame And worthy deeds grows petrified. I did as yet not understand Nature is far more vast than I, Deep as the ocean, wide as land, And overarching as the sky; And but responded to my call, And only felt and fed my need, Because She doth the same for all Who to her pity turn and plead. VI Shall man have mind, and Nature none, Shall I, not she, have soul and heart? Nay, rather, if we be not one, Each is of each the counterpart. She too may have within her breast A conscience, if not like to yours, A sense of rightness ill at rest, Long as her waywardness endures. 422 And hence her thunder, earthquakes, hail, Her levin bolts, her clouds' discharge: She sins upon a larger scale, Because She is herself more large. Hence, too, when She hath pierced with pain The heart of man, and wrecked his years, The pity of the April rain, And late repentance of her tears. She is no better, worse, than we; We can but say she seems more great, That half her will, like ours, is free, And half of it is locked in Fate. Nor need we fear that we should err Beyond our scope in reasoning thus,That there must be a God for Her, If that there be a God for us. VII The chiming of the Sabbath bell, The silence of the Sabbath fields, Over the hamlet cast a spell To which the gracious spirit yields. Sound is there none of wheel or wain, Husht stands the anvil, husht the forge, No shout is heard in rustic lane, No axe resounds in timbered gorge. No flail beats time on granary floor, The windmill's rushing wings are stayed, And children's glee rings out no more From hedgerow bank or primrose glade. The big-boned team that firm and slow Draw yoked, are free to couch or stray; The basking covey seem to know None will invade their peace to-day. 423 And speckless swains, and maidens neat, Through rustic porch, down cottage stair, Demurely up the village street Stream onward to the House of Prayer. They kneel as they were taught to kneel In childhood, and demand not why, But, as they chant or answer, feel A vague communion with the sky. VIII But when the impetuous mind is spurred To range through epochs great but gone, And, heedless of dogmatic word, With fearless ardour presses on, Confronting pulpit, sceptre, shrine, With point by Logic beaten out, And, questioning tenets deemed divine With human challenge, human doubt, Hoists Reason's sail, and for the haze Of ocean quits Tradition's shore, Awhile he comes, and kneels, and prays, Then comes and kneels, but prays no more; And only for the love he bears To those who love him, and who reared His frame to genuflexion, shares In ritual, vain, if still revered. His Gods are many or are none, Saturn and Mithra, Christ and Jove, Consorting, as the Ages run, With Vestal choir or Pagan drove. Abiding still by Northern shores, He sees far off on Grecian coast Veiled Aphrodite, but adores Minerva and Apollo most. 424 Beauty of vision, voice, and mind, Enthrall him so, that unto him All Creeds seem true, if he but find Siren, or saint, or seraphim. And thus once more he dwells apart, His inward self enswathed in mist, Blending with poet's pious heart The dreams of pagan Hedonist. IX If Beauty be the Spirit's quest, Its adoration, creed, and shrine, Wherein its restlessness finds rest, And earthly type of the Divine, Must there for such not somewhere be A blending of all beauteous things In some one form wherein we see The sum of our imaginings? The smile on mountain's musing brow, Sunrise and sunset, moon and star, Wavelets around the cygnet's prow, Glamour anear and charm afar; The silence of the silvery pool, Autumn's reserve and Summer's fire, Slow vanishings of Winter's rule To free full voice of April's choir;The worshippers of Beauty find In maiden form, and face, and tress; Faint intimations of her mind And undulating loveliness. Bound, runnels, bound, bound on, and flow! Sing, merle and mavis, pair and sing! 425 Gone is the Winter, fled the snow, And all that lives is flushed with Spring. Harry the woods, young truant folk, For flowers to deck your cottage sills, And, underneath my orchard oak, Cluster, ye golden daffodils! Unfettered by domestic vow, Cuckoo, proclaim your vagrant loves, And coo upon the self-same bough, Inseparable turtle-doves. Soar, laverock, soar on song to sky, And with the choir of Heaven rejoice! You cannot be more glad than I, Who feel Her gaze, and hear Her voice: Who see Her cheek more crimson glow, And through Her veins love's current stream, And feel a fear She doth but know Is kin to joy and dawning dream. Bound, rivulets, bound, bound on, and flow! Sing, merle and mavis, pair and sing! Gone from the world are want and woe, And I myself am one with Spring. XI They err who say that Love is blind, Or, if it be, 'tis but in part, And that, if for fair face it find No counterpart in mind and heart, It dwells on that which it beholds, Fair fleshly vision void of soul, Deeming, illusioned, this enfolds, Longing's fulfilment, end, and whole. Were such my hapless carnal lot, I too might evanescent bliss 426 Embrace, fierce-fancied, fast forgot, Then leave for some fresh loveliness. But April gaze, and Summer tress, With something of Autumnal thought, In Her seem blent to crown and bless A bond I long in dreams have sought. She looks as though She came to grace The earth, from world less soiled than this, Around her head and virgin face Halo of heavenly holiness. XII He who hath roamed through various lands, And, wheresoe'er his steps are set, The kindred meaning understands Of spire, and dome, and minaret; By Roman river, Stamboul's sea, In Peter's or Sophia's shrine, Acknowledges with reverent knee The presence of the One Divine; Who, to the land he loves so well Returning, towards the sunset hour Wends homeward, feels yet stronger spell In lichened roof and grey church-tower; Round whose foundations, side by side, Sleep hamlet wit and village sage, While loud the blackbird cheers his bride Deep in umbrageous Vicarage. XIII Was it that sense which some aver Foreshadows Fate it doth not see, That gave unwittingly to Her The name, for ever dear to me, 427 Borne by that tearful Mother whom, Nigh unto Ostia's shelving sand, Augustine laid in lonely tomb, Ere sailing for his Afric land? But I at least should have foreseen, When Monica to me had grown Familiar word, that names may mean More than by word and name is shown; That nought can keep two lives apart More than divorce 'twixt mind and mind, Even though heart be one with heart;Alas! Alas! Yes, Love is blind. XIV How could I think of jarring Creeds, And riddles that unread remain, Or ask if Heaven's indulgence heeds Broils born of man's polemic brain, And pause because my venturous mind Had roamed through tracks of polar thought, Whence mightiest spirits turn back blind, Since finding not the thing they sought, When Love, with luring gifts in hand, Beauty, refinement, smile, caress, Heart to surmise and understand, And crowning grace of holiness, Stood there before me, and, with gaze I had been purblind not to see, Said, ``I to you will, all my days, Give what you yearn to give to me''? Must both then sorrow, while we live, Because, rejoicing, I forgot Something there was I could not give, Because, alas! I had it not. 428 XV She comes from Vicarage Garden, see! Radiant as morning, lithe and tall, Fresh lilies in her hand, but She The loveliest lily of them all. The thrushes in their fluting pause, The bees float humming round her head, Earth, air, and heaven shine out because They hear her voice, and feel her tread. Up in the fretted grey church-tower, That rustic gaze for miles can see, The belfry strikes the silvery hour, Announcing her propinquity. And I who, fearful to be late, Passed long since through the deerpark pale, And loitered by the churchyard gate, Once more exclaim, ``Hail! loved one! hail!'' We pass within, and up the nave, Husht, because Heaven seems always there, Wend choirward, where, devoutly grave, She kneels, to breathe a silent prayer. She takes the flowers I too have brought, Blending them deftly with her own, And ranges them, as quick as thought, Around the white-draped altar-throne. How could she know my gaze was not On things unseen, but fixed on Her, That, as She prayed, I all forgot The worship in the worshipper?While She beheld, as in a glass, The Light Divine, that I but sought Sight of her soul?-Alas! Alas! Love is yet blinder than I thought. 429 XVI Who hath not seen a little cloud Up from the clear horizon steal, And, mounting lurid, mutter loud Premonitory thunder-peal? Husht grows the grove, the summer leaf Trembles and writhes, as if in pain, And then the sky, o'ercharged with grief, Bursts into drenching tears of rain. I through the years had sought to hide My darkening doubts from simple sight. 'Tis sacrilegious to deride Faith of unquestioning neophyte. And what, methought, is Doubt at best? A sterile wind through seeded sedge Blowing for nought, an empty nest That lingers in a leafless hedge. Pain, too, there is we should not share With others lest it mar their joy; There is a quiet bliss in prayer None but the heartless would destroy. But just as Love is quick divined From heightened glow or visage pale, The meditations of the Mind Disclose themselves through densest veil. And 'tis the unloving and least wise Who through life's inmost precincts press, And with unsympathetic eyes Outrage our sacred loneliness. Then, when their sacrilegious gaze The mournful void hath half surmised, To some more tender soul they raise The veil of ignorance it prized. 430 XVII `What though I write farewell I could Not utter, lest your gaze should chide, 'Twill by your love be understood My love is still, dear, at your side. ``Nor must we meet to speak goodbye, Lest that my Will should lose its choice, And conscience waver, for then I Should see your face and hear your voice. ``But, when you find yourself once more, Come back, come back and look for me, Beside the little lowly door, The Doorway of Humility.'' XVIII There! Peace at last! The far-off roar Of human passion dies away. ``Welcome to our broad shade once more,'' The waning woodlands seem to say: The music of the vagrant wind, That wandered aimlessly, is stilled; The songless branches all remind That Summer's glory is fulfilled. The fluttering of the falling leaves Dimples the leaden pool awhile; So Age impassively receives Youth's tale of troubles with a smile. Thus, as the seasons steal away, How much is schemed, how little done, What splendid plans at break of day! What void regrets at set of sun! The world goes round, for you, for me, For him who sleeps, for him who strives, And the cold Fates indifferent see 431 Crowning or failure of our lives. Then fall, ye leaves, fade, summer breeze! Grow, sedges, sere on every pool! Let each old glowing impulse freeze, Let each old generous project cool! It is not wisdom, wit, nor worth, Self-sacrifice nor friendship true, Makes venal devotees of earth Prostrate themselves and worship you. The consciousness of sovran powers, The stubborn purpose, steadfast will, Have ever, in this world of ours, Achieved success, achieve it still. Farewell, ye woods! No more I sit; Great voices in the distance call. If this be peace, enough of it! I go. Fall, unseen foliage, fall! XIX Nay, but repress rebellious woe! In grief 'tis not that febrile fool, Passion, that can but overthrow, But Resignation, that should rule. In patient sadness lurks a gift To purify the life it stings, And, as the days move onward, lift The lonely heart to loftier things; Bringing within one's ripening reach The sceptre of majestic Thought, Wherefrom one slowly learns to teach The Wisdom to oneself it taught. And unto what can man aspire, On earth, more worth the striving for, Than to be Reason's loftier lyre, 432 And reconciling monitor; To strike a more resounding string And deeper notes of joy and pain, Than such as but lamenting sing, Or warble but a sensuous strain: So, when my days are nearly sped, And my last harvest labours done, That I may have around my head The halo of a setting sun. Yet even if be heard above Such selfish hope, presumptuous claim, Better one hour of perfect love Than an eternity of Fame! XX Where then for grief seek out the cure? What scenes will bid my smart to cease? High peaks should teach one to endure, And lakes secluded bring one peace. Farewell awhile, then, village bells, Autumnal wood and harvest wain! And welcome, as it sinks or swells, The music of the mighty main, That seems to say, now loud, now low, Rising or falling, sweet or shrill, ``I pace, a sentry, to and fro, To guard your Island fortress still.'' The roses falter on their stalk, The late peach reddens on the wall, The flowers along the garden walk Unheeded fade, unheeded fall. My gates unopened drip with rain, The wolf-hound wends from floor to floor, And, listening for my voice in vain, 433 Waileth along the corridor. Within the old accustomed place Where we so oft were wont to be, Kneeling She prays, while down her face The fruitless tears fall silently. SWITZERLAND XXI Rain, wind, and rain. The writhing lake Scuds to and fro to scape their stroke: The mountains veil their heads, and make Of cloud and mist a wintry cloak. Through where the arching pinewoods make Dusk cloisters down the mountain side, The loosened avalanches take Valeward their way, with death for guide, And toss their shaggy manes and fling To air their foam and tawny froth, From ledge and precipice bound and spring, With hungry roar and deepening wrath; Till, hamlet homes and orchards crushed, And, rage for further ravin stayed, They slumber, satiated, husht, Upon the ruins they have made. I rise from larch-log hearth, and, lone, Gaze on the spears of serried rain, That faster, nigher, still are blown, Then stream adown the window pane. The peasant's goatskin garments drip, As home he wends with lowered head, Shakes off the drops from lid and lip, Then slinks within his châlet shed. 434 The cattle bells sound dull and hoarse, The boats rock idly by the shore; Only the swollen torrents course With faster feet and fuller roar. Mournful, I shape a mournful song, And ask the heavens, but ask in vain, ``How long, how long?'' Ah! not so long As, in my heart, rain, wind, and rain. XXII I ask the dark, the dawn, the sun, The domeward-pointing peaks of snow, Lofty and low alike, but none Will tell me what I crave to know. My mind demands, ``Whence, Whither, Why?'' From mountain slope and green defile, And wait the answer. The replyA far-off irresponsive smile. I ask the stars, when mortals sleep, The pensive moon, the lonely winds; But, haply if they know, they keep The secret of secluded minds. Shall I in Straining Where in Where in vain, then, strive to find, towards merely fancied goal? the lily lurks the mind, the rose discern the soul? More mindless still, stream, pasture, lake, The mountains yet more heartless seem, And life's unceasing quest and ache Only a dream within a dream. We know no more, though racked with thought Than he who, in yon châlet born, Gives not the riddle, Life, a thought, But lays him down and sleeps till morn. 435 Sometimes he kneels; I cannot kneel, So suffer from a wider curse Than Eden's outcasts, for I feel An exile in the universe. The rudeness of his birth enures His limbs to every season's stings, And, never probing, so endures The sadness at the heart of things. When lauwine growls, and thunder swells, Their far-off clamour sounds to me But as the noise of clanging bells Above a silent sanctuary. It is their silence that appals, Their aspect motionless that awes, When searching spirit vainly calls On the effect to bare the Cause. I get no answer, near or far; The mountains, though they soar so high, And scale the pathless ether, are No nearer unto God than I. There dwells nor mystery nor veil Round the clear peaks no foot hath trod; I, gazing on their frontage pale, See but the waning ghost of God. Is Faith then but a drug for sleep, And Hope a fondly soothing friend That bids us, when it sees us weep, Wait for the End that hath no end? Then do I hear voice unforgot Wailing across the distance dim, ``Think, dear! If God existeth not, Why are you always seeking Him?'' XXIII 436 Like glowing furnace of the forge, How the winds rise and roar, as they Up twisting valley, craggy gorge, Seek, and still seek, to storm their way; Then, baffled, up the open slope With quickening pulses scale and pant, Indomitably bent to cope With bristling fronts of adamant. All through the day resounds the strife, Then doth at sunset hour subside: So the fierce passions of our life Slowly expire at eventide. By Nature we are ne'er misled; We see most truly when we dream. A singer wise was he who said, ``Follow the gleam! Follow the gleam!'' XXIV I dreamed, last night, again I stood, Silent, without the village shrine, While She in modest maidenhood Left, fondly clasped, her hand in mine. And, with a face as cerecloth white, And tears like those that by the bier Of loved one lost make dim the sight, She poured her sorrows in mine ear. ``I love your voice, I love your gaze, But there is something dearer still, The faith that kneels, the hope that prays, And bows before the Heavenly Will. ``Not where hills rise, or torrents roll, Seek Him, nor yet alone, apart; He dwells within the troubled soul, His home is in the human heart. 437 ``Withal, the peaceful mountains may 'Twixt doubt and yearning end the strife: So ponder, though you cannot pray, And think some meaning into life: ``Nor like to those that cross the main To wander witless through strange land, Hearing unmastered tongues, disdain The speech they do not understand. ``Firm stands my faith that they who sound The depths of doubt Faith yet will save: They are like children playing round A still remembered mother's grave; ``Not knowing, when they wax more old, And somewhat can her vision share, She will the winding-sheet unfold, And beckon them to evening prayer.'' Then, with my hand betwixt her hands, She laid her lips upon my brow, And, as to one who understands, Said, ``Take once more my vestal vow. ``No other gaze makes mine to glow, No other footstep stirs my heart, To me you only dearer grow, Dearer and nearer, more apart. ``Whene'er you come with humble mind, The little Door stands open wide, And, bending low, you still will find Me waiting on the other side.'' Her silence woke me. . . . To your breast Fold me, O sleep! and seal mine ears; That She may roam through my unrest Till all my dreams are drenched with tears! XXV 438 Why linger longer, subject, here, Where Nature sits and reigns alone, Inspiring love not, only fear, Upon her autocratic throne? Her edicts are the rigid snow, The wayward winds, the swaying branch; She hath no pity to bestow, Her law the lawless avalanche. Though soon cascades will bound and sing, That now but drip with tears of ice, And upland meadows touched by Spring Blue gentian blend with edelweiss, Hence to the Land of youthful dreams, The Land that taught me all I know. Farewell, lone mountain-peaks and streams; Yet take my thanks before I go. You gave me shelter when I fled, But sternly bade me stem my tears, Nor aimless roam with rustling tread 'Mong fallen leaves of fruitless years. ITALY XXVI Upon the topmost wheel-track steep, The parting of two nations' ways, Athwart stone cross engraven deep, The name ``Italia'' greets the gaze! I trembled, when I saw it first, With joy, my boyish longings fed, The headspring of my constant thirst, The altar of my pilgrim tread. Now once again the magic word, So faintly borne to Northern home, Sounds like a silvery trumpet heard 439 Beneath some universal dome. The forests soften to a smile, A smile the very mountains wear, Through mossy gorge and grassed defile Torrents race glad and debonair. From casement, balcony and door, Hang golden gourds, droops tear-tipped vine, And sun-bronzed faces bask before Thin straw-swathed flasks of last year's wine. Unyoked, the patient sleek-skinned steers Take, like their lords, no heed of time. Hark! now the evening star appears, Ave Maria belfries chime. The maidens knit, and glance, and sing, With glowing gaze 'neath ebon tress, And, like to copse-buds sunned by Spring, Seem burgeoning into tenderness. On waveless lake where willows weep, The Borromean Islands rest As motionless as babe asleep Upon a slumbering Mother's breast. O Land of sunshine, song, and Love! Whether thy children reap or sow, Of Love they chant on hills above, Of Love they sing in vale below. But what avail the love-linked hands, And love-lit eyes, to them that roam Passionless through impassioned lands, Since they have left their heart at home! XXVII Among my dreams, now known as dreams In this my reawakened life, I thought that by historic streams, 440 Apart from stress, aloof from strife, By rugged paths that twist and twine Through olive slope and chesnut wood Upward to mediaeval shrine, Or high conventual brotherhood, Along the mountain-curtained track Round peaceful lake where wintry bands Halt briefly but to bivouac Ere blustering on to Northern lands;Through these, through all I first did see, With me to share my raptures none, That nuptialled Monica would be My novice and companion: That we should float from mere to mere, And sleep within some windless cove, With nightingales to lull the ear, From ilex wood and orange grove; Linger at hamlets lost to fame, That still wise-wandering feet beguile, To gaze on frescoed wall or frame Lit by Luini's gracious smile. Now, but companioned by my pain, Among each well-remembered scene I can but let my Fancy feign The happiness that might have been; Imagine that I hear her voice, Imagine that I feel her hand, And I, enamoured guide, rejoice To see her swift to understand. Alack! Imagination might As lief with rustic Virgil roam, Reverent, or, welcomed guest, alight At Pliny's philosophic home; 441 Hear one majestically trace Rome's world-wide sway from wattled wall, And read upon the other's face The omens of an Empire's fall. XXVIII Like moonlight seen through forest leaves, She shines upon me from afar, What time men reap the ripened sheaves, And Heaven rains many a falling star. I gaze up to her lofty height, And feel how far we dwell apart: O if I could, this night, this night, Fold her full radiance to my heart! But She in Heaven, and I on earth, Still journey on, but each alone; She, maiden Queen of sacred birth, Who with no consort shares her throne. XXIX What if She ever thought She saw The self within myself prefer Communion with the silent awe Of far-off mountains more than Her; That Nature hath the mobile grace To make life with our moods agree, And so had grown the Loved One's face, Since it nor checked nor chided me; Or from the tasks that irk and tire I sought for comfort from the Muse, Because it grants the mind's desire All that familiar things refuse. How vain such thought! The face, the form, Of mountain summits but express, Clouded or clear, in sun or storm, 442 Feebly Her spirit's loftiness. Did I explore from pole to pole, In Nature's aspect I should find But faint reflections of Her soul, Dim adumbrations of Her mind. O come and test with lake, with stream, With mountain, which the stronger be, Thou, my divinest dearest dream, My Muse, and more than Muse, to me! XXX They tell me that Jehovah speaks In silent grove, on lonely strand, And summit of the mountain peaks; Yet there I do not understand. The stars, disdainful of my thought, Majestic march toward their goal, And to my nightly watch have brought No explanation to my soul. The truth I seek I cannot find, In air or sky, on land or sea; If the hills have their secret mind, They will not yield it up to me: Like one who lost mid lonely hills Still seeks but cannot find his way, Since guide is none save winding rills, That seem themselves, too, gone astray. And so from rise to set of sun, At glimmering dawn, in twilight haze, I but behold the face of One Who veils her face, and weeps, and prays. What know I that She doth not know? What I know not, She understands: With heavenly gifts She overflows, 443 While I have only empty hands. O weary wanderer! Best forego This questioning of wind and wave. For you the sunshine and the snow, The womb, the cradle, and the grave. XXXI How blest, when organ concords swell, And anthems are intoned, are they Who neither reason nor rebel, But meekly bow their heads and pray. And such the peasants mountain-bred, Who hail to-day with blithe accord Her Feast Who to the Angel said, ``Behold the Handmaid of the Lord!'' Downward they wind from pastoral height, Or hamlet grouped round shattered towers, To wend to shrine more richly dight, And bring their gift of wilding flowers; Their gifts, their griefs, their daily needs, And lay these at Her statue's base, Who never, deem they, intercedes Vainly before the Throne of Grace. Shall I, because I stand apart, A stranger to their pious vows, Scorn their humility of heart That pleads before the Virgin Spouse, Confiding that the Son will ne'er, If in His justice wroth with them, Refuse to harken to Her prayer Who suckled Him in Bethlehem? Of all the intercessors born By man's celestial fancy, none 444 Hath helped the sorrowing, the forlorn, Lowly and lone, as She hath done. The maiden faithful to Her shrine Bids demons of temptation flee, And mothers fruitful as the vine Retain their vestal purity. Too trustful love, by lust betrayed, And by cold worldlings unforgiven, Unto Her having wept and prayed, Faces its fate, consoled and shriven. The restless, fiercely probing mind No honey gleans, though still it stings. What comfort doth the spirit find In Reason's endless reasonings? They have no solace for my grief, Compassion none for all my pain: They toss me like the fluttering leaf, And leave me to the wind and rain. XXXII If Conscience be God's Law to Man, Then Conscience must perforce arraign Whatever falls beneath the ban Of that allotted Suzerain. And He, who bids us not to swerve, Whither the wayward passions draw, From its stern sanctions, must observe The limits of the self-same Law. Yet, if obedient Conscience scan The sum of wrongs endured and done Neither by act nor fault of Man, They rouse it to rebellion. Life seems of life by life bereft 445 Through some immitigable curse, And Man sole moral being left In a non-moral Universe. My Conscience would my Will withstand, Did Will project a world like this: Better Eternal vacuum still, Than murder, lust, and heartlessness! If Man makes Conscience, then being good Is only being worldly wise, And universal brotherhood A comfortable compromise. O smoke of War! O blood-steeped sod! O groans of fratricidal strife! Who will explain the ways of God, That I may be at peace with life! The moral riddle 'tis that haunts, Primeval and unending curse, Racking the mind when pulpit vaunts A Heaven-created Universe. Yet whence came Life, and how begin? Rolleth the globe by choice or chance? Dear Lord! Why longer shut me in This prison-house of ignorance! FLORENCE XXXIII City acclaimed ere Dante's days Fair, and baptized in field of flowers, Once more I scan with tender gaze Your glistening domes, your storied towers. I feel as if long years had flown Since first with eager heart I came, 446 And, girdled by your mountain zone, Found you yet fairer than your fame. It was the season purple-sweet When figs are plump, and grapes are pressed, And all your sons with following feet Bore a dead Poet to final rest. You seemed to fling your gates ajar, And softly lead me by the hand, Saying, ``Behold! henceforth you are No stranger in the Tuscan land.'' And though no love my love can wean From native crag and cradling sea, Yet Florence from that hour hath been More than a foster-nurse to me. When mount I terraced slopes arrayed In bridal bloom of peach and pear, While under olive's phantom shade Lupine and beanflower scent the air, The wild-bees hum round golden bay, The green frog sings on fig-tree bole, And, see! down daisy-whitened way Come the slow steers and swaying pole. The fresh-pruned vine-stems, curving, bend Over the peaceful wheaten spears, And with the glittering sunshine blend Their transitory April tears. O'er wall and trellis trailed and wound, Hang roses blushing, roses pale; And, hark! what was that silvery sound? The first note of the nightingale. Curtained, I close my lids and dream Of Beauty seen not but surmised, And, lulled by scent and song, I seem Immortally imparadised. 447 When from the deep sweet swoon I wake And gaze past slopes of grape and grain, Where Arno, like some lonely lake, Silvers the far-off seaward plain, I see celestial sunset fires That lift us from this earthly leaven, And darkly silent cypress spires Pointing the way from hill to Heaven. Then something more than mortal steals Over the wavering twilight air, And, messenger of nightfall, peals From each crowned peak a call to prayer. And now the last meek prayer is said, And, in the hallowed hush, there is Only a starry dome o'erhead, Propped by columnar cypresses. XXXIV Re-roaming through this palaced town, I suddenly, 'neath grim-barred pile, Catch sight of Dante's awful frown, Or Leonardo's mystic smile; Then, swayed by memory's fancy, stroll To where from May-day's flaming pyre Savonarola's austere soul Went up to Heaven in tongues of fire; Or Buonarroti's plastic hand Made marble block from Massa's steep Dawn into Day at his command, Then plunged it into Night and Sleep. No later wanderings can dispel The glamour of the bygone years; And, through the streets I know so well, 448 I scarce can see my way for tears. XXXV A sombre shadow seems to fall On comely altar, transept fair; The saints are still on frescoed wall, But who comes thither now for prayer? Men throng from far-off stranger land, To stare, to wonder, not to kneel, With map and guide-book in their hand To tell them what to think and feel. They scan, they prate, they marvel why The figures still expressive glow, Oblivious they were painted by Adoring Frà Angelico. Did Dante from his tomb afar Return, his wrongs redressed at last, And see you, Florence, as you are, Half alien to your gracious Past, Finding no Donatello now, No reverent Giotto 'mong the quick, To glorify ascetic vow Of Francis or of Dominic; Self-exiled by yet sterner fate Than erst, he would from wandering cease, And, ringing at monastic gate, Plead, ``I am one who craves for peace.'' And what he sought but ne'er could find, Shall I, less worthy, hope to gain, The freedom of the tranquil mind, The lordship over loss and pain? More than such peace I found when I Did first, in unbound youth, repair 449 To Tuscan shrine, Ausonian sky. I found it, for I brought it there. XXXVI Yet Art brings peace, itself is Peace, And, as I on these frescoes gaze, I feel all fretful tumults cease And harvest calm of mellower days. For Soul too hath its seasons. Time, That leads Spring, Summer, Autumn, round, Makes our ephemeral passions chime With something permanent and profound. And, as in Nature, April oft Strives to revert to wintry hours, But shortly upon garth and croft Re-sheds warm smiles and moistening showers, Or, for one day, will Autumn wear The gayer garments of the Spring, And then athwart the wheatfields bare Again her graver shadows fling; So, though the Soul hath moods that veer, And seem to hold no Rule in awe, Like the procession of the year, It too obeys the sovran Law. Nor Art itself brings settled peace, Until the mind is schooled to know That gusts subside and tumults cease Only in sunset's afterglow. Life's contradictions vanish then, Husht thought replacing clashing talk Among the windy ways of men. 'Tis in the twilight Angels walk. 450 ROME XXXVII The last warm gleams of sunset fade From cypress spire and stonepine dome, And, in the twilight's deepening shade, Lingering, I scan the wrecks of Rome. Husht the Madonna's Evening Bell; The steers lie loosed from wain and plough; The vagrant monk is in his cell, The meek nun-novice cloistered now. Pedant's presumptuous voice no more Vexes the spot where Caesar trod, And o'er the pavement's soundless floor Come banished priest and exiled God. The lank-ribbed she-wolf, couched among The regal hillside's tangled scrubs, With doting gaze and fondling tongue Suckles the Vestal's twin-born cubs. Yet once again Evander leads Æneas to his wattled home, And, throned on Tiber's fresh-cut reeds, Talks of burnt Troy and rising Rome. From out the tawny dusk one hears The half-feigned scream of Sabine maids, The rush to arms, then swift the tears That separate the clashing blades. The Lictors with their fasces throng To quell the Commons' rising roar, As Tullia's chariot flames along, Splashed with her murdered father's gore. Her tresses free from band or comb, Love-dimpled Venus, lithe and tall, 451 And fresh as Fiumicino's foam, Mounts her pentelic pedestal. With languid lids, and lips apart, And curving limbs like wave half-furled, Unarmed she dominates the heart, And without sceptre sways the world. Nerved by her smile, avenging Mars Stalks through the Forum's fallen fanes, Or, changed of mien and healed of scars, Threads sylvan slopes and vineyard plains. With waves of song from wakening lyre Apollo routs the wavering night, While, parsley-crowned, the white-robed choir Wind chanting up the Sacred Height, Where Jove, with thunder-garlands wreathed, And crisp locks frayed like fretted foam, Sits with his lightnings half unsheathed, And frowns against the foes of Rome. You cannot kill the Gods. They still Reclaim the thrones where once they reigned, Rehaunt the grove, remount the rill, And renovate their rites profaned. Diana's hounds still lead the chase, Still Neptune's Trident crests the sea, And still man's spirit soars through space On feathered heels of Mercury. No flood can quench the Vestals' Fire; The Flamen's robes are still as white As ere the Salii's armoured choir Were drowned by droning anchorite. The saint may seize the siren's seat, The shaveling frown where frisked the Faun; Ne'er will, though all beside should fleet, The Olympian Presence be withdrawn. 452 Here, even in the noontide glare, The Gods, recumbent, take their ease; Go look, and you will find them there, Slumbering behind some fallen frieze. But most, when sunset glow hath paled, And come, as now, the twilight hour, In vesper vagueness dimly veiled I feel their presence and their power. What though their temples strew the ground, And to the ruin owls repair, Their home, their haunt, is all around; They drive the cloud, they ride the air. And, when the planets wend their way Along the never-ageing skies, ``Revere the Gods'' I hear them say; ``The Gods are old, the Gods are wise.'' Build as man may, Time gnaws and peers Through marble fissures, granite rents; Only Imagination rears Imperishable monuments. Let Gaul and Goth pollute the shrine, Level the altar, fire the fane: There is no razing the Divine; The Gods return, the Gods remain. XXXVIII Christ is arisen. The place wherein They laid Him shows but cerements furled, And belfry answers belfry's din To ring the tidings round the world. Grave Hierarchs come, an endless band, In jewelled mitre, cope embossed, Who bear Rome's will to every land 453 In all the tongues of Pentecost. Majestic, along marble floor, Walk Cardinals in blood-red robe, Martyrs for Faith and Christ no more, Who gaze as though they ruled the globe. With halberds bare and doublets slashed, Emblems that war will never cease, Come martial guardians, unabashed, And march afront the Prince of Peace. Then, in his gestatorial Chair See Christ's vicegerent, bland, benign, To crowds all prostrate as in prayer Lean low, and make the Holy Sign. Then trumpets shrill, and organ peals, Throughout the mighty marble pile, Whileas a myriad concourse kneels In dense-packed nave and crowded aisle. Hark to the sudden hush! Aloft From unseen source in empty dome Swells prayerful music silvery-soft, Borne from far-off celestial Home. Then, when the solemn rite is done, The worshippers stream out to where Dance fountains glittering in the sun, While expectation fills the air. Now on high balcony He stands, And-save for the Colonna curse,Blesses with high-uplifted hands The City and the Universe. Christ is arisen! But scarce as when, On the third day of death and gloom, Came ever-loving Magdalen With tears and spices to His tomb. 454 XXXIX The Tiber winds its sluggish way Through niggard tracts whence Rome's command Once cast the shadow of her sway, O'er Asian city, Afric sand. Nor even yet doth She resign Her sceptre. Still the spell is hers, Though she may seem a rifled shrine 'Mid circumjacent sepulchres. One after one, they came, they come, Gaul, Goth, Savoy, to work their will; She answers, when She most seems dumb, ``I wore the Crown, I wear it still. ``From Jove I first received the gift, I from Jehovah wear it now, Nor shall profane invader lift The diadem from off my brow. ``The Past is mine, and on the Past The Future builds; and Time will rear The next strong structure on the last, Where men behold but shattered tier. ``The Teuton hither hies to teach, To prove, disprove, to delve and probe. Fool! Pedant! Does he think to reach The deep foundations of the globe?'' For me, I am content to tread On Sabine dust and Gothic foe. Leave me to deepening silent dread Of vanished Empire's afterglow. In this Imperial wilderness Why rashly babble and explore? O, let me know a little less, So I may feel a little more! 455 XL For upward of one thousand years, Here men and women prayed to Jove, With smiles and incense, gifts and tears, In secret shrine, or civic grove; And, when Jove did not seem to heed, Sought Juno's mediatorial power, Or begged fair Venus intercede And melt him in his amorous hour. Sages invoked Minerva's might; The Poet, ere he struck the lyre, Prayed to the God of Song and Light To touch the strings with hallowed fire. With flaming herbs were altars smoked Sprinkled with blood and perfumed must, And gods and goddesses invoked To second love or sanction lust. And did they hear and heed the prayer, Or, through that long Olympian reign, Were they divinities of air Begot of man's fantastic brain? In Roman halls their statues still Serenely stand, but no one now Ascends the Capitolian Hill, To render thanks, or urge the vow. Through now long centuries hath Rome Throned other God, preached other Creed, That here still have their central home, And feed man's hope, content his need. Against these, too, will Time prevail? No! Let whatever gestates, be, Secure will last the tender tale 456 From Bethlehem to Calvary. Throughout this world of pain and loss, Man ne'er will cease to bend his knee To Crown of Thorns, to Spear, to Cross, And Doorway of Humility. XLI If Reason be the sole safe guide In man implanted from above, Why crave we for one only face, Why consecrate the name of Love? Faces there are no whit less fair, Yet ruddier lip, more radiant eye, Same rippling smile, same auburn hair, But not for us. Say, Reason, why. Why bound our hearts when April pied Comes singing, or when hawthorn blows? Doth logic in the lily hide, And where's the reason in the rose? Why weld our keels and launch our ships, If Reason urge some wiser part, Kiss England's Flag with dying lips And fold its glories to the heart? In this gross world we touch and see, If Reason be no trusty guide, For world unseen why should it be The sole explorer justified? The homing swallow knows its nest, Sure curves the comet to its goal, Instinct leads Autumn to its rest, And why not Faith the homing soul? Is Reason so aloof, aloft, It doth not 'gainst itself rebel, 457 And are not Reason's reasonings oft By Reason proved unreasonable? He is perplexed no more, who prays, ``Hail, Mary Mother, full of grace!'' O drag me from Doubt's endless maze, And let me see my Loved One's face! XLII ``Upon this rock!'' Yet even here Where Christian God ousts Pagan wraith, Rebellious Reason whets its spear, And smites upon the shield of Faith. On sacred mount, down seven-hilled slopes, Fearless it faces foe and friend, Saying to man's immortal hopes, ``Whatso began, perforce must end.'' Not men alone, but gods too, die; Fanes are, like hearths, left bare and lone; This earth will into fragments fly, And Heaven itself be overthrown. Why then should Man immortal be? He is but fleeting form, to fade, Like momentary cloud, or sea Of waves dispersed as soon as made. Yet if 'tis Force, not Form, survives, Meseems therein that one may find Some comfort for distressful lives; For, if Force ends not, why should Mind? Is Doubt more forceful than Belief? The doctor's cap than friar's cowl? O ripeness of the falling leaf! O wisdom of the moping owl! Man's Mind will ever stand apart 458 From Science, save this have for goal The evolution of the heart, And sure survival of the Soul. XLIII The Umbilicum lonely stands Where once rose porch and vanished dome; But he discerns who understands That every road may lead to Rome. Enthroned in Peter's peaceful Chair, The spiritual Caesar sways A wider Realm of earth and air Than trembled at Octavian's gaze. His universal arms embrace The saint, the sinner, and the sage, And proffer refuge, comfort, grace To tribulation's pilgrimage. Here scientific searchers find Precursors for two thousand years, Who in a drouthy world divined Fresh springs for human doubts and fears. Here fair chaste Agnes veils her face From prowlers of the sensual den, And pity, pardon, and embrace Await repentant Magdalen. Princess and peasant-mother wend To self-same altar, self-same shrine, And Cardinal and Patriarch bend Where lepers kneel, and beggars whine. And is there then, in my distress, No road, no gate, no shrine, for me? The answer comes, ``Yes, surely, yes! The Doorway of Humility.'' 459 O rival Faiths! O clamorous Creeds! Would you but hush your strife in prayer, And raise one Temple for our needs, Then, then, we all might worship there. But dogma new with dogma old Clashes to soothe the spirit's grief, And offer to the unconsoled Polyglot Babel of Belief! XLIV The billows roll, and rise, and break, Around me; fixedly shine the stars In clear dome overhead, and take Their course, unheeding earthly jars. Yet if one's upward gaze could be But stationed where the planets are, The star were restless as the sea, The sea be tranquil as the star. Hollowed like cradle, then like grave, Now smoothly curved, now shapeless spray, Withal the undirected wave Forms, and reforms, and knows its way. Then, waters, bear me on where He, Ere death absolved at Christian font, Removed Rome's menaced majesty Eastward beyond the Hellespont. Foreseeing not what Fate concealed, But Time's caprice would there beget, That Cross would unto Crescent yield, Caesar and Christ to Mahomet. Is it then man's predestined state To search for, ne'er to find, the Light? Arise, my Star, illuminate These empty spaces of the Night! 460 XLV Last night I heard the cuckoo call Among the moist green glades of home, And in the Chase around the Hall Saw the May hawthorn flower and foam. Deep in the wood where primrose stars Paled before bluebell's dazzling reign, The nightingale's sad sobbing bars Rebuked the merle's too joyful strain. The kine streamed forth from stall and byre, The foal frisked round its mother staid, The meads, by sunshine warmed, took fire, And lambs in pasture, bleating, played. The uncurbed rivulets raced to where The statelier river curled and wound, And trout, of human step aware, Shot through the wave without a sound. Adown the village street, as clear As in one's wakeful mid-day hours, Beheld I Monica drawing near, Her vestal lap one crib of flowers. Lending no look to me, she passed By the stone path, as oft before, Between old mounds Spring newly grassed, And entered through the Little Door. Led by her feet, I hastened on, But, ere my feverish steps could get To the low porch, lo! Morning shone On Moslem dome and minaret! CONSTANTINOPLE 461 XLVI Now Vesper brings the sunset hour, And, where crusading Knighthood trod, Muezzin from his minaret tower Proclaims, ``There is no God but God!'' Male God who shares his godhead with No Virgin Mother's sacred tear, But finds on earth congenial kith In wielders of the sword and spear: Male God who on male lust bestows The ruddy lip, the rounded limb, And promises, at battle's close, Houri, not saint nor seraphim. Swift through the doubly-guarded stream, Shoots the caïque 'neath oarsmen brisk, While from its cushioned cradle gleam The eyes of yashmaked odalisque. Unchanged adown the changing years, Here where the Judas blossoms blaze, Against Sophia's marble piers The scowling Muslim lean and gaze; And still at sunset's solemn hour, Where Christ's devout Crusader trod, Defiant from the minaret's tower Proclaim, ``There is no God but God!'' XLVII Three rival Rituals. One revered In that loved English hamlet where, With flowers in Vicarage garden reared, She decks the altar set for prayer: Another, where majestic Rome, With fearless Faith and flag unfurled 462 'Gainst Doubt's ephemeral wave and foam, Demands obedience from the world. The third, where now I stand, and where Two hoary Continents have met, And Islam guards from taint and tare Monistic Creed of Mahomet. Yet older than all three, but banned To suffer still the exile's doom From shrine where Turkish sentries stand, And Christians wrangle round Christ's tomb. Where then find Creed, divine or dead, All may embrace, and none contemn?Remember Who it was that said, ``Not here, nor at Jerusalem!'' ATHENS XLVIII To Acrocorinth's brow I climb, And, lulled in retrospective bliss, Descry, as through the mists of time, Faintly the far Acropolis. Below me, rivers, mountains, vales, Wide stretch of ancient Hellas lies: Symbol of Song that never fails, Parnassus communes with the skies. I linger, dream-bound by the Past, Till sundown joins time's deep abyss, Then skirt, through shadows moonlight-cast, Lone strand of sailless Salamis, Until Eleusis gleams through dawn, Where, though a suppliant soul I come, The veil remains still unwithdrawn, 463 And all the Oracles are dumb. So onward to the clear white Light, Where, though the worshippers be gone, Abides on unmysterious height The calm unquestioning Parthenon. Find I, now there I stand at last, That naked Beauty, undraped Truth, Can satisfy our yearnings vast, The doubts of age, the dreams of youth; That, while we ask, in futile strife, From altar, tripod, fount, or well, Form is the secret soul of life, And Art the only Oracle; That Hera and Athena, linked With Aphrodite, hush distress, And, in their several gifts distinct, Withal are Triune Goddesses? That mortal wiser then was He Who gave the prize to Beauty's smile, Divides his gifts among the Three, And thuswise baffles Discord's guile? But who is wise? The nobler twain, Who the restraining girdle wear, Contend too often all in vain With sinuous curve and frolic hair. Just as one sees in marble, still, Pan o'er Apollo's shoulder lean, Suggesting to the poet's quill The sensual note, the hint obscene. Doth then the pure white Light grow dim, And must it be for ever thus? Listen! I hear a far-off Hymn, Veni, Creator, Spiritus! 464 XLIX The harvest of Hymettus drips As sweet as when the Attic bees Swarmed round the honey-laden lips Of heavenly-human Sophocles. The olives are as green in grove As in the days the poets bless, When Pallas with Poseidon strove To be the City's Patroness. The wine-hued main, white marble frieze, Dome of blue ether over all, One still beholds, but nowhere sees Panathenaic Festival. O'erhead, no Zeus or frowns or nods, Olympus none in air or skies; Below, a sepulchre of Gods, And tombs of dead Divinities. Yet, are they dead? Still stricken blind, Tiresiaslike, are they that see, With bold uncompromising mind, Wisdom in utter nudity; Experiencing a kindred fate With the First Parents of us all, Jehovah thrust through Eden's Gate, When Knowledge brought about their Fall. Hath Aphrodite into foam, Whence She first flowered, sunk back once more, And doth She nowhere find a home, Or worship, upon Christian shore? Her shrine is in the human breast, To find her none need soar or dive. Goodness or Loveliness our quest, The ever-helpful Gods survive. 465 Hellas retorts, when Hebrew gibes At Gods of levity and lust, ``God of Judaea's wandering tribes Was jealous, cruel, and unjust.'' Godhead, withal, remains the same, And Art embalms its symbols still; As Poets, when athirst for Fame, Still dream of Aganippe's rill. Why still pursue a bootless quest, And wander heartsore farther East, Because unanswered, south or west, By Pagan seer or Christian priest? Brahma and Buddha, what have they To offer to my shoreless search? ``Let Contemplation be,'' they say, ``Your ritual, Nothingness your Church. ``Passion and purpose both forsake, Echoes from non-existent wall; We do but dream we are awake, Ourselves the deepest dream of all. ``We dream we think, feel, touch, and see, And what these are, still dreaming, guess, Though there is no Reality Behind their fleeting semblances.'' Thus the East answers my appeal, Denies, and so illudes, my want. Alas! Could I but cease to feel, Brahma should be my Hierophant. But, hampered by my Western mind, I cannot set the Spirit free From Matter, but Illusion find, 466 Of all, the most illusory. DELPHI LI The morning mists that hid the bay And curtained mountains fast asleep, Begin to feel the touch of day, And roll from off both wave and steep. In floating folds they curve and rise, Then slowly melt and merge in air, Till high above me glow the skies, And cloudless sunshine everywhere. Parnassus wears nor veil nor frown, Windless the eagle wings his way, As I from Delphi gaze adown On Salona and Amphissa. It was the sovran Sun that drew Aloft and scattered morning haze, And now fills all the spacious blue With its own glorifying rays. And, no less sovran than the sun, Imagination brings relief Of morning light to shadows dun, To heart's distress, and spirit's grief. Parnassus boasts no loftier peak Than Poet's heavenward song; which, though Harbouring among the sad and weak, Lifteth aloft man's griefs below. Though sun-bronzed Phocian maidens lave Their kerchiefs in Castalia's spring, The Muses linger round its wave, And aid the pilgrim sent to sing. 467 And, listening there, I seem to hear The unseen Oracle say, ``Be strong: Subdue the sigh, repress the tear, And let not sorrow silence Song. ``You now have learnt enough from pain; And, if worse anguish lurk behind, Breathe in it some unselfish strain, And with grief's wisdom aid your kind. ``Who but of his own suffering sings, Is like an eagle, robbed, distressed, That vainly shrieks and beats its wings, Because it cannot find its nest. ``Let male Imagination wed The orphan, Sorrow, to console Its virgin loneness, whence are bred Serenity and self-control. ``Hence let the classic breezes blow You to your Land beyond the sea, That you may make, for others' woe, Your own a healing melody; ``To wintry woe no more a slave, But, having dried your April tears, Behold a helpful harvest wave From ridges of the fallow years.'' LII Rebuked thus by the stately Past, Whose solemn choruses endure Through voices new and visions vast, And centuries of sepulture, Because, serene, it never blinked At sheen or shadow of the sun, But Hades and Olympus linked 468 With Salamis and Marathon; Which held despondency at bay And, while revering Fate's decree, Reconciled with majestic lay Man to the Human Tragedy; To Gods of every land I vowed, Judaea, Hellas, Mecca, Rome, No more to live by sorrow bowed, But, wending backward to my home, Thenceforth to muse on woe more wide Than individual distress, The loftier Muses for my guide, Minerva for my monitress; Nor yet to scorn the tender aid Of Christian martyr, virgin, sage, And, meekly pondering in the shade, Proffer ripe counsel to my Age. And, haply, since 'tis Song alone Can baffle death, and conquer time, Maiden unborn in days unknown, Under the leaves of fragrant lime, Scanning the verse that here is writ, While cherishing some secret smart Of love or loss, may glean from it Some comfort for her weary heart; And, gently warned, grave minds may own The world hath more to bear than they, And, while I dream 'neath mossy stone, Repeat my name, and love my lay. LIII Scarce to the all-indwelling Power That vow was uttered, ere there came 469 A messenger in boyhood's flower, Winged with his search, his face aflame. From Amphissa he straight had clomb, Thridding that devious mountain land, With letter from my far-off home, And written by my Loved One's hand. ``Come to me where I drooping lie. None yet have died of Love, they say: Withal, I sometimes think that I Have prayed and sighed my life away. ``I want your absolution, dear, For whatso wrong I may have done; My conscience waneth less severe, In softness of the setting sun. ``'Twas I, 'twas I, far more than you, That stood in need, as now I see, Stooping, to enter meekly through The Doorway of Humility. ``In vain I turn to Throne of Grace, Where sorrows cease, and tears are dry; I fain once more would see your face, And hear your voice, before I die.'' ENGLAND LIV The oak logs smoulder on my hearth, Though round them hums no household talk; The roses in the garden-garth Hang mournfully on curving stalk. My wolf-hound round me leaps and bays, That wailed lost footsteps when I went: He little knows the grief that weighs 470 On my return from banishment. Half Autumn now, half Summer yet, For Nature hath a human heart, It seems as though they, having met, To take farewell, are loth to part. The splendour of the Year's decline Hath not yet come. One still can see Late honeysuckle intertwine With Maiden's-Bower and briony. The bracken-fronds, fast yellowing, tower From out sere needles of the pine; Now hawkweed blooms where foxgloves flower, And bramble where once eglantine. And, as I wend with hurrying feet Across the park, along the lane That leads unto the hamlet street, And cradle of my bliss and bane, In cottage plots on either side, O'er mignonette and fragrant stock Soar tiger-lilies lithe and tall, And homely-sheltered hollyhock. And when I reach the low grey wall That skirts God's-acre on the hill, I see, awaiting my recall, The Little Door stand open still. A dip, a slight descent, and then Into the Vicarage Walk I passed; It seemed as though the tongues of men Had left it since I saw it last. Round garden-plot, in westering sun, Her agëd parents slowly stepped: Her Mother had the face of one Who oft hath prayed, and oft hath wept. 471 She wore the silent plaintive grace Of Autumn just before its close, And on her slowly fading face The pathos of November rose. With pitying gaze and accents kind, ``Go in,'' she said, ``and mount the stair; And you through open door will find That Monica awaits you there.'' LV I mounted. At half-open door Pausing, I softly called her name, As one would pause and halt before Heaven's Gateway. But no answer came. She lies, methought, in Sleep's caress, So, passing in, I seemed to see, So saintly white the vision, less A chamber than a Sanctuary. Vestured in white, on snow-white bed, She lay, as dreaming something sweet, Madonna lilies at her head, Madonna lilies at her feet. A thought, I did not dare to speak,``Is this the sleep of life or death?'' And, with my cheek against her cheek, Listening, I seemed to hear her breath. 'Twas Love's last blindness not to see Her sinless soul had taken wing Unto the Land, if such there be, Where saints adore, and Seraphs sing. And yet I felt within my heart, Though lids were closed and lips were dumb, That, for Love's sake, her soul in part Had lingered here, till I should come. 472 I kissed her irresponsive hand, I laid my lips on her cold brow, That She, like me, should understand 'Twas thus I sealed our nuptial vow. And then I saw upon her breast A something writ, she fain had said Had I been near, to me addressed, Which, kneeling down, I took and read. LVI ``I prayed I might prolong my years Till you could come and hush my sighs, And dry my penitential tears; But Heaven hath willed it otherwise: ``That I may expiate the wrong By me inflicted on us both, When, yet Love's novice, feebly strong, I sinned against Love's sovran troth. ``Now Death, the mirror unto Life, Shows me that nought should keep apart Those who, though sore perplexed by strife 'Twixt Faith and Doubt, are one in heart. ``For Doubt is one with Faith when they, Who doubt, for Truth's sake suffering live; And Faith meanwhile should hope and pray, Withholding not what Love can give. ``We lead the blind by voice and hand, And not by light they cannot see; We are not framed to understand The How and Why of such as He, ``But natured only to rejoice At every sound or sign of hope, And, guided by the still small voice, 473 In patience through the darkness grope; ``Until our finer sense expands, And we exchange for holier sight The earthly help of voice and hands, And in His light behold the Light. ``Had my poor Love but been more wise, I should have ta'en you to my breast, Striving to hush your plaintive cries, And rock your Reason back to rest. ``But, though alone you now must tread Where we together should have trod, In loneliness you may be led, Through faith in me, to Faith in God. ``With tranquil purpose, fervent mind, Foster, while you abide on earth, And humbly proffer to your kind, The gift assigned to you at birth. ``As in the far-off boyish year When did your singing voice awake, Disinterestedly revere And love it for its own great sake. ``And when life takes autumnal hues, With fervent reminiscence woo All the affections of the Muse, And write the poem lived by you. ``And should, until your days shall end, You still the lyric voice retain, With its seductive music blend A graver note, a loftier strain. ``While buoyant youth and manhood strong Follow where Siren sounds entice, The Deities of Love and Song, Rapture and loveliness, suffice. 474 ``But when decay, and pain, and loss, Remind one of the Goal forgot, And we in turn must bear the Cross, The Pagan Gods can help us not. ``Nor need you then seek, far and near, More sumptuous shrines on alien strand, But with domestic mind revere The Ritual of your native Land. ``The Little Door stands open wide, And, if you meekly pass therethrough, Though I no longer kneel inside, I shall be hovering near to you. ``Farewell! till you shall learn the whole Of what we here but see in part. Now I to God commend my soul, And unto you I leave my heart.'' LVII I wended up the slope once more To where the Church stands lone and still, And passed beneath the Little Door, My will the subject of Her will. The sunset rays through pictured pane Fell, fretted into weft and woof, On transept, nave, and aisle, to wane On column cold and vaulted roof. Within the carven altar screen Were lilies tall, and white, and fair, So like to those I late had seen, It seemed She must be sleeping there. Mutely I knelt, with bended brow And shaded eyes, but heart intent, To learn, should any teach me now, What Life, and Love, and Sorrow meant. 475 And there remained until the shroud Of dusk foretold the coming night; And then I rose, and prayed aloud, ``Let there be Light! Let there be Light!'' ~ Alfred Austin,

1475:The Victories Of Love. Book Ii From Jane To Her Mother Thank Heaven, the burthens on the heart Are not half known till they depart! Although I long'd, for many a year, To love with love that casts out fear, My Frederick's kindness frighten'd me, And heaven seem'd less far off than he; And in my fancy I would trace A lady with an angel's face, That made devotion simply debt, Till sick with envy and regret, And wicked grief that God should e'er Make women, and not make them fair. That he might love me more because Another in his memory was, And that my indigence might be To him what Baby's was to me, The chief of charms, who could have thought? But God's wise way is to give nought Till we with asking it are tired; And when, indeed, the change desired Comes, lest we give ourselves the praise, It comes by Providence, not Grace; And mostly our thanks for granted pray'rs Are groans at unexpected cares. First Baby went to heaven, you know, And, five weeks after, Grace went, too. Then he became more talkative, And, stooping to my heart, would give Signs of his love, which pleased me more Than all the proofs he gave before; And, in that time of our great grief, We talk'd religion for relief; For, though we very seldom name Religion, we now think the same! Oh, what a bar is thus removed To loving and to being loved! 292 For no agreement really is In anything when none's in this. Why, Mother, once, if Frederick press'd His wife against his hearty breast, The interior difference seem'd to tear My own, until I could not bear The trouble. 'Twas a dreadful strife, And show'd, indeed, that faith is life. He never felt this. If he did, I'm sure it could not have been hid; For wives, I need not say to you, Can feel just what their husbands do, Without a word or look; but then It is not so, you know, with men. From that time many a Scripture text Help'd me, which had, before, perplex'd. Oh, what a wond'rous word seem'd this: He is my head, as Christ is his! None ever could have dared to see In marriage such a dignity For man, and for his wife, still less, Such happy, happy lowliness, Had God Himself not made it plain! This revelation lays the rein— If I may speak so—on the neck Of a wife's love, takes thence the check Of conscience, and forbids to doubt Its measure is to be without All measure, and a fond excess Is here her rule of godliness. I took him not for love but fright; He did but ask a dreadful right. In this was love, that he loved me The first, who was mere poverty. All that I know of love he taught; And love is all I know of aught. My merit is so small by his, That my demerit is my bliss. My life is hid with him in Christ, 293 Never thencefrom to be enticed; And in his strength have I such rest As when the baby on my breast Finds what it knows not how to seek, And, very happy, very weak, Lies, only knowing all is well, Pillow'd on kindness palpable. II From Lady Clitheroe To Mary Churchill Dear Saint, I'm still at High-Hurst Park. The house is fill'd with folks of mark. Honoria suits a good estate Much better than I hoped. How fate Loads her with happiness and pride! And such a loving lord, beside! But between us, Sweet, everything Has limits, and to build a wing To this old house, when Courtholm stands Empty upon his Berkshire lands, And all that Honor might be near Papa, was buying love too dear. With twenty others, there are two Guests here, whose names will startle you: Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Graham! I thought he stay'd away for shame. He and his wife were ask'd, you know, And would not come, four years ago. You recollect Miss Smythe found out Who she had been, and all about Her people at the Powder-mill; And how the fine Aunt tried to instil Haut ton, and how, at last poor Jane Had got so shy and gauche that, when The Dockyard gentry came to sup, She always had to be lock'd up; And some one wrote to us and said Her mother was a kitchen-maid. Dear Mary, you'll be charm'd to know 294 It must be all a fib. But, oh, She is the oddest little Pet On which my eyes were ever set! She's so outrée and natural That, when she first arrived, we all Wonder'd, as when a robin comes In through the window to eat crumbs At breakfast with us. She has sense, Humility, and confidence; And, save in dressing just a thought Gayer in colours than she ought, (To-day she looks a cross between Gipsy and Fairy, red and green,) She always happens to do well. And yet one never quite can tell What she might do or utter next. Lord Clitheroe is much perplex'd. Her husband, every now and then, Looks nervous; all the other men Are charm'd. Yet she has neither grace, Nor one good feature in her face. Her eyes, indeed, flame in her head, Like very altar-fires to Fred, Whose steps she follows everywhere Like a tame duck, to the despair Of Colonel Holmes, who does his part To break her funny little heart. Honor's enchanted. 'Tis her view That people, if they're good and true, And treated well, and let alone, Will kindly take to what's their own, And always be original, Like children. Honor's just like all The rest of us! But, thinking so, 'Tis well she miss'd Lord Clitheroe, Who hates originality, Though he puts up with it in me. Poor Mrs. Graham has never been To the Opera! You should have seen The innocent way she told the Earl She thought Plays sinful when a girl, 295 And now she never had a chance! Frederick's complacent smile and glance Towards her, show'd me, past a doubt, Honoria had been quite cut out. 'Tis very strange; for Mrs. Graham, Though Frederick's fancy none can blame, Seems the last woman you'd have thought Her lover would have ever sought. She never reads, I find, nor goes Anywhere; so that I suppose She got at all she ever knew By growing up, as kittens do. Talking of kittens, by-the-bye, You have more influence than I With dear Honoria. Get her, Dear, To be a little more severe With those sweet Children. They've the run Of all the place. When school was done, Maud burst in, while the Earl was there, With ‘Oh, Mama, do be a bear!’ Do you know, Dear, this odd wife of Fred Adores his old Love in his stead! She is so nice, yet, I should say, Not quite the thing for every day. Wonders are wearying! Felix goes Next Sunday with her to the Close, And you will judge. Honoria asks All Wiltshire Belles here; Felix basks Like Puss in fire-shine, when the room Is thus aflame with female bloom. But then she smiles when most would pout; And so his lawless loves go out With the last brocade. 'Tis not the same, I fear, with Mrs. Frederick Graham. Honoria should not have her here,— And this you might just hint, my Dear,— For Felix says he never saw Such proof of what he holds for law, 296 That ‘beauty is love which can be seen.’ Whatever he by this may mean, Were it not dreadful if he fell In love with her on principle! III From Jane To Mrs. Graham Mother, I told you how, at first, I fear'd this visit to the Hurst. Fred must, I felt, be so distress'd By aught in me unlike the rest Who come here. But I find the place Delightful; there's such ease, and grace, And kindness, and all seem to be On such a high equality. They have not got to think, you know, How far to make the money go. But Frederick says it's less the expense Of money, than of sound good-sense, Quickness to care what others feel, And thoughts with nothing to conceal; Which I'll teach Johnny. Mrs. Vaughan Was waiting for us on the Lawn, And kiss'd and call'd me ‘Cousin.’ Fred Neglected his old friends, she said. He laugh'd, and colour'd up at this. She was, you know, a flame of his; But I'm not jealous! Luncheon done, I left him, who had just begun To talk about the Russian War With an old Lady, Lady Carr,— A Countess, but I'm more afraid, A great deal, of the Lady's Maid,— And went with Mrs. Vaughan to see The pictures, which appear'd to be Of sorts of horses, clowns, and cows Call'd Wouvermans and Cuyps and Dows. And then she took me up, to show Her bedroom, where, long years ago, A Queen slept. 'Tis all tapestries 297 Of Cupids, Gods, and Goddesses, And black, carved oak. A curtain'd door Leads thence into her soft Boudoir, Where even her husband may but come By favour. He, too, has his room, Kept sacred to his solitude. Did I not think the plan was good? She ask'd me; but I said how small Our house was, and that, after all, Though Frederick would not say his prayers At night till I was safe upstairs, I thought it wrong to be so shy Of being good when I was by. ‘Oh, you should humour him!’ she said, With her sweet voice and smile; and led The way to where the children ate Their dinner, and Miss Williams sate. She's only Nursery-Governess, Yet they consider her no less Than Lord or Lady Carr, or me. Just think how happy she must be! The Ball-Room, with its painted sky Where heavy angels seem to fly, Is a dull place; its size and gloom Make them prefer, for drawing-room, The Library, all done up new And comfortable, with a view Of Salisbury Spire between the boughs. When she had shown me through the house, (I wish I could have let her know That she herself was half the show; She is so handsome, and so kind!) She fetch'd the children, who had dined; And, taking one in either hand, Show'd me how all the grounds were plann'd. The lovely garden gently slopes To where a curious bridge of ropes Crosses the Avon to the Park. We rested by the stream, to mark The brown backs of the hovering trout. Frank tickled one, and took it out 298 From under a stone. We saw his owls, And awkward Cochin-China fowls, And shaggy pony in the croft; And then he dragg'd us to a loft, Where pigeons, as he push'd the door, Fann'd clear a breadth of dusty floor, And set us coughing. I confess I trembled for my nice silk dress. I cannot think how Mrs. Vaughan Ventured with that which she had on,— A mere white wrapper, with a few Plain trimmings of a quiet blue, But, oh, so pretty! Then the bell For dinner rang. I look'd quite well (‘Quite charming,’ were the words Fred said,) With the new gown that I've had made. I am so proud of Frederick. He's so high-bred and lordly-like With Mrs. Vaughan! He's not quite so At home with me; but that, you know, I can't expect, or wish. 'Twould hurt, And seem to mock at my desert. Not but that I'm a duteous wife To Fred; but, in another life, Where all are fair that have been true I hope I shall be graceful too, Like Mrs. Vaughan. And, now, good-bye! That happy thought has made me cry, And feel half sorry that my cough, In this fine air, is leaving off. IV From Frederick To Mrs. Graham Honoria, trebly fair and mild With added loves of lord and child, Is else unalter'd. Years, which wrong The rest, touch not her beauty, young With youth which rather seems her clime, Than aught that's relative to time. 299 How beyond hope was heard the prayer I offer'd in my love's despair! Could any, whilst there's any woe, Be wholly blest, then she were so. She is, and is aware of it, Her husband's endless benefit; But, though their daily ways reveal The depth of private joy they feel, 'Tis not their bearing each to each That does abroad their secret preach, But such a lovely good-intent To all within their government And friendship as, 'tis well discern'd, Each of the other must have learn'd; For no mere dues of neighbourhood Ever begot so blest a mood. And fair, indeed, should be the few God dowers with nothing else to do, And liberal of their light, and free To show themselves, that all may see! For alms let poor men poorly give The meat whereby men's bodies live; But they of wealth are stewards wise Whose graces are their charities. The sunny charm about this home Makes all to shine who thither come. My own dear Jane has caught its grace, And, honour'd, honours too the place. Across the lawn I lately walk'd Alone, and watch'd where mov'd and talk'd, Gentle and goddess-like of air, Honoria and some Stranger fair. I chose a path unblest by these; When one of the two Goddesses, With my Wife's voice, but softer, said, ‘Will you not walk with us, dear Fred?’ She moves, indeed, the modest peer Of all the proudest ladies here. Unawed she talks with men who stand 300 Among the leaders of the land, And women beautiful and wise, With England's greatness in their eyes. To high, traditional good-sense, And knowledge ripe without pretence, And human truth exactly hit By quiet and conclusive wit, Listens my little, homely Dove, Mistakes the points and laughs for love; And, after, stands and combs her hair, And calls me much the wittiest there! With reckless loyalty, dear Wife, She lays herself about my life! The joy I might have had of yore I have not; for 'tis now no more, With me, the lyric time of youth, And sweet sensation of the truth. Yet, past my hope or purpose bless'd, In my chance choice let be confess'd The tenderer Providence that rules The fates of children and of fools! I kiss'd the kind, warm neck that slept, And from her side this morning stepp'd, To bathe my brain from drowsy night In the sharp air and golden light. The dew, like frost, was on the pane. The year begins, though fair, to wane. There is a fragrance in its breath Which is not of the flowers, but death; And green above the ground appear The lilies of another year. I wander'd forth, and took my path Among the bloomless aftermath; And heard the steadfast robin sing As if his own warm heart were Spring, And watch'd him feed where, on the yew, Hung honey'd drops of crimson dew; And then return'd, by walls of peach, And pear-trees bending to my reach, And rose-beds with the roses gone, 301 To bright-laid breakfast. Mrs. Vaughan Was there, none with her. I confess I love her than of yore no less! But she alone was loved of old; Now love is twain, nay, manifold; For, somehow, he whose daily life Adjusts itself to one true wife, Grows to a nuptial, near degree With all that's fair and womanly. Therefore, as more than friends, we met, Without constraint, without regret; The wedded yoke that each had donn'd Seeming a sanction, not a bond. From Mrs. Graham Your love lacks joy, your letter says. Yes; love requires the focal space Of recollection or of hope, Ere it can measure its own scope. Too soon, too soon comes Death to show We love more deeply than we know! The rain, that fell upon the height Too gently to be call'd delight, Within the dark vale reappears As a wild cataract of tears; And love in life should strive to see Sometimes what love in death would be! Easier to love, we so should find, It is than to be just and kind. She's gone: shut close the coffin-lid: What distance for another did That death has done for her! The good, Once gazed upon with heedless mood, Now fills with tears the famish'd eye, And turns all else to vanity. 'Tis sad to see, with death between, The good we have pass'd and have not seen! How strange appear the words of all! 302 The looks of those that live appal. They are the ghosts, and check the breath: There's no reality but death, And hunger for some signal given That we shall have our own in heaven. But this the God of love lets be A horrible uncertainty. How great her smallest virtue seems, How small her greatest fault! Ill dreams Were those that foil'd with loftier grace The homely kindness of her face. 'Twas here she sat and work'd, and there She comb'd and kiss'd the children's hair; Or, with one baby at her breast, Another taught, or hush'd to rest. Praise does the heart no more refuse To the chief loveliness of use. Her humblest good is hence most high In the heavens of fond memory; And Love says Amen to the word, A prudent wife is from the Lord. Her worst gown's kept, ('tis now the best, As that in which she oftenest dress'd,) For memory's sake more precious grown Than she herself was for her own. Poor child! foolish it seem'd to fly To sobs instead of dignity, When she was hurt. Now, more than all, Heart-rending and angelical That ignorance of what to do, Bewilder'd still by wrong from you: For what man ever yet had grace Ne'er to abuse his power and place? No magic of her voice or smile Suddenly raised a fairy isle, But fondness for her underwent An unregarded increment, Like that which lifts, through centuries, The coral-reef within the seas, Till, lo! the land where was the wave, 303 Alas! 'tis everywhere her grave. VI From Jane To Mrs. Graham Dear Mother, I can surely tell, Now, that I never shall get well. Besides the warning in my mind, All suddenly are grown so kind. Fred stopp'd the Doctor, yesterday, Downstairs, and, when he went away, Came smiling back, and sat with me, Pale, and conversing cheerfully About the Spring, and how my cough, In finer weather, would leave off. I saw it all, and told him plain I felt no hope of Spring again. Then he, after a word of jest, Burst into tears upon my breast, And own'd, when he could speak, he knew There was a little danger, too. This made me very weak and ill, And while, last night, I lay quite still, And, as he fancied, in the deep, Exhausted rest of my short sleep, I heard, or dream'd I heard him pray: ‘Oh, Father, take her not away! ‘Let not life's dear assurance lapse ‘Into death's agonised 'Perhaps,' ‘A hope without Thy promise, where ‘Less than assurance is despair! ‘Give me some sign, if go she must, ‘That death's not worse than dust to dust, ‘Not heaven, on whose oblivious shore ‘Joy I may have, but her no more! ‘The bitterest cross, it seems to me, ‘Of all is infidelity; ‘And so, if I may choose, I'll miss ‘The kind of heaven which comes to this. ‘If doom'd, indeed, this fever ceased, 304 ‘To die out wholly, like a beast, ‘Forgetting all life's ill success ‘In dark and peaceful nothingness, ‘I could but say, Thy will be done; ‘For, dying thus, I were but one ‘Of seed innumerable which ne'er ‘In all the worlds shall bloom or bear. ‘I've put life past to so poor use ‘Well may'st Thou life to come refuse; ‘And justice, which the spirit contents, ‘Shall still in me all vain laments; ‘Nay, pleased, I will, while yet I live, ‘Think Thou my forfeit joy may'st give ‘To some fresh life, else unelect, ‘And heaven not feel my poor defect! ‘Only let not Thy method be ‘To make that life, and call it me; ‘Still less to sever mine in twain, ‘And tell each half to live again, ‘And count itself the whole! To die, ‘Is it love's disintegrity? ‘Answer me, 'No,' and I, with grace, ‘Will life's brief desolation face, ‘My ways, as native to the clime, ‘Adjusting to the wintry time, ‘Ev'n with a patient cheer thereof—’ He started up, hearing me cough. Oh, Mother, now my last doubt's gone! He likes me more than Mrs. Vaughan; And death, which takes me from his side, Shows me, in very deed, his bride! VII From Jane To Frederick I leave this, Dear, for you to read, For strength and hope, when I am dead. When Grace died, I was so perplex'd, I could not find one helpful text; And when, a little while before, 305 I saw her sobbing on the floor, Because I told her that in heaven She would be as the angels even, And would not want her doll, 'tis true A horrible fear within me grew, That, since the preciousness of love Went thus for nothing, mine might prove To be no more, and heaven's bliss Some dreadful good which is not this. But being about to die makes clear Many dark things. I have no fear, Now, that my love, my grief, my joy Is but a passion for a toy. I cannot speak at all, I find, The shining something in my mind, That shows so much that, if I took My thoughts all down, 'twould make a book. God's Word, which lately seem'd above The simpleness of human love, To my death-sharpen'd hearing tells Of little or of nothing else; And many things I hoped were true, When first they came, like songs, from you, Now rise with witness past the reach Of doubt, and I to you can teach, As if with felt authority And as things seen, what you taught me. Yet how? I have no words but those Which every one already knows: As, ‘No man hath at any time ‘Seen God, but 'tis the love of Him ‘Made perfect, and He dwells in us, ‘If we each other love.’ Or thus, ‘My goodness misseth in extent ‘Of Thee, Lord! In the excellent ‘I know Thee; and the Saints on Earth ‘Make all my love and holy mirth.’ And further, ‘Inasmuch as ye ‘Did it to one of these, to Me ‘Ye did it, though ye nothing thought 306 ‘Nor knew of Me, in that ye wrought.’ What shall I dread? Will God undo Our bond, which is all others too? And when I meet you will you say To my reclaiming looks, ‘Away! ‘A dearer love my bosom warms ‘With higher rights and holier charms. ‘The children, whom thou here may'st see, ‘Neighbours that mingle thee and me, ‘And gaily on impartial lyres ‘Renounce the foolish filial fires ‘They felt, with 'Praise to God on high, ‘'Goodwill to all else equally;' ‘The trials, duties, service, tears; ‘The many fond, confiding years ‘Of nearness sweet with thee apart; ‘The joy of body, mind, and heart; ‘The love that grew a reckless growth, ‘Unmindful that the marriage-oath ‘To love in an eternal style ‘Meant—only for a little while: ‘Sever'd are now those bonds earth-wrought: ‘All love, not new, stands here for nought!’ Why, it seems almost wicked, Dear, Even to utter such a fear! Are we not ‘heirs,’ as man and wife, ‘Together of eternal life?’ Was Paradise e'er meant to fade, To make which marriage first was made? Neither beneath him nor above Could man in Eden find his Love; Yet with him in the garden walk'd His God, and with Him mildly talk'd! Shall the humble preference offend In heaven, which God did there commend? Are ‘honourable and undefiled’ The names of aught from heaven exiled? And are we not forbid to grieve As without hope? Does God deceive, 307 And call that hope which is despair, Namely, the heaven we should not share? Image and glory of the man, As he of God, is woman. Can This holy, sweet proportion die Into a dull equality? Are we not one flesh, yea, so far More than the babe and mother are, That sons are bid mothers to leave And to their wives alone to cleave, ‘For they two are one flesh?’ But 'tis In the flesh we rise. Our union is, You know 'tis said, ‘great mystery.’ Great mockery, it appears to me; Poor image of the spousal bond Of Christ and Church, if loosed beyond This life!—'Gainst which, and much more yet, There's not a single word to set. The speech to the scoffing Sadducee Is not in point to you and me; For how could Christ have taught such clods That Cæsar's things are also God's? The sort of Wife the Law could make Might well be ‘hated’ for Love's sake, And left, like money, land, or house; For out of Christ is no true spouse. I used to think it strange of Him To make love's after-life so dim, Or only clear by inference: But God trusts much to common sense, And only tells us what, without His Word, we could not have found out. On fleshly tables of the heart He penn'd truth's feeling counterpart In hopes that come to all: so, Dear, Trust these, and be of happy cheer, Nor think that he who has loved well Is of all men most miserable. There's much more yet I want to say, But cannot now. You know my way 308 Of feeling strong from Twelve till Two After my wine. I'll write to you Daily some words, which you shall have To break the silence of the grave. VIII From Jane To Frederick You think, perhaps, ‘Ah, could she know How much I loved her!’ Dear, I do! And you may say, ‘Of this new awe ‘Of heart which makes her fancies law, ‘These watchful duties of despair, ‘She does not dream, she cannot care!’ Frederick, you see how false that is, Or how could I have written this? And, should it ever cross your mind That, now and then, you were unkind, You never, never were at all! Remember that! It's natural For one like Mr. Vaughan to come, From a morning's useful pastime, home, And greet, with such a courteous zest, His handsome wife, still newly dress'd, As if the Bird of Paradise Should daily change her plumage thrice. He's always well, she's always gay. Of course! But he who toils all day, And comes home hungry, tired, or cold, And feels 'twould do him good to scold His wife a little, let him trust Her love, and say the things he must, Till sooth'd in mind by meat and rest. If, after that, she's well caress'd, And told how good she is, to bear His humour, fortune makes it fair. Women like men to be like men; That is, at least, just now and then. Thus, I have nothing to forgive, But those first years, (how could I live!) When, though I really did behave 309 So stupidly, you never gave One unkind word or look at all: As if I was some animal You pitied! Now, in later life, You used me like a proper Wife. You feel, Dear, in your present mood, Your Jane, since she was kind and good, A child of God, a living soul, Was not so different, on the whole, From Her who had a little more Of God's best gifts: but, oh, be sure, My dear, dear Love, to take no blame Because you could not feel the same Towards me, living, as when dead. A hungry man must needs think bread So sweet! and, only at their rise And setting, blessings, to the eyes, Like the sun's course, grow visible. If you are sad, remember well, Against delusions of despair, That memory sees things as they were, And not as they were misenjoy'd, And would be still, if ought destroy'd The glory of their hopelessness: So that, in truth, you had me less In days when necessary zeal For my perfection made you feel My faults the most, than now your love Forgets but where it can approve. You gain by loss, if that seem'd small Possess'd, which, being gone, turns all Surviving good to vanity. Oh, Fred, this makes it sweet to die! Say to yourself: ‘'Tis comfort yet ‘I made her that which I regret; ‘And parting might have come to pass ‘In a worse season; as it was, ‘Love an eternal temper took, ‘Dipp'd, glowing, in Death's icy brook!’ Or say, ‘On her poor feeble head 310 ‘This might have fallen: 'tis mine instead! ‘And so great evil sets me free ‘Henceforward from calamity. ‘And, in her little children, too, ‘How much for her I yet can do!’ And grieve not for these orphans even; For central to the love of Heaven Is each child as each star to space. This truth my dying love has grace To trust with a so sure content, I fear I seem indifferent. You must not think a child's small heart Cold, because it and grief soon part. Fanny will keep them all away, Lest you should hear them laugh and play, Before the funeral's over. Then I hope you'll be yourself again, And glad, with all your soul, to find How God thus to the sharpest wind Suits the shorn lambs. Instruct them, Dear, For my sake, in His love and fear. And show how, till their journey's done, Not to be weary they must run. Strive not to dissipate your grief By any lightness. True relief Of sorrow is by sorrow brought. And yet for sorrow's sake, you ought To grieve with measure. Do not spend So good a power to no good end! Would you, indeed, have memory stay In the heart, lock up and put away Relics and likenesses and all Musings, which waste what they recall. True comfort, and the only thing To soothe without diminishing A prized regret, is to match here, By a strict life, God's love severe. Yet, after all, by nature's course, Feeling must lose its edge and force. Again you'll reach the desert tracts 311 Where only sin or duty acts. But, if love always lit our path, Where were the trial of our faith? Oh, should the mournful honeymoon Of death be over strangely soon, And life-long resolutions, made In grievous haste, as quickly fade, Seeming the truth of grief to mock, Think, Dearest, 'tis not by the clock That sorrow goes! A month of tears Is more than many, many years Of common time. Shun, if you can, However, any passionate plan. Grieve with the heart; let not the head Grieve on, when grief of heart is dead; For all the powers of life defy A superstitious constancy. The only bond I hold you to Is that which nothing can undo. A man is not a young man twice; And if, of his young years, he lies A faithful score in one wife's breast, She need not mind who has the rest. In this do what you will, dear Love, And feel quite sure that I approve. And, should it chance as it may be, Give her my wedding-ring from me; And never dream that you can err T'wards me by being good to her; Nor let remorseful thoughts destroy In you the kindly flowering joy And pleasure of the natural life. But don't forget your fond, dead Wife. And, Frederick, should you ever be Tempted to think your love of me All fancy, since it drew its breath So much more sweetly after death, Remember that I never did A single thing you once forbid; 312 All poor folk liked me; and, at the end, Your Cousin call'd me ‘Dearest Friend!’ And, now, 'twill calm your grief to know,— You, who once loved Honoria so,— There's kindness, that's look'd kindly on, Between her Emily and John. Thus, in your children, you will wed! And John seems so much comforted, (Like Isaac when his mother died And fair Rebekah was his bride), By his new hope, for losing me! So all is happiness, you see. And that reminds me how, last night, I dreamt of heaven, with great delight. A strange, kind Lady watch'd my face, Kiss'd me, and cried, ‘His hope found grace!’ She bade me then, in the crystal floor, Look at myself, myself no more; And bright within the mirror shone Honoria's smile, and yet my own! ‘And, when you talk, I hear,’ she sigh'd, ‘How much he loved her! Many a bride ‘In heaven such countersemblance wears ‘Through what Love deem'd rejected prayers.’ She would have spoken still; but, lo, One of a glorious troop, aglow From some great work, towards her came, And she so laugh'd, 'twas such a flame, Aaron's twelve jewels seem'd to mix With the lights of the Seven Candlesticks. IX From Lady Clitheroe To Mrs. Graham My dearest Aunt, the Wedding-day, But for Jane's loss, and you away, Was all a Bride from heaven could beg! Skies bluer than the sparrow's egg, And clearer than the cuckoo's call; And such a sun! the flowers all 313 With double ardour seem'd to blow! The very daisies were a show, Expanded with uncommon pride, Like little pictures of the Bride. Your Great-Niece and your Grandson were Perfection of a pretty pair. How well Honoria's girls turn out, Although they never go about! Dear me, what trouble and expense It took to teach mine confidence! Hers greet mankind as I've heard say That wild things do, where beasts of prey Were never known, nor any men Have met their fearless eyes till then. Their grave, inquiring trust to find All creatures of their simple kind Quite disconcerts bold coxcombry, And makes less perfect candour shy. Ah, Mrs. Graham! people may scoff, But how your home-kept girls go off! How Hymen hastens to unband The waist that ne'er felt waltzer's hand! At last I see my Sister's right, And I've told Maud this very night, (But, oh, my daughters have such wills!) To knit, and only dance quadrilles. You say Fred never writes to you Frankly, as once he used to do, About himself; and you complain He shared with none his grief for Jane. It all comes of the foolish fright Men feel at the word, hypocrite. Although, when first in love, sometimes They rave in letters, talk, and rhymes, When once they find, as find they must. How hard 'tis to be hourly just To those they love, they are dumb for shame, Where we, you see, talk on the same. Honoria, to whose heart alone 314 He seems to open all his own, At times has tears in her kind eyes, After their private colloquies. He's her most favour'd guest, and moves My spleen by his impartial loves. His pleasure has some inner spring Depending not on anything. Petting our Polly, none e'er smiled More fondly on his favourite child; Yet, playing with his own, it is Somehow as if it were not his. He means to go again to sea, Now that the wedding's over. He Will leave to Emily and John The little ones to practise on; And Major-domo, Mrs. Rouse, A deal old soul from Wilton House, Will scold the housemaids and the cook, Till Emily has learn'd to look A little braver than a lamb Surprised by dogs without its dam! Do, dear Aunt, use your influence, And try to teach some plain good sense To Mary. 'Tis not yet too late To make her change her chosen state Of single silliness. In truth, I fancy that, with fading youth, Her will now wavers. Yesterday, Though, till the Bride was gone away, Joy shone from Mary's loving heart, I found her afterwards apart, Hysterically sobbing. I Knew much too well to ask her why. This marrying of Nieces daunts The bravest souls of maiden Aunts. Though Sisters' children often blend Sweetly the bonds of child and friend, They are but reeds to rest upon. When Emily comes back with John, Her right to go downstairs before Aunt Mary will but be the more 315 Observed if kindly waived, and how Shall these be as they were, when now Niece has her John, and Aunt the sense Of her superior innocence? Somehow, all loves, however fond, Prove lieges of the nuptial bond; And she who dares at this to scoff, Finds all the rest in time drop off; While marriage, like a mushroom-ring, Spreads its sure circle every Spring. She twice refused George Vane, you know; Yet, when he died three years ago In the Indian war, she put on gray, And wears no colours to this day. And she it is who charges me, Dear Aunt, with ‘inconsistency!’ From Frederick To Honoria Cousin, my thoughts no longer try To cast the fashion of the sky. Imagination can extend Scarcely in part to comprehend The sweetness of our common food Ambrosial, which ingratitude And impious inadvertence waste, Studious to eat but not to taste. And who can tell what's yet in store There, but that earthly things have more Of all that makes their inmost bliss, And life's an image still of this, But haply such a glorious one As is the rainbow of the sun? Sweet are your words, but, after all Their mere reversal may befall The partners of His glories who Daily is crucified anew: Splendid privations, martyrdoms To which no weak remission comes, 316 Perpetual passion for the good Of them that feel no gratitude, Far circlings, as of planets' fires, Round never-to-be-reach'd desires, Whatever rapturously sighs That life is love, love sacrifice. All I am sure of heaven is this: Howe'er the mode, I shall not miss One true delight which I have known. Not on the changeful earth alone Shall loyalty remain unmoved T'wards everything I ever loved. So Heaven's voice calls, like Rachel's voice To Jacob in the field, ‘Rejoice! ‘Serve on some seven more sordid years, ‘Too short for weariness or tears; ‘Serve on; then, oh, Beloved, well-tried, ‘Take me for ever as thy Bride!’ XI From Mary Churchill To The Dean Charles does me honour, but 'twere vain To reconsider now again, And so to doubt the clear-shown truth I sought for, and received, when youth, Being fair, and woo'd by one whose love Was lovely, fail'd my mind to move. God bids them by their own will go, Who ask again the things they know! I grieve for my infirmity, And ignorance of how to be Faithful, at once, to the heavenly life, And the fond duties of a wife. Narrow am I and want the art To love two things with all my heart. Occupied singly in His search, Who, in the Mysteries of the Church, Returns, and calls them Clouds of Heaven, I tread a road, straight, hard, and even; But fear to wander all confused, 317 By two-fold fealty abused. Either should I the one forget, Or scantly pay the other's debt. You bid me, Father, count the cost. I have; and all that must be lost I feel as only woman can. To make the heart's wealth of some man, And through the untender world to move, Wrapt safe in his superior love, How sweet! How sweet the household round Of duties, and their narrow bound, So plain, that to transgress were hard, Yet full of manifest reward! The charities not marr'd, like mine, With chance of thwarting laws divine; The world's regards and just delight In one that's clearly, kindly right, How sweet! Dear Father, I endure, Not without sharp regret, be sure, To give up such glad certainty, For what, perhaps, may never be. For nothing of my state I know, But that t'ward heaven I seem to go, As one who fondly landward hies Along a deck that seaward flies. With every year, meantime, some grace Of earthly happiness gives place To humbling ills, the very charms Of youth being counted, henceforth, harms: To blush already seems absurd; Nor know I whether I should herd With girls or wives, or sadlier balk Maids' merriment or matrons' talk. But strait's the gate of life! O'er late, Besides, 'twere now to change my fate: For flowers and fruit of love to form, It must be Spring as well as warm. The world's delight my soul dejects, Revenging all my disrespects Of old, with incapacity 318 To chime with even its harmless glee, Which sounds, from fields beyond my range, Like fairies' music, thin and strange. With something like remorse, I grant The world has beauty which I want; And if, instead of judging it, I at its Council chance to sit, Or at its gay and order'd Feast, My place seems lower than the least. The conscience of the life to be Smites me with inefficiency, And makes me all unfit to bless With comfortable earthliness The rest-desiring brain of man. Finally, then, I fix my plan To dwell with Him that dwells apart In the highest heaven and lowliest heart; Nor will I, to my utter loss, Look to pluck roses from the Cross. As for the good of human love, 'Twere countercheck almost enough To think that one must die before The other; and perhaps 'tis more In love's last interest to do Nought the least contrary thereto, Than to be blest, and be unjust, Or suffer injustice; as they must, Without a miracle, whose pact Compels to mutual life and act, Whether love shines, or darkness sleeps Cold on the spirit's changeful deeps. Enough if, to my earthly share, Fall gleams that keep me from despair. Happy the things we here discern; More happy those for which we yearn; But measurelessly happy above All else are those we guess not of! XII From Felix To Honoria 319 Dearest, my Love and Wife, 'tis long Ago I closed the unfinish'd song Which never could be finish'd; nor Will ever Poet utter more Of love than I did, watching well To lure to speech the unspeakable! ‘Why, having won her, do I woo?’ That final strain to the last height flew Of written joy, which wants the smile And voice that are, indeed, the while They last, the very things you speak, Honoria, who mak'st music weak With ways that say, ‘Shall I not be ‘As kind to all as Heaven to me?’ And yet, ah, twenty-fold my Bride! Rising, this twentieth festal-tide, You still soft sleeping, on this day Of days, some words I long to say, Some words superfluously sweet Of fresh assurance, thus to greet Your waking eyes, which never grow Weary of telling what I know So well, yet only well enough To wish for further news thereof. Here, in this early autumn dawn, By windows opening on the lawn, Where sunshine seems asleep, though bright, And shadows yet are sharp with night, And, further on, the wealthy wheat Bends in a golden drowse, how sweet To sit and cast my careless looks Around my walls of well-read books, Wherein is all that stands redeem'd From time's huge wreck, all men have dream'd Of truth, and all by poets known Of feeling, and in weak sort shown, And, turning to my heart again, To find I have what makes them vain, The thanksgiving mind, which wisdom sums, And you, whereby it freshly comes 320 As on that morning, (can there be Twenty-two years 'twixt it and me?) When, thrill'd with hopeful love I rose And came in haste to Sarum Close, Past many a homestead slumbering white In lonely and pathetic light, Merely to fancy which drawn blind Of thirteen had my Love behind, And in her sacred neighbourhood To feel that sweet scorn of all good But her, which let the wise forfend When wisdom learns to comprehend! Dearest, as each returning May I see the season new and gay With new joy and astonishment, And Nature's infinite ostent Of lovely flowers in wood and mead, That weet not whether any heed, So see I, daily wondering, you, And worship with a passion new The Heaven that visibly allows Its grace to go about my house, The partial Heaven, that, though I err And mortal am, gave all to her Who gave herself to me. Yet I Boldly thank Heaven, (and so defy The beggarly soul'd humbleness Which fears God's bounty to confess,) That I was fashion'd with a mind Seeming for this great gift design'd, So naturally it moved above All sordid contraries of love, Strengthen'd in youth with discipline Of light, to follow the divine Vision, (which ever to the dark Is such a plague as was the ark In Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron,) still Discerning with the docile will Which comes of full persuaded thought, That intimacy in love is nought Without pure reverence, whereas this, 321 In tearfullest banishment, is bliss. And so, dearest Honoria, I Have never learn'd the weary sigh Of those that to their love-feasts went, Fed, and forgot the Sacrament; And not a trifle now occurs But sweet initiation stirs Of new-discover'd joy, and lends To feeling change that never ends; And duties, which the many irk, Are made all wages and no work. How sing of such things save to her, Love's self, so love's interpreter? How the supreme rewards confess Which crown the austere voluptuousness Of heart, that earns, in midst of wealth, The appetite of want and health, Relinquishes the pomp of life And beauty to the pleasant Wife At home, and does all joy despise As out of place but in her eyes? How praise the years and gravity That make each favour seem to be A lovelier weakness for her lord? And, ah, how find the tender word To tell aright of love that glows The fairer for the fading rose? Of frailty which can weight the arm To lean with thrice its girlish charm? Of grace which, like this autumn day, Is not the sad one of decay, Yet one whose pale brow pondereth The far-off majesty of death? How tell the crowd, whom passion rends, That love grows mild as it ascends? That joy's most high and distant mood Is lost, not found in dancing blood; Albeit kind acts and smiling eyes, And all those fond realities Which are love's words, in us mean more 322 Delight than twenty years before? How, Dearest, finish, without wrong To the speechless heart, the unfinish'd song, Its high, eventful passages Consisting, say, of things like these:— One morning, contrary to law, Which, for the most, we held in awe, Commanding either not to intrude On the other's place of solitude Or solitary mind, for fear Of coming there when God was near, And finding so what should be known To Him who is merciful alone, And views the working ferment base Of waking flesh and sleeping grace, Not as we view, our kindness check'd By likeness of our own defect, I, venturing to her room, because (Mark the excuse!) my Birthday 'twas, Saw, here across a careless chair, A ball-dress flung, as light as air, And, here, beside a silken couch, Pillows which did the pressure vouch Of pious knees, (sweet piety! Of goodness made and charity, If gay looks told the heart's glad sense, Much rather than of penitence,) And, on the couch, an open book, And written list—I did not look, Yet just in her clear writing caught:— ‘Habitual faults of life and thought ‘Which most I need deliverance from.’ I turn'd aside, and saw her come Adown the filbert-shaded way, Beautified with her usual gay Hypocrisy of perfectness, Which made her heart, and mine no less, So happy! And she cried to me, ‘You lose by breaking rules, you see! ‘Your Birthday treat is now half-gone 323 ‘Of seeing my new ball-dress on.’ And, meeting so my lovely Wife, A passing pang, to think that life Was mortal, when I saw her laugh, Shaped in my mind this epitaph: ‘Faults had she, child of Adam's stem, ‘But only Heaven knew of them.’ Or thus: For many a dreadful day, In sea-side lodgings sick she lay, Noteless of love, nor seem'd to hear The sea, on one side, thundering near, Nor, on the other, the loud Ball Held nightly in the public hall; Nor vex'd they my short slumbers, though I woke up if she breathed too low. Thus, for three months, with terrors rife, The pending of her precious life I watch'd o'er; and the danger, at last, The kind Physician said, was past. Howbeit, for seven harsh weeks the East Breathed witheringly, and Spring's growth ceased, And so she only did not die; Until the bright and blighting sky Changed into cloud, and the sick flowers Remember'd their perfumes, and showers Of warm, small rain refreshing flew Before the South, and the Park grew, In three nights, thick with green. Then she Revived, no less than flower and tree, In the mild air, and, the fourth day, Look'd supernaturally gay With large, thanksgiving eyes, that shone, The while I tied her bonnet on, So that I led her to the glass, And bade her see how fair she was, And how love visibly could shine. Profuse of hers, desiring mine, And mindful I had loved her most When beauty seem'd a vanish'd boast, 324 She laugh'd. I press'd her then to me, Nothing but soft humility; Nor e'er enhanced she with such charms Her acquiescence in my arms. And, by her sweet love-weakness made Courageous, powerful, and glad, In a clear illustration high Of heavenly affection, I Perceived that utter love is all The same as to be rational, And that the mind and heart of love, Which think they cannot do enough, Are truly the everlasting doors Wherethrough, all unpetition'd, pours The eternal pleasance. Wherefore we Had innermost tranquillity, And breathed one life with such a sense Of friendship and of confidence, That, recollecting the sure word: ‘If two of you are in accord, ‘On earth, as touching any boon ‘Which ye shall ask, it shall be done ‘In heaven,’ we ask'd that heaven's bliss Might ne'er be any less than this; And, for that hour, we seem'd to have The secret of the joy we gave. How sing of such things, save to her, Love's self, so love's interpreter? How read from such a homely page In the ear of this unhomely age? 'Tis now as when the Prophet cried: ‘The nation hast Thou multiplied, ‘But Thou hast not increased the joy!’ And yet, ere wrath or rot destroy Of England's state the ruin fair, Oh, might I so its charm declare, That, in new Lands, in far-off years, Delighted he should cry that hears: ‘Great is the Land that somewhat best ‘Works, to the wonder of the rest! ‘We, in our day, have better done 325 ‘This thing or that than any one; ‘And who but, still admiring, sees ‘How excellent for images ‘Was Greece, for laws how wise was Rome; ‘But read this Poet, and say if home ‘And private love did e'er so smile ‘As in that ancient English isle!’ XIII From Lady Clitheroe To Emily Graham My dearest Niece, I'm charm'd to hear The scenery's fine at Windermere, And glad a six-weeks' wife defers In the least to wisdom not yet hers. But, Child, I've no advice to give! Rules only make it hard to live. And where's the good of having been Well taught from seven to seventeen, If, married, you may not leave off, And say, at last, ‘I'm good enough!’ Weeding out folly, still leave some. It gives both lightness and aplomb. We know, however wise by rule, Woman is still by nature fool; And men have sense to like her all The more when she is natural. 'Tis true that, if we choose, we can Mock to a miracle the man; But iron in the fire red hot, Though 'tis the heat, the fire 'tis not: And who, for such a feint, would pledge The babe's and woman's privilege, No duties and a thousand rights? Besides, defect love's flow incites, As water in a well will run Only the while 'tis drawn upon. ‘Point de culte sans mystère,’ you say, ‘And what if that should die away?’ Child, never fear that either could 326 Pull from Saint Cupid's face the hood. The follies natural to each Surpass the other's moral reach. Just think how men, with sword and gun, Will really fight, and never run; And all in sport: they would have died, For sixpence more, on the other side! A woman's heart must ever warm At such odd ways: and so we charm By strangeness which, the more they mark, The more men get into the dark. The marvel, by familiar life, Grows, and attaches to the wife By whom it grows. Thus, silly Girl, To John you'll always be the pearl In the oyster of the universe; And, though in time he'll treat you worse, He'll love you more, you need not doubt, And never, never find you out! My Dear, I know that dreadful thought That you've been kinder than you ought. It almost makes you hate him! Yet 'Tis wonderful how men forget, And how a merciful Providence Deprives our husbands of all sense Of kindness past, and makes them deem We always were what now we seem. For their own good we must, you know, However plain the way we go, Still make it strange with stratagem; And instinct tells us that, to them, 'Tis always right to bate their price. Yet I must say they're rather nice, And, oh, so easily taken in To cheat them almost seems a sin! And, Dearest, 'twould be most unfair To John your feelings to compare With his, or any man's; for she Who loves at all loves always; he, Who loves far more, loves yet by fits, And when the wayward wind remits 327 To blow, his feelings faint and drop Like forge-flames when the bellows stop. Such things don't trouble you at all When once you know they're natural. My love to John; and, pray, my Dear, Don't let me see you for a year; Unless, indeed, ere then you've learn'd That Beauties wed are blossoms turn'd To unripe codlings, meant to dwell In modest shadow hidden well, Till this green stage again permute To glow of flowers with good of fruit. I will not have my patience tried By your absurd new-married pride, That scorns the world's slow-gather'd sense, Ties up the hands of Providence, Rules babes, before there's hope of one, Better than mothers e'er have done, And, for your poor particular, Neglects delights and graces far Beyond your crude and thin conceit. Age has romance almost as sweet And much more generous than this Of yours and John's. With all the bliss Of the evenings when you coo'd with him, And upset home for your sole whim, You might have envied, were you wise, The tears within your Mother's eyes, Which, I dare say, you did not see. But let that pass! Yours yet will be, I hope, as happy, kind, and true As lives which now seem void to you. Have you not seen shop-painters paste Their gold in sheets, then rub to waste Full half, and, lo, you read the name? Well, Time, my Dear, does much the same With this unmeaning glare of love. But, though you yet may much improve, In marriage, be it still confess'd, There's little merit at the best. 328 Some half-a-dozen lives, indeed, Which else would not have had the need, Get food and nurture, as the price Of antedated Paradise; But what's that to the varied want Succour'd by Mary, your dear Aunt, Who put the bridal crown thrice by, For that of which virginity, So used, has hope? She sends her love, As usual with a proof thereof— Papa's discourse, which you, no doubt, Heard none of, neatly copied out Whilst we were dancing. All are well, Adieu, for there's the Luncheon Bell. The Wedding Sermon The truths of Love are like the sea For clearness and for mystery. Of that sweet love which, startling, wakes Maiden and Youth, and mostly breaks The word of promise to the ear, But keeps it, after many a year, To the full spirit, how shall I speak? My memory with age is weak, And I for hopes do oft suspect The things I seem to recollect. Yet who but must remember well 'Twas this made heaven intelligible As motive, though 'twas small the power The heart might have, for even an hour, To hold possession of the height Of nameless pathos and delight! II In Godhead rise, thither flow back All loves, which, as they keep or lack, In their return, the course assign'd, Are virtue or sin. Love's every kind, 329 Lofty or low, of spirit or sense, Desire is, or benevolence. He who is fairer, better, higher Than all His works, claims all desire, And in His Poor, His Proxies, asks Our whole benevolence: He tasks, Howbeit, His People by their powers; And if, my Children, you, for hours, Daily, untortur'd in the heart, Can worship, and time's other part Give, without rough recoils of sense, To the claims ingrate of indigence, Happy are you, and fit to be Wrought to rare heights of sanctity, For the humble to grow humbler at. But if the flying spirit falls flat, After the modest spell of prayer That saves the day from sin and care, And the upward eye a void descries, And praises are hypocrisies, And, in the soul, o'erstrain'd for grace, A godless anguish grows apace; Or, if impartial charity Seems, in the act, a sordid lie, Do not infer you cannot please God, or that He His promises Postpones, but be content to love No more than He accounts enough. Account them poor enough who want Any good thing which you can grant; And fathom well the depths of life In loves of Husband and of Wife, Child, Mother, Father; simple keys To what cold faith calls mysteries. III The love of marriage claims, above All other kinds, the name of love, As perfectest, though not so high As love which Heaven with single eye Considers. Equal and entire, Therein benevolence, desire, 330 Elsewhere ill-join'd or found apart, Become the pulses of one heart, Which now contracts, and now dilates, And, both to the height exalting, mates Self-seeking to self-sacrifice. Nay, in its subtle paradise (When purest) this one love unites All modes of these two opposites, All balanced in accord so rich Who may determine which is which? Chiefly God's Love does in it live, And nowhere else so sensitive; For each is all that the other's eye, In the vague vast of Deity, Can comprehend and so contain As still to touch and ne'er to strain The fragile nerves of joy. And then 'Tis such a wise goodwill to men And politic economy As in a prosperous State we see, Where every plot of common land Is yielded to some private hand To fence about and cultivate. Does narrowness its praise abate? Nay, the infinite of man is found But in the beating of its bound, And, if a brook its banks o'erpass, 'Tis not a sea, but a morass. IV No giddiest hope, no wildest guess Of Love's most innocent loftiness Had dared to dream of its own worth, Till Heaven's bold sun-gleam lit the earth. Christ's marriage with the Church is more, My Children, than a metaphor. The heaven of heavens is symbol'd where The torch of Psyche flash'd despair. But here I speak of heights, and heights Are hardly scaled. The best delights Of even this homeliest passion, are 331 In the most perfect souls so rare, That they who feel them are as men Sailing the Southern ocean, when, At midnight, they look up, and eye The starry Cross, and a strange sky Of brighter stars; and sad thoughts come To each how far he is from home. Love's inmost nuptial sweetness see In the doctrine of virginity! Could lovers, at their dear wish, blend, 'Twould kill the bliss which they intend; For joy is love's obedience Against the law of natural sense; And those perpetual yearnings sweet Of lives which dream that they can meet Are given that lovers never may Be without sacrifice to lay On the high altar of true love, With tears of vestal joy. To move Frantic, like comets to our bliss, Forgetting that we always miss, And so to seek and fly the sun, By turns, around which love should run, Perverts the ineffable delight Of service guerdon'd with full sight And pathos of a hopeless want, To an unreal victory's vaunt, And plaint of an unreal defeat. Yet no less dangerous misconceit May also be of the virgin will, Whose goal is nuptial blessing still, And whose true being doth subsist, There where the outward forms are miss'd, In those who learn and keep the sense Divine of ‘due benevolence,’ Seeking for aye, without alloy Of selfish thought, another's joy, And finding in degrees unknown That which in act they shunn'd, their own. For all delights of earthly love 332 Are shadows of the heavens, and move As other shadows do; they flee From him that follows them; and he Who flies, for ever finds his feet Embraced by their pursuings sweet. VI Then, even in love humane, do I Not counsel aspirations high, So much as sweet and regular Use of the good in which we are. As when a man along the ways Walks, and a sudden music plays, His step unchanged, he steps in time, So let your Grace with Nature chime. Her primal forces burst, like straws, The bonds of uncongenial laws. Right life is glad as well as just, And, rooted strong in ‘This I must,’ It bears aloft the blossom gay And zephyr-toss'd, of ‘This I may;’ Whereby the complex heavens rejoice In fruits of uncommanded choice. Be this your rule: seeking delight, Esteem success the test of right; For 'gainst God's will much may be done, But nought enjoy'd, and pleasures none Exist, but, like to springs of steel, Active no longer than they feel The checks that make them serve the soul, They take their vigour from control. A man need only keep but well The Church's indispensable First precepts, and she then allows, Nay, more, she bids him, for his spouse, Leave even his heavenly Father's awe, At times, and His immaculate law, Construed in its extremer sense. Jehovah's mild magnipotence Smiles to behold His children play In their own free and childish way, And can His fullest praise descry 333 In the exuberant liberty Of those who, having understood The glory of the Central Good, And how souls ne'er may match or merge, But as they thitherward converge, Take in love's innocent gladness part With infantine, untroubled heart, And faith that, straight t'wards heaven's far Spring, Sleeps, like the swallow, on the wing. VII Lovers, once married, deem their bond Then perfect, scanning nought beyond For love to do but to sustain The spousal hour's delighted gain. But time and a right life alone Fulfil the promise then foreshown. The Bridegroom and the Bride withal Are but unwrought material Of marriage; nay, so far is love, Thus crown'd, from being thereto enough, Without the long, compulsive awe Of duty, that the bond of law Does oftener marriage-love evoke, Than love, which does not wear the yoke Of legal vows, submits to be Self-rein'd from ruinous liberty. Lovely is love; but age well knows 'Twas law which kept the lover's vows Inviolate through the year or years Of worship pieced with panic fears, When she who lay within his breast Seem'd of all women perhaps the best, But not the whole, of womankind, Or love, in his yet wayward mind, Had ghastly doubts its precious life Was pledged for aye to the wrong wife. Could it be else? A youth pursues A maid, whom chance, not he, did choose, Till to his strange arms hurries she In a despair of modesty. 334 Then, simply and without pretence Of insight or experience, They plight their vows. The parents say ‘We cannot speak them yea or nay; ‘The thing proceedeth from the Lord!’ And wisdom still approves their word; For God created so these two They match as well as others do That take more pains, and trust Him less Who never fails, if ask'd, to bless His children's helpless ignorance And blind election of life's chance. Verily, choice not matters much, If but the woman's truly such, And the young man has led the life Without which how shall e'er the wife Be the one woman in the world? Love's sensitive tendrils sicken, curl'd Round folly's former stay; for 'tis The doom of all unsanction'd bliss To mock some good that, gain'd, keeps still The taint of the rejected ill. VIII Howbeit, though both were perfect, she Of whom the maid was prophecy As yet lives not, and Love rebels Against the law of any else; And, as a steed takes blind alarm, Disowns the rein, and hunts his harm, So, misdespairing word and act May now perturb the happiest pact. The more, indeed, is love, the more Peril to love is now in store. Against it nothing can be done But only this: leave ill alone! Who tries to mend his wife succeeds As he who knows not what he needs. He much affronts a worth as high As his, and that equality Of spirits in which abide the grace 335 And joy of her subjected place; And does the still growth check and blurr Of contraries, confusing her Who better knows what he desires Than he, and to that mark aspires With perfect zeal, and a deep wit Which nothing helps but trusting it. So, loyally o'erlooking all In which love's promise short may fall Of full performance, honour that As won, which aye love worketh at! It is but as the pedigree Of perfectness which is to be That our best good can honour claim; Yet honour to deny were shame And robbery; for it is the mould Wherein to beauty runs the gold Of good intention, and the prop That lifts to the sun the earth-drawn crop Of human sensibilities. Such honour, with a conduct wise In common things, as, not to steep The lofty mind of love in sleep Of over much familiarness; Not to degrade its kind caress, As those do that can feel no more, So give themselves to pleasures o'er; Not to let morning-sloth destroy The evening-flower, domestic joy; Not by uxoriousness to chill The warm devotion of her will Who can but half her love confer On him that cares for nought but her;— These, and like obvious prudences Observed, he's safest that relies, For the hope she will not always seem, Caught, but a laurel or a stream, On time; on her unsearchable Love-wisdom; on their work done well, 336 Discreet with mutual aid; on might Of shared affliction and delight; On pleasures that so childish be They're 'shamed to let the children see, By which life keeps the valleys low Where love does naturally grow; On much whereof hearts have account, Though heads forget; on babes, chief fount Of union, and for which babes are No less than this for them, nay far More, for the bond of man and wife To the very verge of future life Strengthens, and yearns for brighter day, While others, with their use, decay; And, though true marriage purpose keeps Of offspring, as the centre sleeps Within the wheel, transmitting thence Fury to the circumference, Love's self the noblest offspring is, And sanction of the nuptial kiss; Lastly, on either's primal curse, Which help and sympathy reverse To blessings. IX God, who may be well Jealous of His chief miracle, Bids sleep the meddling soul of man, Through the long process of this plan, Whereby, from his unweeting side, The Wife's created, and the Bride, That chance one of her strange, sweet sex He to his glad life did annex, Grows more and more, by day and night, The one in the whole world opposite Of him, and in her nature all So suited and reciprocal To his especial form of sense, Affection, and intelligence, That, whereas love at first had strange Relapses into lust of change, It now finds (wondrous this, but true!) 337 The long-accustom'd only new, And the untried common; and, whereas An equal seeming danger was Of likeness lacking joy and force, Or difference reaching to divorce, Now can the finish'd lover see Marvel of me most far from me, Whom without pride he may admire, Without Narcissus' doom desire, Serve without selfishness, and love ‘Even as himself,’ in sense above Niggard ‘as much,’ yea, as she is The only part of him that's his. I do not say love's youth returns; That joy which so divinely yearns! But just esteem of present good Shows all regret such gratitude As if the sparrow in her nest, Her woolly young beneath her breast, Should these despise, and sorrow for Her five blue eggs that are no more. Nor say I the fruit has quite the scope Of the flower's spiritual hope. Love's best is service, and of this, Howe'er devout, use dulls the bliss. Though love is all of earth that's dear, Its home, my Children, is not here: The pathos of eternity Does in its fullest pleasure sigh. Be grateful and most glad thereof. Parting, as 'tis, is pain enough. If love, by joy, has learn'd to give Praise with the nature sensitive, At last, to God, we then possess The end of mortal happiness, And henceforth very well may wait The unbarring of the golden gate, Wherethrough, already, faith can see That apter to each wish than we 338 Is God, and curious to bless Better than we devise or guess; Not without condescending craft To disappoint with bliss, and waft Our vessels frail, when worst He mocks The heart with breakers and with rocks, To happiest havens. You have heard Your bond death-sentenced by His Word. What, if, in heaven, the name be o'er, Because the thing is so much more? All are, 'tis writ, as angels there, Nor male nor female. Each a stair In the hierarchical ascent Of active and recipient Affections, what if all are both By turn, as they themselves betroth To adoring what is next above, Or serving what's below their love? Of this we are certified, that we Are shaped here for eternity, So that a careless word will make Its dint upon the form we take For ever. If, then, years have wrought Two strangers to become, in thought, Will, and affection, but one man For likeness, as none others can, Without like process, shall this tree The king of all the forest, be, Alas, the only one of all That shall not lie where it doth fall? Shall this unflagging flame, here nurs'd By everything, yea, when reversed, Blazing, in fury, brighter, wink, Flicker, and into darkness shrink, When all else glows, baleful or brave, In the keen air beyond the grave? Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh O'er him who learns the truth by half! Beware; for God will not endure For men to make their hope more pure 339 Than His good promise, or require Another than the five-string'd lyre Which He has vow'd again to the hands Devout of him who understands To tune it justly here! Beware The Powers of Darkness and the Air, Which lure to empty heights man's hope, Bepraising heaven's ethereal cope, But covering with their cloudy cant Its ground of solid adamant, That strengthens ether for the flight Of angels, makes and measures height, And in materiality Exceeds our Earth's in such degree As all else Earth exceeds! Do I Here utter aught too dark or high? Have you not seen a bird's beak slay Proud Psyche, on a summer's day? Down fluttering drop the frail wings four, Missing the weight which made them soar. Spirit is heavy nature's wing, And is not rightly anything Without its burthen, whereas this, Wingless, at least a maggot is, And, wing'd, is honour and delight Increasing endlessly with height. XI If unto any here that chance Fell not, which makes a month's romance, Remember, few wed whom they would. And this, like all God's laws, is good; For nought's so sad, the whole world o'er, As much love which has once been more. Glorious for light is the earliest love; But worldly things, in the rays thereof, Extend their shadows, every one False as the image which the sun At noon or eve dwarfs or protracts. A perilous lamp to light men's acts! By Heaven's kind, impartial plan, Well-wived is he that's truly man 340 If but the woman's womanly, As such a man's is sure to be. Joy of all eyes and pride of life Perhaps she is not; the likelier wife! If it be thus; if you have known, (As who has not?) some heavenly one, Whom the dull background of despair Help'd to show forth supremely fair; If memory, still remorseful, shapes Young Passion bringing Eshcol grapes To travellers in the Wilderness, This truth will make regret the less: Mighty in love as graces are, God's ordinance is mightier far; And he who is but just and kind And patient, shall for guerdon find, Before long, that the body's bond Is all else utterly beyond In power of love to actualise The soul's bond which it signifies, And even to deck a wife with grace External in the form and face. A five years' wife, and not yet fair? Blame let the man, not Nature, bear! For, as the sun, warming a bank Where last year's grass droops gray and dank, Evokes the violet, bids disclose In yellow crowds the fresh primrose, And foxglove hang her flushing head, So vernal love, where all seems dead, Makes beauty abound. Then was that nought, That trance of joy beyond all thought, The vision, in one, of womanhood? Nay, for all women holding good, Should marriage such a prologue want, 'Twere sordid and most ignorant Profanity; but, having this, 'Tis honour now, and future bliss; For where is he that, knowing the height And depth of ascertain'd delight, 341 Inhumanly henceforward lies Content with mediocrities! ~ Coventry Patmore,