classes ::: Place, noun,
children ::: Crossroads (vg)
branches ::: Crossroads

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen


object:Crossroads
object:TXR
class:Place
word class:noun

--- NOTES
rather than the RL crossroads, or seen from otherside instead,
the imagined crossroads that lead to all the places I want to visit.
The Inside of the Tower of MEM, the Universe, is all contained inside that one Tower. And that Tower is a thought of God or something.

--- PLACES


see also ::: the World

see also ::: the_World

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO

the_World

AUTH

BOOKS
The_Tarot_of_Paul_Christian

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.00a_-_Introduction
0_1962-02-03
03.04_-_The_Body_Human
10.05_-_Mind_and_the_Mental_World
10.24_-_Savitri
1.03_-_A_Parable
1.04_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_PROGRESS
1.05_-_2010_and_1956_-_Doomsday?
1.07_-_Hui_Ch'ao_Asks_about_Buddha
1.08_-_The_Change_of_Vision
1.22_-_ON_THE_GIFT-GIVING_VIRTUE
1962_02_03
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_VII
1.jlb_-_Limits
1.tr_-_Begging
1.tr_-_The_Way_Of_The_Holy_Fool
2.07_-_I_Also_Try_to_Tell_My_Tale
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_1
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_2

PRIMARY CLASS

Place
SIMILAR TITLES
Crossroads
Crossroads (vg)

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE

Dei Termini (Latin) Terminal gods; the Hermae or statues of Hermes placed by the Greeks at crossroads. Likewise a general name for divinities presiding over frontiers and boundaries.

Gandhāra. (T. Sa 'dzin; C. Jiantuoluo; J. Kendara; K. Kondara 健馱羅). An ancient center of Indic Buddhism, located in the northwest of the subcontinent in the region of present-day northern Pakistan and southeastern Afghanistan. The Gandhāra region included the entire Peshawar valley up to its border along the Indus River to the east and also extended to include the Swat valley and the region around Gandhāra's central city of TAKsAsILA (Taxila), located near what is today Peshawar, Pakistan. For the five centuries bracketing the beginning of the Common Era, Gandhāra was a cosmopolitan cultural center and a crossroads of the major trade routes between Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, China, and the Indian subcontinent (see SILK ROAD). As traders from these various areas moved through Gandhāra, the region became a place of cultural exchange. Four major empires were centered in Gandhāra: the Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian, Indo-Parthian, and KUSHAN. Tradition claims that AsOKA supported Buddhism in the Gandhāra region during the third century BCE, although the first physical evidence of Buddhism in the region dates from the second and first centuries CE. Gandhāra was conquered by Demetrius I of Bactria around 185 BCE and, although Greek rule in the region was brief, Greek art and culture had an enduring effect on the Gandhāran community. Some of the oldest known Buddhist art comes from this region, more specifically the "Greco-Buddhist" style of sculpture that was a product of this period. The earliest iconographic representations of the Buddha, in fact, are thought by some art historians to come from second century BCE Gandhāra. During the first and second centuries CE, Gandhāra became the principal gateway through which Buddhism traveled to Persia, China, and the rest of Asia. Between the years 50 and 320 CE, the KUSHANs were pushed south out of Central Asia and occupied Gandhāra. Gandhāra, along with KASHMIR, supported and housed a large SARVĀSTIVĀDA community, and Gandhāra was long recognized as a principal bastion of this important MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOL. Around the first or second century CE, when the Sarvāstivāda school was at its peak, the fourth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) is said to have taken place in Gandhāra, sponsored by KANIsKA I, the third king of the Kushan dynasty. According to traditional accounts, there were 499 monks in attendance, although that large number is probably intended to represent the importance of the convention rather than a literal count of the number of people present. VASUMITRA presided over the fourth council, with the noted poet and scholarly exegete AsVAGHOsA assisting him. In addition to recording a new VINAYA, the council also resulted in the compilation of a massive collection of Sarvāstivāda ABHIDHARMA philosophy, known as the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, or "Great Exegesis of Abhidharma," which functions as a virtual encyclopedia of different scholastic perspectives on Buddhism of the time. The VAIBHĀsIKA school of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma exegesis, which based itself on this compilation, was centered in the regions of Gandhāra and Kashmir. The KĀsYAPĪYA and BAHUsRUTĪYA schools added to the significant presence of Buddhism in the region.

Hecate (Greek) Hekate. This goddess, daughter of Perses and Asteria, was given power from Zeus in heaven, earth, and sea. She was a mysterious divinity, popularly represented as the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, haunting crossroads and graveyards, wandering only by night and seen by dogs, whose barking told of her approach. Identified with Artemis and Persephone, she was held to be the same as Selene or Luna in heaven, Artemis or Diana on earth, and Persephone or Proserpina in the underworld; hence she was called Tergemina, Triformis, Triceps, etc. She is the personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic and is one prototype of the Christian Trinity (SD 1:387).

Judah at the crossroads in order to entice the patri¬

law, squatting like a harlot at the crossroads), God

stupa. (P. thupa; T. mchod rten; C. ta; J. to; K. t'ap 塔). In Sanskrit, "reliquary"; a structure, originally in the shape of a hemispherical mound, that contains the relics (sARĪRA) or possessions of the Buddha or a saint, often contained within a reliquary container. In the MAHĀPARINIBBĀNASUTTA, the Buddha says that after he has passed away, his relics should be enshrined in a stupa erected at a crossroads, and that the stupa should be honored with garlands, incense, and sandalwood paste. Because of a dispute among his lay followers after his death, his relics were said to be divided into ten portions and distributed to ten groups or individuals, each of whom constructed a stupa to enshrine their share of the relics in their home region. Two of these sites were the Buddha's home city of KAPILAVASTU, and KUsINAGARĪ, the place of his death, as well as RĀJAGṚHA and VAIsĀLĪ. The original stupas were later said to have been opened and the relics collected by the emperor AsOKA in the third century BCE so that he could subdivide them for a larger number of stupas in order to accumulate merit and protect his realm. Asoka is said to have had eighty-four thousand stupas constructed. The stupa form eventually spread throughout the Buddhist world (and during the twentieth century into the Western hemisphere), with significant variations in architectural form. For example, the dagoba of Sri Lanka and the so-called "PAGODA" (derived from a Portuguese transcription of the Sanskrit BHAGAVAT ["blessed," "fortunate"] or the Persian but kadah ["idol house"]), which are so ubiquitous in East Asia, are styles of stupas. The classical architectural form of the stupa in India consisted of a circular platform surmounted by a hemisphere made of brick within which the relics were enshrined. At the summit of the hemisphere, one or more parasols were affixed. A walking path (see CAnKRAMA) enclosed by a railing was constructed around the stupa, to allow for clockwise circumambulation of the reliquary. Each of these architectural elements would evolve in form and eventually become imbued with rich symbolic meaning as the stupa evolved in India and across Asia. The relics enshrined in the stupa are considered by Buddhists to be living remnants of the Buddha (or the relevant saint) and pilgrimage to, and worship of, stupas has long been an important type of Buddhist practice. For all Buddhist schools, the stupa became a reference point denoting the Buddha's presence in the landscape. Although early texts and archeological records link stupa worship with the Buddha's life and especially the key sites in his career, stupas are also found at places that were sacred for other reasons, often through an association with a local deity. Stupas were constructed for past buddhas and for prominent disciples (sRĀVAKA) of the Buddha. Indeed, stupas dedicated to disciples of the Buddha may have been especially popular because the monastic rules stipulate that donations to such stupas became the property of the monastery, whereas donations to stupas of the Buddha remained the property of the Buddha, who continued to function as a legal resident of most monasteries. By the seventh century, the practice of enshrining the physical relics of the Buddha ceases to appear in the Indian archeological record. Instead, one finds stupas filled with small clay tablets that have been stamped or engraved with a four-line verse (often known by its first two words YE DHARMĀ) that was regarded as conveying the essence of the Buddha's teaching: "For those factors that are produced through causes, the TATHĀGATA has set forth their causes (HETU) and also their cessation (NIRODHA). Thus has spoken the great renunciant." For the MAHĀYĀNA, the stupa conveyed a variety of meanings, such as the Buddha's immortality and buddhahood's omnipresence, and served a variety of functions, such as a site of textual revelation and a center guaranteeing rebirth in a PURE LAND. Stupas were also pivotal in the social history of Buddhism: these monuments became magnets attracting monastery building and votive construction, as well as local ritual traditions and regional pilgrimage. The economics of Buddhist devotion at these sites generated income for local monasteries, artisans, and merchants. The great stupa complexes (which often included monasteries with endowed lands, a pilgrimage center, a market, and support from the state) were essential sites for the Buddhist polities of Asia. See CAITYA and entries for specific stupas, including FAMENSI, RATNAGIRI, SĀNCĪ, SHWEDAGON, SVAYAMBHu/SVAYAMBHuNĀTH, THIÊN MỤ TỰ, THuPĀRĀMA.



QUOTES [3 / 3 - 351 / 351]


KEYS (10k)

   1 Taigu Ryokan
   1 Israel Regardie
   1 Federico Garcia Lorca

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   6 Sherwood Smith
   6 Haruki Murakami
   6 Anonymous
   5 Stephen King
   4 Shannon L Alder
   3 Woody Allen
   3 Taigu Ryokan
   3 Rainer Maria Rilke
   3 Paulette Jiles
   3 Neil Gaiman
   3 Mary Oliver
   3 Kevin Hearne
   3 J R Ward
   3 Jodi Picoult
   3 Federico Garcia Lorca
   2 William Ritter
   2 Tony Robbins
   2 Stephen Cope
   2 Shelby Foote
   2 Seanan McGuire

1:I know there is no straight road
   No straight road in this world
   Only a giant labyrinth
   Of intersecting crossroads
   ~ Federico Garcia Lorca,
2:The Way Of The Holy Fool ::: At the crossroads this year, after
begging all day
I lingered at the village temple.
Children gather round me and
whisper,
"The crazy monk has come back
to play."
~ Taigu Ryokan,
3: The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species. ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, Intro,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove
2:We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove
3:Every gathering of Americans-whether a few on the porch of a crossroads store or massed thousands in a great stadium-is the possessor of a potentially immeasurable influence on the future. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove
4:Main Street, U.S.A. is America at the turn of the century&
5:You know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into - the good restaurant or the awful one. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
6:Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove
7:Down the street the dogs are barking And the day is getting dark. As the night comes in a-falling, The dogs´ll lose their bark And the silent night will shatter From the sounds inside my mind, For I´m one to many mornings And a thousand miles behind. From the crossroads of my doorstep, My eyes they start to fade, As I turn my head back to the room Where my love and I have laid. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove
8:At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty three that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
9:You may be at a crossroads in your life. You may have issues to deal with; people you need to forgive. You can go one of the two ways. You can ignore what you now know to be true and keep burying that bitterness in your life, pushing it deeper and allowing it to poison and contaminate you and those around you. Or you can make a much better choice by getting it out in the open and asking God to help you to totally forgive and let it all go. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove
10:Our life crises tell us that we need to break free of beliefs that no longer serve our personal development. These points at which we must choose to change or to stagnate are our greatest challenges. Every new crossroads means we enter into a new cycle of change - whether it be adopting a new health regimen or a new spiritual practice. And change inevitably means letting go of familiar people and places and moving on to another stage of life. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
11:Our life crises tell us that we need to break free of beliefs that no longer serve our personal development. These points at which we must choose to change or to stagnate are our greatest challenges. Every new crossroads means we enter into a new cycle of change - whether it be adopting a new health regimen or a new spiritual practice. And change inevitably means letting go of familiar people and places and moving on to another stage of life. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
12:On Nov. 6, the day before my 94th birthday, our nation will hold one of the most critical elections in my lifetime. We are at a crossroads and there are profound moral issues at stake. I strongly urge you to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms. The Bible speaks clearly on these crucial issues. Please join me in praying for America, that we will turn our hearts back toward God. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Lares of the Crossroads ~ Colleen McCullough,
2:I stood at a crossroads and fate came to meet me. ~ Liz Greene,
3:Earth is indeed a crossroads in our galaxy. ~ Elizabeth Clare Prophet,
4:It’s a crossroads, Bryce. Which way are you going to go? ~ Riley Hart,
5:Texas is the crossroads of the world. Everything here is big. ~ Bobby Lee,
6:beings of the crossroads are ambivalent; they are capricious. ~ Gordon White,
7:Demons wait at crossroads attempting to influence our decisions. ~ April Smith,
8:Our world is at the crossroads. We have a choice, right and wrong. ~ LL Cool J,
9:We're at the crossroads, ... where we need to win to stay alive. ~ Randy Johnson,
10:When you feel life at crossroads,
you need higher perspective view. ~ Toba Beta,
11:To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be a crossroads. ~ Gloria E Anzald a,
12:To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be a crossroads. ~ Gloria E Anzaldua,
13:In our eyes the roads are endless. Two are crossroads of the shadow. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca,
14:Every thought leads me back to crossroads of patience, forgiveness and love. ~ Shannon L Alder,
15:Revolt and revolution both wind up at the same crossroads: the police, or folly. ~ Albert Camus,
16:Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such. ~ George Saunders,
17:It's been a long time coming but the reality is that this process is at a crossroads. ~ Gerry Adams,
18:The intersection of religion and world politics has often been a bloody crossroads. ~ Elliott Abrams,
19:A pilgrim is someone who gets moving in life because he realizes he is at a crossroads. ~ Nilton Bonder,
20:Stand at the crossroads if you will, but if you'll not choose, I'll move on without you ~ Jacqueline Carey,
21:Every relationship that has hit a crossroads has asked, “What is it that you want from me? ~ Shannon L Alder,
22:Al Gore may think Medicare is at a crossroads, but his plan puts it on a highway to bankruptcy. ~ Dan Bartlett,
23:I envy the trees that grow at crossroads. They are never forced to decide which way to go... ~ Margarita Engle,
24:If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads. ~ Ann Patchett,
25:When I turned 30, I knew my life was at a crossroads. It was either over, or I was going to restart. ~ Glenn Beck,
26:The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,
27:Every day is a crossroads. Every day is a chance to change your life and our world for the better. ~ Hillary Clinton,
28:like travelers attacked at crossroads; those that stay in the middle of the road come to no harm. ~ Angela J Townsend,
29:We have to get used to the idea that at the most important crossroads in our life there are no signs. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
30:Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism. ~ Rosa Luxemburg,
31:The perfect position for myth is at a crossroads: its genius radiates out in many different directions. ~ Dr. Martin Shaw,
32:I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it. ~ Jodi Picoult,
33:the country sat at a defining crossroads, ready to veer in one direction, but just as able to choose another, it ~ Jay Winik,
34:We humans have come to a crossroads in our history: we can either destroy the world or create a good future. ~ Sakyong Mipham,
35:Earth is the crossroads of every possible alien. We're the McDonald's next to the highway of the galaxy. ~ Katherine Applegate,
36:we are at the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty ~ Richard Siken,
37:At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future tradition has placed 10 000 men to guard the past ~ Maurice Maeterlinck,
38:Not often, but every once in a while, God brings us to a major turning point — a great crossroads in our life. ~ Oswald Chambers,
39:We stand at a crossroads. One path leads to despair, the other to destruction. Let's hope we make the right choice. ~ Woody Allen,
40:At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck,
41:I think New York will always be this incredible international crossroads, and I don't think that will ever change. ~ Liev Schreiber,
42:We stand at a crossroads. Idolatry looms. Traditional values in jeopardy. Truth under siege and virtue abandoned. ~ Gregory Maguire,
43:Together we had found our way to that crossroads of self-love and self-loathing that is the modern madness most in vogue. ~ Dean Koontz,
44:I know there is no straight road No straight road in this world Only a giant labyrinth Of intersecting crossroads ~ Federico Garcia Lorca,
45:Night was falling across the trampled rye. Nine thousand men had been killed or wounded in the fight for the crossroads, ~ Bernard Cornwell,
46:I know there is no straight road
   No straight road in this world
   Only a giant labyrinth
   Of intersecting crossroads
   ~ Federico Garcia Lorca,
47:Two days until Halloween, or, as the not-so-gentle folks in Crossroads, Mississippi, liked to say…two days until hell came calling. ~ Cynthia Eden,
48:I know there is no straight road
No straight road in this world
Only a giant labyrinth
Of intersecting crossroads ~ Federico Garc a Lorca,
49:The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas' mysterious routes back to his native Guinea. ~ Jacques Roumain,
50:Every journey taken always includes the path not taken, the detour through hell, the crossroads of indecision and the long way home. ~ Shannon L Alder,
51:Some people we know in our lives come up to a crossroads, and they could go left or right, and then end up in a totally different place. ~ Jason Momoa,
52:The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location. ~ Flannery O Connor,
53:I see myself at crossroads in my life, mapless, lacking bits of knowledge - then, the Moon breaks through, lights up the path before me. ~ John J Geddes,
54:There were moments in which a person reached a crossroads, when something happened, out of the blue, to change the course of life's events. ~ Kate Morton,
55:...I see myself at crossroads in my life, mapless, lacking bits of knowledge - then, the Moon breaks through, lights up the path before me... ~ John Geddes,
56:When you find yourself at yet another crossroads, sorting out your best next step, it’s as useful to know what you don’t want as what you do. ~ Kate Bolick,
57:Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess. ~ Heinrich Heine,
58:Most of us are one of two things: blind or chicken-shit. We wouldn't know a crossroads in our lives if it had a set of stoplights and a Denny's. ~ Larry Brooks,
59:And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade. ~ Jacqueline Carey,
60:How many crossroads are you allowed to have in life? I seem to have a lot of crossroads. I think maybe I crossed back across the same road too often. ~ Queen Latifah,
61:Brevis arrived at the crossroads tugging at a rope. The rope was attached to a bearded, horned, evil-eyed billy goat which Brevis was taking to market to sell. ~ Neil Gaiman,
62:When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads. ~ Ann Patchett,
63:And naturally she wanted to believe she would have been a hero, when push came to shove. But you never knew what path you'd take until you got to that crossroads. ~ Jodi Picoult,
64:(when Sabastain asks for a mandake root harvested by the the new moon at crossroads, Garnet responds)......

Why not just ask for it grown under a gallows? ~ Tate Hallaway,
65:Crossroads, what a disaster. Hundreds of millions of dollars wasted and no one is held responsible....people ought to be asking, 'What are you in business for?' ~ Patrick Caddell,
66:Visions of McDonald's restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through my brain. I don't believe in saturation. We're thinking and talking worldwide. ~ Ray Kroc,
67:And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar. ~ Mary Oliver,
68:I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it. ~ Star Jones,
69:When you are having trouble making a decision or are at a crossroads in your life and are confused about which path to take, cry out to God and ask for His guidance. ~ Jacklyn Zeman,
70:I must admit that I remain endlessly fascinated by the small crossroads of life, the forks in the road, seldom indicated, rarely a road sign. Only visible in retrospect. ~ Deon Meyer,
71:The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at crossroads. ~ Flann O Brien,
72:Edward, it will take time to find a willing and acceptable match, won't it? Decent men do not hang about at crossroads just waiting for ruined women to take them home. ~ Victoria Dahl,
73:He would still be that man with whom she had sat on a rooftop at the Crossroads. A man who would have been hers if the stars constellated a different design for her heart. ~ Elise Kova,
74:Prisons! Prisons! Prisons, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible since they are the crossroads of all the malediction in the world. One cannot commit evil in evil. ~ Jean Genet,
75:Homecomer, hitcher, phantom rider,
White lady wants what’s been denied her,
Gather-grim knows what you fear the most,
But best keep away from the crossroads ghost. ~ Seanan McGuire,
76:Indecision is the reluctance or inability to pass a judgment on an issue under consideration. Indecision means you have come to crossroads and you cannot make your mind. ~ Israelmore Ayivor,
77:Margaret Mearle, daughter of the Count of Crossroads, had been Catherine’s closest bosom friend since they were toddlers. Unfortunately, they had never much liked each other. ~ Marissa Meyer,
78:The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads. ~ Shelby Foote,
79:The Vatican remained the crossroads in the plot to kill Hitler: all roads truly led to Rome, to the desk with a simple crucifix overlooking the fountains on St. Peter’s Square. ~ Mark Riebling,
80:It was as if he had just seen a door open to another place, somewhere worlds away where hanged men blew in the wind at every crossroads, where witches shrieked overhead in the night. ~ Neil Gaiman,
81:Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end... and knowing there’s so much worth saving. ~ Stephen King,
82:What had
seemed so simple then seemed so complicated now.
Doors had closed and opportunities had opened. She
felt lost, at a crossroads, not knowing which path to
take. ~ Lorraine Heath,
83:And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful-

how the mind clings to the road it knows,
rushing through crossroads, sticking

like lint to the familiar. ~ Mary Oliver,
84:It is a poem about the necessity of choosing that somehow, like its author, never makes a choice itself—that instead repeatedly returns us to the same enigmatic, leaf-shadowed crossroads. ~ David Orr,
85:Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end . . . and knowing there’s so much worth saving. ~ Stephen King,
86:They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is--well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads. ~ G K Chesterton,
87:Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett,
88:Mackenzies buried a rapist at a crossroads, with a spear thrust in the soil above; and they buried him living when they could, as a sacrifice to turn aside the anger of the Earth Powers. ~ S M Stirling,
89:We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands. ~ Carl Sagan,
90:I believe that the trans movement is at a crossroads. We have achieved an unprecedented level of visibility in the last couple of years. However, that's not the same thing as equality. ~ Chelsea Manning,
91:Remember that the pharynx is at a crossroads from which leads off, at the top, the passage to the mouth cavity and the passage to the nasal cavity, and below, the passage to the larynx. ~ Roman Jakobson,
92:This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, a nd you will find rest for your souls.” JEREMIAH 6:16 NIV ~ Anonymous,
93:I’ve found that life is a series of crossroads, dead-ends and U-turns. There is no real destination. There is no goal to end all goals. As long as we’re living, we’ll always keep driving. ~ Krista Ritchie,
94:When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born. ~ John Henrik Clarke,
95:Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end . . . and knowing there’s so much worth saving. That ~ Stephen King,
96:The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain. ~ David Brooks,
97:At key crossroads in his life, Vernon Davis has continued to make a conscious choice to grow as a person and player. His determination through adversity since his childhood days is commendable. ~ Hannah Storm,
98:I just get focused on whatever is in front of me. When I was filming Crossroads, it had all my focus. Now I'm all focused on finishing my recording so I can get that out. It's just day by day. ~ Taryn Manning,
99:I’ve found that life is a series of crossroads, dead-ends and U-turns. There is no real destination. There is no goal to end all goals. As long as we’re living, we’ll always keep driving. I’m ~ Krista Ritchie,
100:Every gathering of Americans-whether a few on the porch of a crossroads store or massed thousands in a great stadium-is the possessor of a potentially immeasurable influence on the future. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower,
101:This [2016] is not simply another four-year election. This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over our government. ~ Donald Trump,
102:with a mouth of lush church grass I stand at the crossroads drinking the light of faith on the shores of eternity I lead my body, on like a dun horse in the dusk toward the forest somewhere ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,
103:More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. ~ Woody Allen,
104:More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. ~ Woody Allen,
105:Adversity is a crossroads that makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise. Every time he chooses character, he becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequences. ~ John C Maxwell,
106:Libraries—like train stations, crossroads, church belfries, and attics—are places where worlds leak together, where the Management, in its ineffable wisdom, tends not to look too closely on what goes on. ~ Daniel Polansky,
107:The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins. ~ Will Durant,
108:I know there is no straight road No straight road in this world Only a giant labyrinth Of intersecting crossroads ~ Federico Garcia Lorca Photo Sigfrid Lundberg (streetphoto from Lund, Sweden)Fab Friday to us all .... 🍂☀️🍂💃,
109:More than any other time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. —Woody Allen ~ James Barrat,
110:I channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors. ~ Jim Shepard,
111:Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you've had a bunch of bad days and there's different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music. ~ Taylor Swift,
112:Well, I'm at some kind of crossroads in my life and I don't know which way to take. It's not about money, I mean, because I'm established enough now as a writer to get a reasonable advance if I wanted to do fiction. ~ Helen Garner,
113:Main Street, U.S.A. is America at the turn of the century - the crossroads of an era. The gas lamps and the electric lamp--the horse-drawn car and auto car. Main Street is everyone's hometown- the heart line of America. ~ Walt Disney,
114:For some things, there is no forgiving or unforgiving. They are simply a crossroads, and a direction taken, whether I would or no. Someone else set my feet on that path. All I can control is every step I take after that. ~ Robin Hobb,
115:Our nation stands at the crossroads of liberty. Crushing national debt, rampant illegal immigration, insane business regulations and staggering national unemployment are pushing our nation into unchartered territory. ~ James Lankford,
116:Plants can help you they have a very strong vibrational force. If you've made friends with several of them, they will come and aid you when you've reached that critical moment and you're at a crossroads of knowledge. ~ Frederick Lenz,
117: today's begging is finished; at the crossroads
  i wander by the side of hachiman shrine
  talking with some children.
  last year, a foolish monk;
  this year, no change!
  
~ Taigu Ryokan, Begging
,
118:Each person on the planet has a small set of rules they silently repeat to themselves when they find themselves at a crossroads, and it's these core beliefs that structure their thinking and give them impetus to choose. ~ Michael Lopp,
119:The band played up and down valleys still in those days unknown except to a few real-estate visionaries, little crossroads places where one day houses'd sprawl and the rates of human affliction in all categories zoom. ~ Thomas Pynchon,
120:Humanity is at a crossroads. We can continue down the current path of greed, consumerism, oligarchy, poverty, war, racism, and environmental degradation. Or we can lead the world in moving in a very different direction. ~ Bernie Sanders,
121:What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as thought he were rewriting the past.It was the only way ~ Haruki Murakami,
122:What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were rewriting the past. It was the only way. ~ Haruki Murakami,
123:The Way Of The Holy Fool ::: At the crossroads this year, after
begging all day
I lingered at the village temple.
Children gather round me and
whisper,
"The crazy monk has come back
to play."
~ Taigu Ryokan,
124:Probably the most important element in intricacy is centering. Good small parks typically have a place somewhere within them commonly understood to be the center—at the very least a main crossroads and pausing point, a climax. ~ Jane Jacobs,
125:I've been there for so many crossroads in American history. My whole political life spans the birth of the environmental movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, putting an end to unjust wars, and so and so. ~ Barbara Boxer,
126:It was a kind love, a selfless love. I was a dreamer, and you were a raveler. We met at the crossroads. I saw love in your smile, and I recognized it for the firs time in my life. But you had a plane to catch, and I was already home. ~ Lang Leav,
127:We are at a crossroads over how the federal government in Washington and state legislatures and city councils across the land allocate their financial resources. Which fork we take will say a lot about Americans and our values. ~ George McGovern,
128:It was a kind love, a selfless love. I was a dreamer, and you were a traveler. We met at the crossroads. I saw love in your smile, and I recognized it for the first time in my life. But you had a plane to catch, and I was already home. ~ Lang Leav,
129:Treacherous are the Crossroads; by which direction you seek May not be the course intended. Either path will bring about a selection of self-deliberated anguish.’ ~ Kathryn Le Veque Chronicles of Christian St. John Vl. IV, p. CCII ~ Kathryn Le Veque,
130:As if she read Dana's thoughts, the wolf spoke softly.
"Stand beside the earliest crossroads and ask of the old paths, where is the way to good?"
"I'm afraid," Dana's voice shook. "Not for me but for you. I don't want you to die. ~ O R Melling,
131:Parisians are so besotted, so silly and so naturally inept that a street player, a seller of indulgences, a mule with its cymbals,a fiddler in the middle of a crossroads, will draw more people than would a good Evangelist preacher. ~ Francois Rabelais,
132:No one dreamed them up. No one needed to. The vampire clawing at the window, the werewolf prowling the moor, the hags at the crossroads – they lurked here already. Some nightmares are ancient, as old as civilization. Some are older still. ~ Robert Dunbar,
133:We're at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism. ~ Newt Gingrich,
134:If we do nothing...and turn our backs now, in future generations, when rank corruption masquerades as libery, it will be upon our shoulders. True patriots will then ask why we who were there to witness our nation at the crossroads did nothing. ~ David Liss,
135:To quote Patrick Modiano, whom you you seem to like, in Villa Triste, 'There are mysterious beings, always the same, who watch over us at each crossroads in our lives.' Let's just say that, unintentionally, I have been one of those beings. ~ Antoine Laurain,
136:Today we are at a crossroads. The technology is available for two great options: The massive surveillance state, or the renewed freedom of a deeply-involved citizenry thinking independently and holding the government to the highest standards. ~ Oliver DeMille,
137:our entire lives aren’t planned out for us—just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we’re meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path. ~ Kay Hooper,
138:The Way Of The Holy Fool
At the crossroads this year, after
begging all day
I lingered at the village temple.
Children gather round me and
whisper,
"The crazy monk has come back
to play."

~ Taigu Ryokan, The Way Of The Holy Fool
,
139:Every life is a journey filled with crossroads. And then there are the bridges, those truly frightening choices that span what always was, from what will forever be. Finding the courage, or stupidity, to cross such bridges changes everything ~ Michael J Sullivan,
140:I am at a crossroads; I have always been against armed opposition... I have chosen civil disobedience. But I will apologize to my people if there are funerals coming out of prisons. I will criticize myself and I won't be the mayor of Diyarbakir. ~ Osman Baydemir,
141:That Morocco is not just another Arab country. It’s a crossroads – between Africa and Europe, and between Arabia and what lies west, beyond the Atlantic. But...’ Ghita said, her voice touched with an undertone of pride, ‘beyond all else it’s Berber. ~ Tahir Shah,
142:Every life is a journey filled with crossroads. And then there are the bridges, those truly frightening choices that span what always was, from what will forever be. Finding the courage, or stupidity, to cross such bridges changes everything. ~ Michael J Sullivan,
143:A crossroads can be something special, a compass with arms reaching to places you might never find the way to again; places that might exist, or might have existed once, or might exist someday, depending on whether or not you decide to look for them. ~ Kate Milford,
144:Does not  l wisdom call?         Does not  m understanding raise her voice? 2    On  n the heights beside the way,         at the crossroads she takes her stand; 3    beside  o the gates in front of  p the town,         at the entrance of the portals she ~ Anonymous,
145:Literally sold his soul? Like, ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ Robert Johnson at the crossroads—” “Like Mephistopheles and your namesake, or the violinist Niccolò Paganini, or the Rolling Stones, yes, exactly.” She paused. “Forget I said that last one. ~ Craig Schaefer,
146:THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE CROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATION Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOR INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE From this place words may fly abroad NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND ~ Paulette Jiles,
147:Janus and his doorways. He would have you believe that all choices are black or white, yes or no, in or out. In fact, it's not that simple. Whenever you reach the crossroads, there are always at least three ways to go...four if you count going backward. ~ Rick Riordan,
148:At each point in our lives, we are at a crossroads. We are the fruit of our past and we are the architects of our future... If you want to know your past, look at your present circumstances. If you want to know your future, look at what is in your mind. ~ Matthieu Ricard,
149:Markets are as old as the crossroads. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping. ~ Howard Rheingold,
150:Well,” said Ruth, when the sounds of the bells had died away, “when you eight-year-olds kill Evil here in Nuremberg, be sure to bury it at a crossroads and drive a stake through its heart—or you just might see it again at the next full moooooooooooooooooon. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
151:I have also just finished three weeks on a soap opera in England. The soap opera is a rather famous one called Crossroads. It was first on television 25 years ago, and it has recently been brought back. I play the part of a businessman called David Wheeler. ~ Jeremy Bulloch,
152:Man is born as a seed; he can become a flower, he may not. It all depends on you, what you do with yourself; it all depends on you whether you grow or you don´t. It is your choice- and each moment the choice has to be faced; each moment you are on the crossroads. ~ Rajneesh,
153:There are two ways to go when you hit that crossroads in your life: There is the bad way, when you sort of give up, and then there is the really hard way, when you fight back. I went the hard way and came out of it okay. Now, I'm sitting here and doing great. ~ Matthew Perry,
154:1995 book Capitalism at a Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems, “[I]t is very difficult to remove cost from a business model aimed at higher-income customers without affecting quality or integrity. ~ Peter H Diamandis,
155:Reaper came for all of us Jerked us up from the brine Slipped out from his bony fingers Landed on our feet just fine Took four steps to Freedom Took four souls to the line Spat at the Devil at the Crossroads Drank our sins with sweet, sweet wine —Death, Devil and Sin ~ Rhys Ford,
156:I think most people who have suffered great losses in their lives—great tragedies—come to a crossroads. Maybe not right then, but when the shock wears off. It may be months later; it may be years. They either expand as a result of their experience, or they contract. ~ Stephen King,
157:We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet, the world we live in has changed, and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dylan to be born on. ~ Jon Bon Jovi,
158:I'm standing at a crossroads. I'm not entirely sure what the future holds ... I'm at a crossroads, but it's a little bit different than the crossroads I've been at before because I'm doing what I do because I love it, and doing what I do because it's pure passion. ~ Billy Ray Cyrus,
159:Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming? ~ Eudora Welty,
160:Marion Woodman—the great Jungian analyst and author—says that we come to the mythic Crossroads during “moments in our lives where the unconscious crosses consciousness; where the eternal crosses the transitory; where a higher will demands the surrender of our egos. ~ Elizabeth Lesser,
161:With her back to him, she experienced one of those extraordinary moments that only happened at rare intervals, where an invisible crossroads opened up and she was suddenly absolutely convinced that whatever small decision she made next would impact the rest of her life. ~ Lucy Parker,
162:Standing at the crossroads where I should have been able to see and follow the footprints of the countless patients I had treated over the years, I saw instead only a blank, a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert, as if a sandstorm had erased all trace of familiarity. ~ Paul Kalanithi,
163:I know you're supposed to set goals for yourself. I see all that motivational stuff on television. Think about the future, what's next! But I'm all into the journey. It's fascinating to me. So if I make certain what I want moment to moment, I'm cool at the crossroads. ~ Cassandra Wilson,
164:Crisis doesn’t necessarily make character, but it certainly does reveal it. Adversity is a crossroads that makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise. Every time he chooses character, he becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequences. ~ John C Maxwell,
165:The cross is the crux, the crossroads, the twisted knot at the center of reality, to which all previous history leads and from which all subsequent history flows. By it we know all reality is cruciform—the love of God, the shape of creation, the labyrinth of human history. ~ Peter J Leithart,
166:Mathematics in itself, as I say, is independent of experience. It begins with the free choice of symbols, to which are freely assigned properties, and it then proceeds to deduce the necessary rational implications of those properties. ~ Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads (1972), p. 84.,
167:What I love about design is the artistic and scientific complexity that also becomes useful . . . Great designers also pursue a mission. Great designers design with mankind in mind . . . The crossroads of science and art, innovation and inspiration are what I love about design. ~ Michelle Obama,
168:Finney asked everyone to carve pumpkins and light them to mark the path from the crossroad to the town. The tradition caught on, and soon crossroads all over the world opened on that one night and the mortal realm was haunted by ghosts, goblins, witches, werewolves, and vampires. ~ Colleen Houck,
169:You’re looking at this choice like it’s right versus wrong. It’s not right versus wrong. It’s right versus left. You’re at a crossroads. You can go left or right…both are good options. That’s why it’s so hard to decide. If this was a choice between right and wrong, it would be easy. ~ Tiffany Reisz,
170:The freedom of this place, the ease of it—it feels like none of it is for me or my people. All this belongs to others, to those who do not abide at the crossroads of uncertainty and despair. It belongs to people so used to living free that they cannot imagine a world in which they are not. ~ Sabaa Tahir,
171:I’m reminded of the words of a Jungian analyst who spoke to a group of women about just such crossroads. “Many of us would just as soon have our choices made for us,” she said, “but the heroine, when at a juncture, makes her own choice—the nonheroine lets others make it for her.” Somewhere ~ Joan Anderson,
172:Now we stand at our own crossroads, looking out upon two futures: one with rising temperatures, rising oceans, and rising violence on a hot and strip-mined planet and another with expanding organic harvests, growing solar arrays, and deepening global partnerships on a green and thriving Earth. ~ Van Jones,
173:There comes to everyone a turning point in their lives, M. Poirot. They stand at the crossroads and have to decide. My profession interests me enormously; it is a sorrow - a very great sorrow - to abandon it. But there are other claims. There is, M. Poirot, the happiness of a human being. ~ Agatha Christie,
174:I figure when you come to a crossroads, you have a choice: right turn, left turn, straight ahead. Or you can just pull over to the side of the road and call it quits. But if you've got a good stretch of road up ahead and someone fun to travel it with, why stay stuck in the galdern ditch? ~ Chris Grabenstein,
175:I hate you," I say, the sentiment muffled against his heart, hoping to make it true.
"And I love you," he answers without hesitation, voice resolved and raw as he holds me tighter so I can't break away and react. "A crossroads, my beautiful princess, that was unavoidable—given our situations. ~ A G Howard,
176:He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Take care, lest I have to burn the Crossroads to the ground in a rage.”
Vhalla laughed softly, very well realizing that it may not entirely be a jest. She grinned up at him playfully. “Take care yourself, lest I have to blow the Crossroads away in a rage. ~ Elise Kova,
177:Robert Johnson invented the blues, at midnight, at a crossroads, after selling his soul to the devil. Dorothy Parker invented amusing women, at 2 p.m., in New York’s best cocktail bar, after tipping a busboy 50 cents for a martini. It’s hard not to draw conclusions as to which is the brighter sex. ~ Caitlin Moran,
178:You know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into - the good restaurant or the awful one. ~ Haruki Murakami,
179:So often,” Jackaby said, “people think that when we arrive at a crossroads, we can choose only one path, but—as I have often and articulately postulated—people are stupid. We’re not walking the path. We are the path. We are all of the roads and all of the intersections. Of course you can choose both. ~ William Ritter,
180:No one answered him and he said no more. When we reached the crossroads, he looked hopefully at us as if we might relent and say good-bye. But we did not relent and as I glanced back at him standing alone in the middle of the crossing, he looked as if the world itself was slung around his neck. (3.48) ~ Mildred D Taylor,
181:A lot of courageous noes make for some beautifully brave yeses. And I guess we never know which ones come first until we are standing at the crossroads, right? It may be easier to determine the yes route, knowing it means saying no. Or maybe it is the no you are sure of, so that tell you where to say yes. ~ Annie F Downs,
182:We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion. . . To continue to place our hopes in a social order achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
183:I’m reminded of the words of a Jungian analyst who spoke to a group of women about just such crossroads. “Many of us would just as soon have our choices made for us,” she said, “but the heroine, when at a juncture, makes her own choice—the nonheroine lets others make it for her.” Somewhere in all this muted splendor ~ Joan Anderson,
184:Unless society came out past Flat Rock Crossroads, kept on past Booker T. High School, hung two rights, a left, turned in on Milk Farm Road and found Roland plowing a tobacco field, jerked him off the tractor, warped him and set him back up there without anybody riding by and noticing, blame can't be laid on society. ~ Kaye Gibbons,
185:I am not african.
Africa is in me, but I cannot return.
I am not taina.
Taino is in me, but there is no way back.
I am european.
Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.

I am new. History made me. My first language is Spanglish.
I was born at the crossroads
and I am whole. ~ Aurora Levins Morales,
186:Be willing to go out on a limb with Me. If that is where I am leading you, it is the safet place to be... Your desire to live close to Me is at odds with your attempts to minimize risk. You are approaching a crossroads in your journey. In order to follow Me wholeheartedly, you must relinquish your tendency to play it safe. ~ Sarah Young,
187:Man is always at the crossroads: each step and there is a choice, each step and you can go wrong or right. When sadness and cheerfulness confront you, always choose cheerfulness. When seriousness and playfulness confront you, always choose playfulness. And remember: we become whatsoever we choose. It is simply a question of choice. ~ Osho,
188:I was a terrible student in high school and the thing that the auto accident did - and it happened just as I graduated, so I was at this sort of crossroads - but it made me apply myself more, because I realized more than anything else what a thin thread we hang on in life, and I really wanted to make something out of my life. ~ George Lucas,
189:Indecent Theology is a theology which problematises and undresses the mythical layers of multiple oppression in Latin America, a theology which, finding its point of departure at the crossroads of Liberation Theology and Queer Thinking, will reflect on economic and theological oppression with passion and imprudence. An ~ Marcella Althaus Reid,
190:Our civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? ~ Henry Beston,
191:In a way, it's a great thing that I have the opportunity to stand at the crossroads of Los Angeles and Indianapolis, and stay right here, ... People say that reality is in the footsteps, and not the words. That, as much as anybody, gives you a chance to show your sincerity and commitment, and what you're all about as far as leaving a legacy. ~ Jim Irsay,
192:The irony is that Iraq actually has one of the richest and most sophisticated cuisines in the world. So many classic American or European foods - ceviche, albondigas, even the mint julep - have roots in Iraqi cuisine, which was a crossroads of Persian and Arab and Turkic traditions. The oldest written recipes in the world are from Iraq! ~ Annia Ciezadlo,
193:You may not remember the time you let me go first.
Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go.
Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up.
You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you:

Today, no matter what it takes,
we ride home together. ~ Brian Andreas,
194:I keep trying to tell people. I said, at 40, 45, you're at that crossroads. You really are there. And it's not like you can have gain without pain, but this is it. The days are - like when I wrote this whole thing about, in the beginning of my first magazine. I said, "If you live to be 75 years old, that's 3,900 weekends. That's it." ~ Sylvester Stallone,
195:You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. ~ Tony Robbins,
196:The lucid dream, located as it is at a crossroads between worlds and states of consciousness, places the magician in a unique position to influence the delicate balance of consciousness and the interplay it has on matter in the waking state, and is thus an opportunity to test one’s ability in the art of adjusting the mutable fabric of Maya. ~ Zeena Schreck,
197:Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone. ~ Mary Oliver,
198:You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don’t think about who you have been. Who are you right now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. ~ Tony Robbins,
199:ADIEU

The glimmer farther away than the head
The heart-skip
On the slope where the air rolls its voice
The spokes of the wheel
the sun in the rut
At the crossroads
near the embankment
a prayer
Some words that are not heard
Nearer the sky
And on its steps
the last square of light

("Adieu") ~ Pierre Reverdy,
200:If I were beginning my career today, I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically, I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television, and I think if I were beginning today, I'd be there. ~ David Attenborough,
201:God, Jaden! You are going to screw yourself into a corner if you don't talk to him. This is like, a crossroads. You're always going to look back and wonder if things could've been different, and this love story is going to turn into a tragedy. Your tragedy. You two deserve a chance to be happy together, and the only thing keeping you apart right now is YOU. ~ Katie Klein,
202:Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940. . . . We ourselves are now at the crossroads. ~ Sir Arthur Harris 1st Baronet,
203:I think most people who have suffered great losses in their lives—great tragedies—come to a crossroads. Maybe not right then, but when the shock wears off. It may be months later; it may be years. They either expand as a result of their experience, or they contract. If that sounds New Age-y—and I suppose it does—I don’t apologize. I know what I’m talking about. ~ Stephen King,
204:You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. ~ Anthony Robbins ~ Anthony Robbins,
205:CROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATION Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOR INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE From this place words may fly abroad NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND NOT TO VARY WITH THE WRITER’S HAND BUT FIXED IN TIME HAVING BEEN VERIFIED IN PROOF Friend you stand on sacred ground THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE ~ Paulette Jiles,
206:THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE CROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATION Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOR INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE From this place words may fly abroad NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND NOT TO VARY WITH THE WRITER’S HAND BUT FIXED IN TIME HAVING BEEN VERIFIED IN PROOF Friend you stand on sacred ground ~ Paulette Jiles,
207:At this crucial crossroads of history, we join to call on the world to recognize that violence begets violence; that nuclear proliferation benefits no one; that we can, we will, and we must find other ways to protect ourselves, our nations and our future: for it is not sufficient to have peace in our time, but, instead, we must leave a peaceful world to our children. ~ David Saperstein,
208:On paper, in the colonel's lamp-lit office, when we saw a problem it was easy to fix; all we had to do was direct that corps commanders regulate their columns so as not to delay each other, halting until crossroads were clear, keeping their riles well closed, and so forth. It didn't work that way on the ground, which was neither flat nor clean - nor, as it turned out, dry ~ Shelby Foote,
209:They had emerged, abruptly and conclusively, from Glenwood Canyon and come out into a more open valley containing the crossroads town of Glenwood Springs. From here a highway doubled back east toward the elite paradise of Aspen. Travelers who, like them, chose to continue west toward Utah were confronted by an animated mushroom cloud rising from the interstate’s median. ~ Neal Stephenson,
210:Down the street the dogs are barking And the day is getting dark. As the night comes in a-falling, The dogs´ll lose their bark And the silent night will shatter From the sounds inside my mind, For I´m one to many mornings And a thousand miles behind. From the crossroads of my doorstep, My eyes they start to fade, As I turn my head back to the room Where my love and I have laid. ~ Bob Dylan,
211:Sara Blair's Harlem Crossroads is an important addition to the body of literature that currently exists about Harlem. It brilliantly illuminates the complex relationship between photographic representation and race, and adds new insight into the ways in which this one black community has figured in both the critical and public imaginations. Harlem Crossroads is a tour de force. ~ Dawoud Bey,
212:Snowden has presented us with choices on how we want to move forward into the future. We're at a crossroads and we still don't quite know which path we're going to take. Without Snowden, just about everyone would still be in the dark about the amount of information the government is collecting. I think that Snowden has changed consciousness about the dangers of surveillance. ~ Laura Poitras,
213:At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist. ~ Haruki Murakami,
214:At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty-three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist. ~ Haruki Murakami,
215:Still, in this remote and tiny crossroads, where everyone knew everyone for generations back, George and Willie Muse were different. They were genetic anomalies: albinos born to black parents. Reared at a time when a black man could be jailed or even killed just for looking at a white woman - reckless eyeballing, the charge was officially called - the Muse brothers were doubly cursed. ~ Beth Macy,
216:What was it Danilov told me before I left? Something about how one day I would stand at a crossroads where I could choose the Light, which illuminated the sky with its warmth and golden glow - or the Darkness, which at first seemed soothing and inviting, but which would consume me in its flames. But do I have to wait for that crossroads? Isn't it present at every moment of my life? ~ Peter H Fogtdal,
217:I never had, and still do not have, the perception of feeling my personal identity. I appear to myself as the place where something is going on, but there is no ‘I’, no ‘me.’ Each of us is a kind of crossroads where things happen. The crossroads is purely passive; something happens there. A different thing, equally valid, happens elsewhere. There is no choice, it is just a matter of chance. ~ Anonymous,
218:run run run Hermione. You have in your hands a message and a token...run and run and run and run Hermione. You know running and running and running that the messenger will take (lampadephoros) your message in its fervour and you will sink down exhausted...run,run, Hermione. For the message-bearer next in line has turned against you...dead, dead or forgotten. Hecate at crossroads, a destruction... ~ H D,
219:Why don’t you just leave? Leave and live your life the way you want to. You’re free to make your own choices.” “No,” he said. “Freedom is an illusion. We are bound by restraints on every turn. Family, clan, religion, morals, duties; all those are restraints. For someone on the crossroads of worlds, you’re naive.” “If you can’t have your freedom, then what’s the point of all this?” “Give ~ Ilona Andrews,
220:I'm always looking for those places where you can slam really disparate people up against one another, and they have to deal with each other. There are very few crossroads anymore. We talk about this country as this big melting pot, but it's a mosaic. There's all these pieces, they're next to each other, they're not necessarily mixing. And I'm looking for those spaces where people actually do mix. ~ Jenji Kohan,
221:When others hurt us in ways we don't deserve, at some point we will come to the crossroads of decision. We will have to look our pain square in the face and ask, "Am I going to hang on to my anger and do violence to myself, or am I going to forgive those who have wounded me? Am I going to allow bitterness to poison and putrefy my soul, or am I going to invite God to empower me to let the anger go?" ~ Pam W Vredevelt,
222:It’s a crossroads, Bryce. Which way are you going to go?” Nick finally repeated the lines from his dream. “Whichever way you are,” he replied. He’d do anything for his man. Go anywhere. Being with Nick was where he was supposed to be. “You lead and I’ll follow. I’m right here with you, Bryce. Always.” “Nah, I don’t need to lead, we’ll go together.” Together, the way they’d done everything since they met. ~ Riley Hart,
223:Paulinus lived communion above all through a pronounced practice of spiritual friendship. He was truly a master in this, making his life a crossroads of elect spirits: from Martin of Tours to Jerome, from Ambrose to Augustine, from Delphinus of Bordeaux to Nicetas of Remesiana, from Victricius of Rouen to Rufinus of Aquileia, from Pammachius to Sulpicius Severus and many others, more or less well known. ~ Benedict XVI,
224:Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for. ~ David Mamet,
225:6. Bede suggests a corollary to #5, and this is a suggestion that both Brian and I really liked: “Let go of the attempt to eliminate risk from these decisions and actions.” The presence of a sense of risk is only an indication that you’re at an important crossroads. Risk cannot be eliminated, and the attempt to eliminate it will only lead you back to paralysis. In important dharma decisions, we never get to 100 percent certitude. ~ Stephen Cope,
226:crossroads about the same time tomorrow. Ashton spent a few moments chattering about her excuse for being away from Mont Royal; it also involved staying with a friend, a nonexistent one. Madeline heard Ashton’s voice, but few of the words registered. The three women crowded into the chaise, Ashton in the middle. It was evident to Madeline that Orry’s sister didn’t like squeezing against a Negress, but she’d just have to put up with it. ~ John Jakes,
227:You may be at a crossroads in your life. You may have issues to deal with; people you need to forgive. You can go one of the two ways. You can ignore what you now know to be true and keep burying that bitterness in your life, pushing it deeper and allowing it to poison and contaminate you and those around you. Or you can make a much better choice by getting it out in the open and asking God to help you to totally forgive and let it all go. ~ Joel Osteen,
228:George Sand, dreaming beside a path of yellow sand, saw life flowing by. “What is more beautiful than a road?” she wrote. “It is the symbol and the image of an active, varied life” (Consuelo, vol. II, p. 116). Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows. Thoreau said that he had the map of his fields engraved in his soul. ~ Gaston Bachelard,
229:Homecomer, hitcher, phantom rider,
White lady wants what’s been denied her,
Gather-grim knows what you fear the most,
But best keep away from the crossroads ghost.

Talk to the poltergeist, talk to the haunt,
Talk to the routewitch if it’s what you want.
Reaper’s in the parlor, seizer’s in a host,
But you’d best keep away from the crossroads ghost.

- common clapping rhyme among the ever-lasters of the twilight ~ Seanan McGuire,
230:It would have been easy to shut her eyes and let him kiss her. To have the choice taken from her in one heated, passive moment, with nothing for her to do but comply. But he was asking for more than her artless submission. Not deference, not docility, but...defiance.
'I want you to choose me,' he said, 'well and truly choose me of your own accord. I don't want you to wait at the crossroads in the hopes that I will force the choice upon you. ~ Courtney Milan,
231:Pick a man, any man. Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first twenty-four hours of our relationship. I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroads, some distinct moment at which I can walk away and keep it from happening, but I never do. I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel,
232:It would have been easy to shut her eyes and let him kiss her. To have the choice taken from her in one heated, passive moment, with nothing for her to do but comply. But he was asking for more than her artless submission. Not deference, not docility, but...defiance.

"I want you to choose me," he said, "well and truly choose me of your own accord. I don't want you to wait at the crossroads in the hopes that I will force the choice upon you. ~ Courtney Milan,
233:I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads. ~ Kevin Hearne,
234:I had no clue where my life was going to go from that point. I couldn’t imagine what was supposed to happen next.

All I knew was that I had created this precious little person and would do anything to protect her and ensure her happiness and health.

No matter what, we were in this together. I would do whatever it took to be a good mother. No matter what she might do, what crossroads she might come to in life, I would always be there for her. ~ Jodie Sweetin,
235:along. I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads. ~ Kevin Hearne,
236:It's a strange feeling, holding someone's life in your hands, and it affects people in different ways. Some hate it; they can't stand the burden and get away as quick as they can. Others revel in power. You can think of it as a choice, and it is, but the truth is that for most of the big things, the choice was made long ago. It's only when you reach the crossroads that you discover what it was. It was nothing new to me; I'd been there before. But the others... ~ Benedict Jacka,
237:Here's the way it works. You're going to find yourself at a crossroads.. There's going to be a dcision you'll have to make, an action to be taken or not, a choice between polar opposites. All of what you are and what you have been and what you could be will be measured on your decision. And the consequences? They don't just affect you. They affect everyone. This is not simple life and death - it's about eternity. Yours. Others'. Do not understimate how far this goes. ~ J R Ward,
238:Some people can’t be in your life because they don’t have the power to help you improve it. That doesn’t mean you don’t wish them well, it just means that you are on Chapter ten of your life, when they are on Chapter five. Maybe, it is just enough to meet at the crossroads in life and agree to take separate paths, then with a cheshire grin you both look back and shout, “Beat you to the top of the mountain”, followed by the funnest sprint of both of your lives. ~ Shannon L Alder,
239:Sometimes in life, from out of a myriad of prosaic decisions like what to eat and where to sleep and how to dress, a true crossroads is revealed. In these moments, when the fog of relative irrelevancy lifts and fate rolls out a demand for free will, there is only left or right – no option of four-by-fouring into the underbrush between two paths, no negotiating with the choice that has been presented. You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse. ~ J R Ward,
240:Sometimes in life, from out of the myriad of prosaic decisions like what to eat and where to sleep and how to dress, a true crossroads is revealed. In these moments, when the fog of relative irrelevancy lifts and fate rolls out a demand for free will, there is only left or right—no option of four-by-fouring into the underbrush between two paths, no negotiating with the choice that has been presented. You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse. ~ J R Ward,
241:Soon, the sums pledged at the Koch donor summits began to soar from the $13 million that Sean Noble raised in June 2009 to nearly $900 million at a single fund-raising session in the years that followed. “This Supreme Court decision essentially gave a Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” acknowledged Steven Law, president of American Crossroads, the conservative super PAC formed by the Republican political operative Karl Rove soon after the Citizens United decision. ~ Jane Mayer,
242:I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful. If you believe that God can be bribed, it's also the hallowed ground to make sacrifices. In the literal sense, it's also a place to change direction, but once you've changed it, you're stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that will be. ~ Tayari Jones,
243:The Count of Monte Cristo would put it better: “What a fool I was not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge myself!” Ah, but what dangerous business this is. This artificial hardening is a dangerous crossroads, a bargain with our primal forces that not everyone escapes or can emerge from with clean hands. William James knew that every man is “ready to be savage in some cause.” The distinction, he said, between good people and bad people is “the choice of the cause. ~ Ryan Holiday,
244:our day is a green apple cut in two
i look at you you dont see me
between us is the blind sun
on the steps our torn embrace
you call me i dont hear you between us is the deaf air
in the shop windows my lips are seeking your smile
at the crossroads our trampled kiss
i have given you my hand you dont feel it
emptiness has embraced you
in the squares your tear is seekinng my eyes
in the evening my day dead meets with your dead day
only in sleep we walk the same paths ~ Vasko Popa,
245:On Nov. 6, the day before my 94th birthday, our nation will hold one of the most critical elections in my lifetime. We are at a crossroads and there are profound moral issues at stake. I strongly urge you to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms. The Bible speaks clearly on these crucial issues. Please join me in praying for America, that we will turn our hearts back toward God. ~ Billy Graham,
246:It wasn’t like in the storybooks. No witches lurked at crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread. Genies didn’t burst from lamps, and talking fish didn’t bargain for their lives. In all the world, there was only one place humans could get wishes: Brimstone’s shop. And there was only one currency he accepted. It wasn’t gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy-tale nonsense, and no, it wasn’t souls, either. It was weirder than any of that. It was teeth. ~ Laini Taylor,
247:I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it. Like scanning the newspaper headline at a red light, and therefore missing the rogue van that jumps the line of traffic and causes an accident. Entering a coffee shop on a whim and meeting the man you will marry one day, while he’s digging for change at the counter. Or this one: instructing your husband to meet you, when for hours you have been convincing yourself this is nothing important at all. ~ Jodi Picoult,
248:Luxembourg was and still is today a crossroads, the place where Germany meets the rest of Europe. The country lost part of its territory to Belgium in the 1800s, and during World Wars I and II the German military overran it. Very few people have visited Luxembourg - when I went there and looked at it, I said, my God, it's built on a rock. And within the rock they had a castle, and within the city there's a network of tunnels so the residents could move around and defend themselves. That was of great interest to me. ~ I M Pei,
249:The rain accompanied Faolan as he travelled inland to the crossroads where he must at last make a choice of ways. He tried to fix his mind on the decision ahead, but thoughts of Deord intruded: Deord strong and serene as guard to a solitary, gifted captive; Deord devoting all he had left, after Breakstone, to keeping that wrongly imprisoned man safe from his own brother and from himself. Deord, at the end, fighting one last, heroic battle and dying so Faolan and Ana and the remarkable Drustan could go free. ~ Juliet Marillier,
250:There are those who believe, at times too hastily, that Iran is at core a Western-loving nation that can hardly wait for America to save it from its own bloodthirsty leaders. And there are those who are convinced that Iran, by and large, is a nation of Allah-worshipping, gun-toting terrorists. In truth, Iranians themselves live in a far more complex and schizophrenic reality, at a surreal crossroads between political Islam and satellite television, massive national oil revenues and searing social inequalities. ~ Lila Azam Zanganeh,
251:It surprised M not at all to discover that though the library had technically been closed for hours, there was a small door in the back that was still open, and that it led to a long, hushed corridor, and then into a chamber, which was more like the nave of an immense cathedral than the checkout room in a library. Libraries—like train stations, crossroads, church belfries, and attics—are places where worlds leak together, where the Management, in its ineffable wisdom, tends not to look too closely on what goes on. ~ Daniel Polansky,
252: The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species. ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, Intro,
253:I have worked in the homes of many successful people and have seen firsthand that everyone fails in life, but failure can be a gift if you don't give up and are willing to learn, improve, and grow because of it. You see, failure often serves as a defining moment, a crossroads on the journey of your life. It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment, and a dedication. Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down? ~ Jon Gordon,
254:As Hubbard grew comfortable with this new style of exploring shapes by computer, he also brought to bear an innovative mathematical style, applying the methods of complex analysis, an area of mathematics that had not been applied to dynamical systems before. Everything was coming together, he felt. Separate disciplines within mathematics were converging at a crossroads. He knew it would suffice to see the Mandelbrot set; before he was done, he wanted to understand it, and indeed, he finally claimed that he did understand it. ~ James Gleick,
255:when rock dudes idolize black bluesmen, they always give the bluesmen artistic credit: Robert Johnson didn’t get any money from Clapton’s cover of “Crossroads,” nor did Leadbelly see much benefit from Nirvana’s admiration, but both Johnson and Leadbelly are explicitly cited as artistic influences–they got credit for their work. (In fact, the gesture of giving credit to a black man is what establishes the white dude’s status as elite among other white dude artists.) But black women artists? They don’t even get credit for their work. ~ Anonymous,
256:Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,
257:Nineteenth-century Russian literature, swooning with compassion for the suffering brother, had created for Nerzhin, and for everyone reading it for the first time, the image of a haloed, silvery-haired People, embodying all wisdom, moral purity, and spiritual grandeur.
But that was far away, on bookshelves; it was somewhere else, in the villages and fields at the crossroads of the nineteenth century. The heavens unfolded, the twentieth century came, and those places had long since ceased to exist under Russian skies. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
258:Obi-Wan's young face clouded. "Some secrets are best left concealed, Master." He shook his head. "Besides, why must you always be the one to do the uncovering? You know how the Council feels about these... detours. Perhaps, just once, the uncovering should be left to someone else."

Qui-Gon looked suddenly sad. "No, Obi-Wan. Secrets must be exposed when found. Detours must be taken when encountered. And if you are the one who stands at the crossroads or the place of concealment, you must never leave it to another to act in your place. ~ Terry Brooks,
259:No investigation of the human story in the Americas [...] can ignore the role of Siberia as a crossroads in the migrations of our ancestors. Moreover, despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of its vast area has yet been sampled by archaeologists, we already know that anatomically modern humans were present in both western and Arctic Siberia at least as far back as 45,000 years ago. We know, too, that DNA studies have revealed close genetic relationships between Native Americans and Siberians that speak to a deep and ancient connection. ~ Graham Hancock,
260:When a congressional committee reported in February on the Mississippi bloodshed, it concluded that the nation had arrived at a crossroads and “must either restrain by force these violent demonstrations by the bold, fierce spirits of the whites” or tell newly enfranchised black citizens, “we have made you men and citizens . . . now work out your own salvation as others have done.”70 It had become flagrantly obvious that no common ground existed between the white and black communities in the South, no middle position that allowed for compromise. ~ Ron Chernow,
261:Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. ~ Rosa Luxemburg,
262:I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebody, to anybody. I know that even as the words of George Wallace rang through my Alabama, the black family who lived down the dirt road from our house sent fresh-picked corn and other food to the poor white lady and her three sons, because they knew their daddy had run off, because hungry does not have a color. ~ Rick Bragg,
263:When my grandmother died, I realized that even if I had millions of dollars, I couldn't find her anywhere on earth. My next thought was that I would die. I looked at my life and thought, "I'm afraid to die." I concluded that whether I was afraid or not, I would die. It was one of the most important crossroads in my life, once I realized that no matter what, I would do this thing, the next step was to think, "If I am going to do the most difficult and frightening thing - dying - is it possible that I could do some difficult and impossible things that are good?" ~ Maya Angelou,
264:… bleak, wind-swept fens and moors; empty fields with broken walls and gates hanging off their hinges; a black, ruined church; an open grave; a suicide buried at a lonely crossroads; a fire of bones blazing in the twilit snow; a gallows with a man swinging from its arm; another man crucified upon a wheel; an ancient spear plunged into the mud with a strange talisman, like a little leather finger, hanging from it; a scarecrow whose black rags blew about so violently in the wind that he seemed about to leap into the grey air and fly towards you on vast black wings … ~ Susanna Clarke,
265:I'm at a funny crossroads, personally. I really want to turn my attention away from planet-hunting towards Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program at UC-Berkeley. I'm in this lucky position that my career has been more successful than I could have ever imagined. It's time for me to roll the dice, try something that's a long shot. Younger scientists can't put their eggs in that basket, because if you spend your time on SETI, your chances of success are low. But I have the luxury. There are some experiments we can do to hunt for the great galactic Internet. ~ Geoffrey Marcy,
266:The Jews might have had Uganda, Madagascar, and other places for the establishment of a Jewish Fatherland, but they wanted absolutely nothing except Palestine, not because the Dead Sea water by evaporation can produce five trillion dollars of metaloids and powdered metals; not because the sub-soil of Palestine contains twenty times more petroleum than all the combined reserves of the two Americas; but because Palestine is the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, because Palestine constitutes the veritable center of world political power, the strategic center for world control. ~ Nahum Goldmann,
267:know people who have been stuck in doubt their entire lifetime. Each of these unfortunate individuals—some of them my very own friends and family—came at some point to a crossroads. They came to this crossroads and found themselves rooted there, with one foot firmly planted on each side of the intersection. Alas, they never moved off the dime. They procrastinated. Dithered. Finally, they put a folding chair smack in the center of that crossroads and lived there for the rest of their lives. After a while, they forgot entirely that there even was a crossroads—forgot that there was a choice. ~ Stephen Cope,
268:Confined on the ship, from which there is no escape, the madman is delivered to the river with its thousand arms, the sea with its thousand roads, to that great uncertainty external to everything. He is a prisoner in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage. And the land he will come to is unknown—as is, once he disembarks, the land from which he comes. He has his truth and his homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to him. ~ Michel Foucault,
269:A crossroad is a holy place. There, the pilgrim has to make a decision. That is why the
gods usually sleep and eat at crossroads. Where roads cross, two great forces are concentrated -the
path that will be chosen, and the path to be ignored. Both are transformed into a single path, but only for
a short period of time. The pilgrim may rest, sleep a bit, and even consult with the gods that inhabit the
crossroad. But no one can remain there forever: once his choice is made, he has to move on, without
thinking about the path he has rejected. Otherwise, the crossroad becomes a curse. ~ Paulo Coelho,
270:No matter how passionately or minutely he might attempt to rewrite the past, the present circumstances in which he found himself would remain generally unchanged. Time had the power to cancel all changes wrought by human artifice, overwriting all new revisions with further revisions, returning the flow to its original course. A few minor facts might be changed, but Tengo would still be Tengo.
What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were rewriting the past. ~ Haruki Murakami,
271:We live in perilous times and at crossroads. On the one hand, we risk our extinction and that of our planet because of the devastating combination of ancient tribal habits and modern technologies that have the ability to obliterate every living being on the planet several times over. On the other hand, we also possess a nervous system through which the universe is becoming self-aware. More than ever, we have the means and insight to create a brave new world in which our current stage of survival of the fittest can evolve to one of survival of the wisest. The road we choose will determine our future. ~ Deepak Chopra,
272:Christianity is not a set of teachings to understand. It is a Person to follow. As he walked with Jesus, Andrew watched Jesus heal the sick, teach God's wisdom, and demonstrate God's power. Andrew not only learned about God; he actually experienced Him! Moments will come when you stand at a crossroads with your Lord. You will have a hundred questions for Him. Rather than answering the questions one by one, Jesus may say, “Put on your shoes, step out onto the road, and follow Me.” As you walk daily with Him, Jesus will answer your questions, and you will discover far more than you even knew to ask. ~ Henry T Blackaby,
273:The Bretton Woods saga unfurled at a unique crossroads in modern history. An ascendant anticolonial superpower, the United States, used its economic leverage over an insolvent allied imperial power, Great Britain, to set the terms by which the latter would cede its dwindling dominion over the rules and norms of foreign trade and finance. Britain cooperated because the overriding aim of survival seemed to dictate the course. The monetary architecture that Harry White designed, and powered through an international gathering of dollar-starved allies, ultimately fell, its critics agree, of its own contradictions. ~ Benn Steil,
274:That’s what makes Snowden’s revelations so stunning and so vitally important. By daring to expose the NSA’s astonishing surveillance capabilities and its even more astounding ambitions, he has made it clear, with these disclosures, that we stand at a historic crossroads. Will the digital age usher in the individual liberation and political freedoms that the Internet is uniquely capable of unleashing? Or will it bring about a system of omnipresent monitoring and control, beyond the dreams of even the greatest tyrants of the past? Right now, either path is possible. Our actions will determine where we end up. ~ Glenn Greenwald,
275:Cursed graze that burns; cursed mind that never stops thinking. Mirrors that don’t lie; doubts that torment; dictators who torture every hope on the rack. The crossroads approach, and it makes my head spin; we choose the path that allows us to sleep; we reject the tempting loophole. Lose yourself within the eyes of the one who deceives, or find yourself within those of the one who still loves you. The uncertainty of what hasn’t been experienced versus the certainty of the already expired. Merge the experiences; the game is as controlled as a fire. Feel the heat; feel the cold. Wager, then, on your own defeat. ~ Eva Garc a S enz,
276:Making The Lion For All It's Got -- A Ballad
I came home and found a lion in my room...
[First draft of "The Lion for Real" CP 174-175]
A lion met America
in the road
they stared at each other
two figures on the crossroads in the desert.
America screamed
The lion roared
They leaped at each other
America desperate to win
Fighting with bombs, flamethrowers,
knives forks submarines.
The lion ate America, bit off her head
and loped off to the golden hills
that's all there is to say
about america except
that now she's
lionshit all over the desert.
~ Allen Ginsberg,
277:She was coming over to my place and instead of us hanging with my knucklehead boys—me smoking, her bored out of her skull—we were seeing movies. Driving out to different places to eat. Even caught a play at the Crossroads and I took her picture with some bigwig black playwrights, pictures where she’s smiling so much you’d think her wide-ass mouth was going to unhinge. We were a couple again. Visiting each other’s family on the weekends. Eating breakfast at diners hours before anybody else was up, rummaging through the New Brunswick library together, the one Carnegie built with his guilt money. A nice rhythm we had going. ~ Junot D az,
278:I must tell vou, Gavril Ardalionovitch,” Mvshkin said suddenly, “that I was once so ill that I really was almost an idiot; but I’ve got over that long ago, and so I rather dislike it when people call me an idiot to my face. Though I can excuse it in you in consideration of your ill-luck, but in your vexation you’ve been abusive to me twice already. I don’t like that at all, especially so suddenly at first acquaintance; and so, as we are just at the crossroads, hadn’t we better part? You go to the right to your home, and I go to the left. I’ve got twenty-five roubles, and I shall be sure to find some lodging-house. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
279:LET THIS DARKNESS BE A BELLTOWER

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,
280:Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,
281:The magic is unleashed as Tam Lin writhes in the grip of the Fairy Queen’s power. He is translated into a lion, a bear, a serpent and a red-hot band of iron, a burning gleed! But Janet, alone at midnight on the crossroads, clings fast to the man she loves.   ‘Again they’ll turn me in your arms To a red het gaud of airn; But hold me fast, and fear me not, I’ll do to you nae harm.   And last they’ll turn me in your arms Into the burning gleed; Then throw me into well water, O throw me in wi speed.   And then I’ll be your ain true-love, I’ll turn a naked knight; Then cover me wi your green mantle, And cover me out o’ sight. ~ Patricia Duncker,
282:So often," Jackaby said. "people think that when we arrive at a crossroads, we can choose only one path, but- as I have often and articulately postulated- people are stupid. We're not walking the path. We are the path. We are all of the roads and all of the intersections. Of course you can choose both."

I blinked.

"Also, if I hear any more nonsense about your allowing other people to decide where you're going in your own life, I will seriously reconsider your employment. You were hired for your mind, Miss Rook. I won't have an assistant incapable of thinking for herself."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Thank you, sir. ~ William Ritter,
283:There’s a whole neurodiversity contingent who hate my ideas of sliders, and want to preserve our incapacity to ‘make up your mind and stick to it’ in case there’s some hypothetical species-destroying crossroads in the future where we need to rescue it. I say, you keep your irrationality intact. I’ll switch mine off. Other people can make up their own minds. Because the inability to see reason is a species-destroying crossroads and we’re at it now. If we don’t figure out how to put off gratification today for survival tomorrow, to beat the solipsist’s delusion that you’re a special snowflake—” “Okay, I know how this goes.” “I know you do. ~ Cory Doctorow,
284:Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in the square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches. ~ Italo Calvino,
285:Marco [Polo] enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in the square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches. ~ Italo Calvino,
286:I tumbled into the taxi alone, closing the door closed with a dull thud before I could possibly change my mind. Not like this, I remember thinking. Whatever this thing is between us, it could only be tainted and cheapened by a semi-drunken encounter on the night of our first meeting. As the car pulled away I stared back at him. The thought that I might never see him again, that I might never know what it would feel like to be kissed by him, seemed unbearably cruel.
At a crossroads, I had been faced with a choice: two possible versions of my future mapped out ahead of me. But I didn't feel like I had made any sort of decision. All I had done was run away. ~ Catherine Sanderson,
287:In asking for a relic of Descartes, the chevalier de Terlon was standing at the crossroads of the ancient and modern. He was applying to a modern thinker - the inventor of analytic geometry, no less - a primitive tradition that extends back not only to the institutionalization of Christianity in the fourth century, when Christians first broke into the tombs of saints to gather relics, but farther still, beyond the horizon of recorded history. The request is all the stranger for the fact that the man whose remains were treated in this quasisaintlike way would go down in history as the progenitor of materialism, rationalism, and a whole tradition that looked on such veneration as nonsense. ~ Russell Shorto,
288:Ideals that our nation was founded on, including equality and liberty for all, have yet to be fully realized. In some corners, their very existence is being threatened. The continuation of American democracy also is not a foregone conclusion. In fact, the American Dream that I have lived and still believe in—the notion that everyone should have an equal opportunity to rise from the ground up—is at a crossroads. More people need to have a fair chance at their dreams, however humble or ambitious those dreams may be, and now is the time to talk about what those chances might look like for everyone. Together, we have the potential to reimagine and deliver on the promise of our country, as I hope this book reveals. ~ Howard Schultz,
289:I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment
millions of human beings are standing at crossroads
and intersections, in jungles and deserts,
showing each other where to turn, what the right way is,
which direction. They explain exactly where to go,
what is the quickest way to get there, when to stop
and ask again. There, over there. The second
turnoff, not the first, and from there left or right,
near the white house, by the oak tree.
They explain with excited voices, with a wave of the hand
and a nod of the head: There, over there, not that there, the other there,
as in some ancient rite. This too is a new religion.
I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment. ~ Yehuda Amichai,
290:Another, Falshed knew, called itself a mountain weasel. Yet another sported a very long tail. There was not, as he had always imagined, just one sort of weasel in the world, but a great many varieties, who fetched up in places like this, an international crossroads. The same could be said of badgers. In his travels through Eggyok the chief had met stink badgers, ferret badgers, hog badgers and honey badgers, all slightly different. When it came to martens there were over a dozen, from stone martens to fisher martens to yellow-throated martens. There were even thirteen species of otter! Yet, so far as he knew, there was only one type of stoat. What did that tell him? That stoats were special? Or that stoats were inferior ~ Garry Kilworth,
291:I think my sense of right and wrong, my feeling of noblesse oblige, and any thought I may have against the oppressor and for the oppressed came from [Le Morte d'Arthur]....It did not seem strange to me that Uther Pendragon wanted the wife of his vassal and took her by trickery. I was not frightened to find that there were evil knights, as well as noble ones. In my own town there were men who wore the clothes of virtue whom I knew to be bad....If I could not choose my way at the crossroads of love and loyalty, neither could Lancelot. I could understand the darkness of Mordred because he was in me too; and there was some Galahad in me, but perhaps not enough. The Grail feeling was there, however, deep-planted, and perhaps always will be. ~ John Steinbeck,
292:I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads.

Love can and does push the levers of power, yet there is no power that can force one to love another. It is a thing freely given and just as freely accepted or rejected. It is by degrees of love that we wither or blossom—and I suspect that this holds true in both the giving and receiving. ~ Kevin Hearne,
293:It was all a mistake,” he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. “I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads—you know where it is. You’ve got to admit it’s a good job of building.” Sam laughed, staring around. “And that Martian—I know he was a friend of yours—came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice.” The ~ Ray Bradbury,
294:The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless—one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is—well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads. ~ G K Chesterton,
295:What about free will? . . . There's that too. I never understood why people think they're mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren't planned out for us- just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we're meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path . . . there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we're meant to learn . . . Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct. ~ Kay Hooper,
296:Heimdallr, from Norse Mythology, is present on the ancient Egyptian circular zodiac and is represented by the Ram; as the watcher and the guardian of the bridge between heaven and earth. His head measures the crossroads of the ecliptic and the vernal equinox as also expressed on the zodiac. Heimdallr was born and raised by the blood of a sacrificial boar which is portrayed on the zodiac at the exact position and right before the bridge (i.e., entrance to Asgard). The Marsian stride starts at the front leg of Capricon marking the nine realms of Asgard thereby - which are unified by the world tree: Yggdrasil. He was born by nine goddesses who turn the mill and was identified as Mars, the hopping one. He is Vindler, the turner, who is the personification of fire who twists and turns the mill. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,
297:life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized. I had planned to do so much, and I had come so close. I was physically debilitated, my imagined future and my personal identity collapsed, and I faced the same existential quandaries my patients faced. The lung cancer diagnosis was confirmed. My carefully planned and hard-won future no longer existed. Death, so familiar to me in my work, was now paying a personal visit. Here we were, finally face-to-face, and yet nothing about it seemed recognizable. Standing at the crossroads where I should have been able to see and follow the footprints of the countless patients I had treated over the years, I saw instead only a blank, a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert, as if a sandstorm had erased all trace of familiarity. The ~ Paul Kalanithi,
298:This city did not deserve what happened to it. Neither does any other shrinking city. Half a century after the Kerner Report tried to inspire a new approach to urban life, we are at another crossroads between how things were once done and how we can choose to do t hem in the future. In a way, public drinking water systems are the perfect embodiment of the ideal that we might reach toward. The sprawling pipelines articulate the shape of a community. House by house, they are a tangible affirmation that each person belongs. They tie the city together, and often the metropolitan region as well. If only some have good, clean water and others do not, the system breaks down. It isn't safe. The community gets sick. But when we are all connected to the water, and to each other, it is life-giving - holy, even. ~ Anna Clark,
299:The Triformis entity known as the Three Daughters of Night is an aspect of She of the Crossroads. However, in practice, they are most effective when called upon individually or as a triple natured entity not equated with She of the Crossroads. The Three Daughters of Night are known separately as the Lady of Shadow, the Lady of Blood, and the Lady of Bones. Each one holds a sacred object in respective order: a serpent, a heart, a femur bone. These represent their inner mystery connection to the realm of Shadow. When called together, three black candles are lighted side by side at the crossroads. A small cauldron, a bottle of red wine, and a handful of white flour are placed in order from left to right in front of the candles. With these items in place, begin your call to the Three Daughters of Night: I ~ Raven Grimassi,
300:Dangerous and indifferent ground: against its fixed mass the tragedies of people count for nothing although the signs of misadventure are everywhere. No past slaughter nor cruelty, no accident nor murder that occurs on the little ranches or at the isolate crossroads with their bare populations of three or seventeen, or in the reckless trailer courts of mining towns delays the flood of morning light. Fences, cattle, roads, refineries, mines, gravel pits, traffic lights, graffiti'd celebration of athletic victory on bridge overpass, crust of blood on the Wal-Mart loading dock, the sun-faded wreaths of plastic flowers marking death on the highway are ephemeral. Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that. ~ Annie Proulx,
301:Well, she keeps an eye on big journeys from the interior to the exterior, or vice versa. She's there for the steps that takes you from one state to another. She's someone you see at crossroads, for instance. Well, you sort of see her but don't register what you've seen until it's too late to go back. She holds three keys...some say they're keys to the underworld, others that they're access to the past, present,and future. Picture the image of me fixed inthis doorway, and also in every other doorway you pass, sometimes tgree dimensional and sometimes vaporous, whatever I feel being at the moment you try to get past me. Imagine not being able to stop me from coming in, imagine not being able to cast me out because I own all thresholds. As an additional bonus, imagine me with three faces. That's who we're sending to have a little chat with Matyas Füst. ~ Helen Oyeyemi,
302:I’ve been insulted by fools before. I survived.” Even in the dim light he saw her eyes change.

“Just because he was using words instead of a knife, you can’t dismiss it, Saetan. He hurt you.”

“Of course he hurt me,” Saetan snapped. “Being accused of—” He closed his eyes and squeezed her hand. “I don’t tolerate fools, Jaenelle, but I also don’t kill them for being fools. I simply keep them out of my life.” He sat up and took her other hand. “I am your sword and your shield, Lady. You don’t have to kill.”

Witch studied him with her ancient, haunted sapphire eyes. “You’ll take the scars on your soul so that mine remains unmarked?”

“Everything has a price,” he said gently. “Those kinds of scars are part of being a Warlord Prince. You’re at a crossroads, witch-child. You can use your power to heal or to harm. It’s your choice. ~ Anne Bishop,
303:I believe now that no matter what we consciously believe to be our true destination in life, unless we explore them all, we will never find it. The search may continue forever, and sometimes the only way to take some rest, is to convince ourselves that we have finally arrived, till we realise that we cannot stay where we are anymore. Hence we look back at the whole life itinerary, scanning all routes, crossroads and roundabouts, searching for a missing dream. We acknowledge whether we turned right, left, went straight or back. And no matter how far in space and time is that crossroad, we will return there and choose otherwise. When happiness or pain reach their climax, we often believe that the journey is over. And yet I can assure you that this is the best moment to acknowledge which routes we did not take, which dream we didn't dream, and choose again. ~ Franco Santoro,
304:So. I see where you're going—bus number 27 to a crossroads near Delphi. Look, I did not want, at any point, on any level, to kill my own father and sleep with my own mother. It's true that I wanted to sleep with Susan—and did so many times—and for a number of years thought of killing Gordon Macleod, but that is another part of the story. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think the Oedipus myth is precisely what it started off as: melodrama rather than psychology. In all my years of life I've never met anyone to whom it might apply.

You think I'm being naive? You wish to point out that human motivation is deviously buried, and hides its mysterious workings from those who blindly submit to it? Perhaps so. But even—especially—Oedipus didn't want to kill his father and sleep with his mother, did he? Oh yes he did! Oh no he didn't! Yes, let's just leave it as a pantomime exchange. ~ Julian Barnes,
305:As you consider how to take your next step toward a Liberation-Based Livelihood, often the first decision you need to consider is: Can I transform my current job into a vehicle for expressing my Core Intention? Or do I need to let go of it altogether?

This crossroads place is full of potential, and it can go in so many directions—not all of them positive! Bringing mindful awareness into the process greatly increases the possibility that you’ll make a healthy decision rather than a reactive one. As I shared in my own story, for many years I tended to leap out of unsatisfactory work situations very quickly. My unhappiness usually followed me into the next job, only to manifest there in new ways.

A good starting point to figure out if it’s time to leave your job is to consider if it’s harmful to yourself and/or to others. If the answer is “yes,” start planning your exit strategy as soon as possible. ~ Maia Duerr,
306:WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light —
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees. ~ Adrienne Rich,
307:Learning Urdu
From a district near Jammu,
(Dogri stumbling through his Urdu)
he comes, the victim of a continent broken
in two in nineteen forty-seven.
He mentions the minced air he ate
while men dissolved in alphabets
of blood, in syllables of death, of hate.
'I only remember half the word
that was my village. The rest I forget.
My memory belongs to the line of blood
across which my friends dissolved
into bitter stanzas of some dead poet.'
He wanted me to sympathize. I couldn't,
I was only interested in the bitter couplets
which I wanted him to explain. He continued,
'And I who knew Mir backwards, every
couplet from the Diwan-e-Ghalib saw poetry
dissolve into letters of blood.' He
Now remembers nothing while I find Ghalib
at the crossroads of language, refusing
to move to any side, masquerading
as a beggar to see my theatre of kindness.
~ Agha Shahid Ali,
308:Bright were the memories of his childhood at these docks, to which he had been ever drawn by the allure of the stranger traders as they swung into their berths like weary and weathered heroes returned from some elemental war. In those days it was uncommon to see the galleys of the Freemen Privateers ease into the bay, sleek and riding low with booty. They hailed from such mysterious ports as Filman Orras, Fort By a Half, Dead Man's Story, and exile; names that rang of adventure in the ears of a lad who had never seen his home city from outside its walls.
The man slowed as he reached the foot of the stone pier. The years between him and that lad marched through his mind, a possession of martial images growing ever grimmer. If he searched out the many crossroads he had come to in the past, he saw their skies storm-warped, the lands ragged and wind-torn. The forces of age and experience worked on them now, and whatever choices he had made then seemed fated and almost desperate. ~ Steven Erikson,
309:You still haven’t told me what King Edward will do when he has all four relics,’ Robert said, fixing Humphrey with his gaze.
‘We aren’t privy to all his plans, Robert, as I’ve told you. Only the men of the Round Table know his full intentions. We have to prove ourselves worthy to be trusted as they are.’
‘Do you not ever wonder?’
Humphrey paused. ‘I just know my king
will do what is best for my kingdom.’
Robert said nothing. He thought of his
own kingdom, beleaguered by Edward’s
interference, and a ghost of a threat drifted in his mind.
But even as it appeared, he pushed it
away. Scotland was its own kingdom, with its own king. It wasn’t Wales or Ireland, fractured and isolated. However much Edward had desired the Crown of Arthur he had come here, first and foremost, to put down a rebellion. Yet still, on this bleak shore with Humphrey beside him, Robert felt a sense of standing at a crossroads with many paths leading away before him. In his mind they all led into darkness. ~ Robyn Young,
310:Poland is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, soul-split country which in many ways (I came to see through Sophie’s eyes and memory that summer, and through my own eyes in later years) resembles or conjures up images of the American South—or at least the South of other, not-so-distant times. It is not alone that forlornly lovely, nostalgic landscape which creates the frequent likeness—the quagmiry but haunting monochrome of the Narew River swampland, for example, with its look and feel of a murky savanna on the Carolina coast, or the Sunday hush on a muddy back street in a village of Galicia, where by only the smallest eyewink of the imagination one might see whisked to a lonesome crossroads hamlet in Arkansas these ramshackle, weather-bleached little houses, crookedly carpentered, set upon shrubless plots of clay where scrawny chickens fuss and peck—but in the spirit of the nation, her indwellingly ravaged and melancholy heart, tormented into its shape like that of the Old South out of adversity, penury and defeat. ~ William Styron,
311:her all the way to the crossroads, and I think it more than adequate.” Everyone gaped at her like she was mad. “Our goal,” she continued, “was to distract the king, was it not? To distract the king and those who serve him, to send them on a merry chase. It would have been nice to meet the lady, and to use her captivity to our advantage, but our first intention was to empty the tombs of its guards, yes?” Immerez calmed and nodded, and Sarge let out a breath of relief. Karigan’s own thoughts were awhirl. They kidnapped Estora just to distract the king? To empty the tombs? What were they up to? “Who are you?” she asked the woman. The woman did not answer, but withdrew a pendant from beneath her chemise. It was crudely made of iron, but shaped into a design Karigan knew well: a dead tree. “Second Empire,” she whispered. She glanced at the onlookers. “You’re all Second Empire?” Some drew out pendants like the woman’s, and others raised their hands, palms outward, to show the tattoo of the dead tree. The old woman smiled kindly ~ Kristen Britain,
312:It is always revealing to see how a person responds to those situations where he’s told: “There’s nothing you can do about it. This is the way of the world.” Peter Thiel’s friend, the mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, has a category of individual he defines as a “high-agency person.” How do you respond when told something is impossible? Is that the end of the conversation or the start of one? What’s the reaction to being told you can’t—that no one can? One type accepts it, wallows in it even. The other questions it, fights it, rejects it. This choice defines us. Puts us at a crossroads with ourselves and what we think about the kind of person we are. “Anyone who is threatened and is forced by necessity either to act or to suffer,” writes Machiavelli, “becomes a very dangerous man to the prince.” And Peter Thiel was driven into a desperate position, of and not of his own making, that had started with a matter of his identity and become about a deeper identity. Now he had not only decided to act against Gawker, but he would conspire to destroy them. ~ Ryan Holiday,
313:But we belong to no one, we’re always on some frontier, always someone’s dowry. Is it then surprising that we’re poor? For centuries we’ve been trying to find, trying to recognize ourselves. Soon we won’t even know who we are, we’re already forgetting that we’ve even been striving for anything. Others do us the honor of letting us march under their banners, since we have none of our own. They entice us when they need us, and reject us when we’re no longer any use to them. The saddest land in the world, the most unhappy people in the world. We’re losing our identity, but we cannot assume another, foreign one. We’ve been severed from our roots, but haven’t become part of anything else; foreign to everyone, both to those who are our kin and those who won’t take us in and adopt us as their own. We live at a crossroads of worlds, at a border between peoples, in everyone’s way. And someone always thinks we’re to blame for something. The waves of history crash against us, as against a reef. We’re fed up with those in power and we’ve made a virtue out of distress: we’ve become noble-minded out of spite. You’re ruthless on a whim. So who’s backward? ~ Me a Selimovi,
314:There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves. ~ Sherwood Smith,
315:But if it were possible to see everyone who has retired to their beds in a great city at night, in London, New York or Tokyo, for example, if we imagined that the buildings were made of glass and that all the rooms were lit, the sight would be deeply unsettling. Everywhere there would be people lying motionless in their cocoons, in room after room for miles on end, and not just at street level, along roads and crossroads, but even up in the air, separated by plateaus, some of them twenty metres above ground, some fifty, some a hundred. We would be able to see millions of immobile people who have withdrawn from others in order to lie in a coma throughout the night. Sleep’s vertiginous link to primordial times, not just with human life as it first unfolded on the plains of Africa three hundred thousand years ago, but with life on earth in its very first form, rising out of the sea and coming ashore four hundred million years ago, would become apparent. And a bed would no longer be merely a piece of furniture acquired from a shop, but a boat that every human being has and which we board every evening to let ourselves be carried through the night. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,
316:Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day. ~ Henry Beston,
317:Besides that, his secret - and principal - reason for retiring was to devote himself entirely to his idée fixe, his collection which was becoming ever larger and more complicated. Van Hulle's concern was no longer simply to have beautiful clocks or rare timepieces; his feelings for them were not simply those one has for inanimate objects. True, their outward appearance was still important, their craftsmanship, their mechanisms, heir value as works of art, but the fact that he had collected so many was for a different reason entirely. It was a result of his strange preoccupation with the exact time. It was no longer enough for him that they were interesting. He was irritated by the differences in time they showed. Above all when they struck the hours and the quarters. One, very old, was deranged and got confused in keeping count of the passage of time, which it had been doing for so long. Others were behind, little Empire clocks with children's voices almost, as if they had not quite grown up. In short, the clocks were always at variance. They seemed to be running after each other, calling out, getting lost, looking for each other at all the changing crossroads of time. ~ Georges Rodenbach,
318:The Time For Brotherhood
When a fellow's feeling blue,
And is troubled, through and through
With a melancholy feeling
That he cannot seem to shake,
When his plans have gone astray
And his hopes have slipped away
And he's standing at the crossroads
Wondering which one to take,
That's the time to grab his hand
And to make him understand
That he's grieving over trifles
And his worries aren't worth while;
That's the time to slap his back
With a good old friendly whack,
That's the time he needs your friendship
And the time he wants your smile.
When he's deep down in the dumps
And has known life's rocky bumps,
When he's got the kill-joy notion
That his work no longer counts;
That's the time a word of cheer
Sweetly whispered in his ear
Sets the heart of him to beating
'Till his spirit proudly mounts.
That's the time a glad 'Hello!'
Means far more than you may know,
That's the time a sign of friendship
Really does a brother good;
That's the time a word of praise
Lifts a fellow up for days,
Sends him on his way, rejoicing,
That's the time for brotherhood.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
319:Life is a series of problems to be analyzed and addressed. How do we fix our failing schools? How do we reduce violence? These problem-centered questions are usually the wrong ones to ask. They focus on deficits, not gifts. A problem conversation tends to focus on one moment in time—the moment when a student didn’t graduate from high school, the moment when a young person commits a crime, the moment when a person is homeless. But actual lives are lived cumulatively. It takes a whole series of shocks before a person becomes homeless—loss of a job, breakdown in family relationship, maybe car problems or some transportation issue. It takes a whole series of shocks before a kid drops out of school. If you abstract away from the cumulative nature of life and define the problem as one episode, you are abstracting away from how life is lived. All conversations are either humanizing or dehumanizing, and problem-centered conversations tend to be impersonal and dehumanizing. The better community-building conversations focus on possibilities, not problems. They are questions such as, What crossroads do we stand at right now? What can we build together? How can we improve our lives together? What talents do we have here that haven’t been fully expressed? ~ David Brooks,
320:crazed mother her dead child. One day, I don’t know which, I found myself in this world, having lived unfeelingly from the time I was evidently born until then. When I asked where I was, everyone misled me, and they contradicted each other. When I asked them to tell me what I should do, they all spoke falsely, and each one said something different. When in bewilderment I stopped on the road, everyone was shocked that I didn’t keep going to no one knew where, or else turn back – I, who’d woken up at the crossroads and didn’t know where I’d come from. I saw that I was on stage and didn’t know the part that everyone else recited straight off, also without knowing it. I saw that I was dressed as a page, but they didn’t give me a queen, and blamed me for not having her. I saw that I had a message in my hand to deliver, and when I told them that the sheet of paper was blank, they laughed at me. And I still don’t know if they laughed because all sheets are blank, or because all messages are to be guessed. Finally I sat down on the rock at the crossroads as before the fireplace I never had. And I began, all by myself, to make paper boats with the lie they’d given me. No one would believe in me, not even as a liar, and there was no pond where I could try out my truth. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
321:Split in two,” he sang, “Loved by one, and then another. Pulled in a direction and then the other. If I could breathe you in, all of you, every day of my life, it wouldn’t be enough. My heart was captive long ago — then you stole it away, you helped me grow. Now I’m staring at my crossroads with a choice to make, wondering how in the world I even thought there was one way to take.”

His hands flew over the piano, muscles tightened in his forearms as he leaned forward and continued singing.

“My biggest fear, is not the ending of this life, but going through it without you by my side.” He repeated the chorus and closed his eyes, humming the haunting melody in such a way that I felt hypnotized.

“Letting her go will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do — but I’m doing it so I can say goodbye to her — and good morning to you. Tell me it’s not too late to ask for a second.” He smirked but continued singing. “Third, fourth, tenth date.” His hands slowed. “Loving you will always be easy because when I look into your eyes I know you see the real me, so be my love, be my rain, be my clouds, be my pain.”

“My biggest fear, is not the ending of this life, but going through it without you by my side.” He stopped playing.

The room fell silent. ~ Rachel Van Dyken,
322:There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves.
“Why don’t you set aside that cloak and eat something?”
His voice was flat. I realized he probably felt even nastier about the situation than I did. ~ Sherwood Smith,
323:A Twig to Rest On This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, a nd you will find rest for your souls.” JEREMIAH 6:16 NIV The day was so long and stressful that Tracey didn’t get out to her front porch until late at night to water her flowers. Recent days had been so unusually hot and dry in the Midwest, draining both Tracey and her once-luscious hanging petunia baskets into a weary state. She breathed a calming sigh to be out in the cool of the evening, hearing a few last birds coo while the crickets took the next singing shift. But as she reached up to water one thirsty pot, something fluttered furiously out through the stream of water. Frightened, Tracey jumped back and tried to determine what it was. The small creature flew directly into a rose of sharon bush next to the porch, where Tracey could now see it was a baby sparrow. Maybe it’s injured, she thought, as it fell asleep on the tiny twig, swaying with the gentle breeze of the night. In the morning she found the bird still resting in the same place and slowly approached it. The sparrow flew off with strength into the sunshine. Lord, thank You for giving me the rest I need along the journey. Just like You do for the tiny sparrow, so much more You do for me. Amen. ~ Anonymous,
324:Maddy shook her head, as if the movement could somehow shake the reality away. She simply couldn’t believe it. That by saving her he had
actually, knowingly put himself in line for a consequence this severe. So much was kept hidden about the Angels, about how they handled their
internal affairs—brutally, it turned out. All the while they put on a smooth, clean exterior for the public and the media.
“What can I do?” she said finally.
Jacks looked at her through the deluge.
“Come with me.”
There he stood in the pouring rain, the image of shirtless soaked perfection. He stood before her offering her a choice just like he had the
night they went flying. She was at another crossroads. She knew she could just leave. Knew she probably should. But they were going to take his
wings, and it was all her fault. Her fault for going to the party, her fault for trying to follow through with her plan, her fault for leaving and insisting on
walking home. Could she really leave him now? Before she had even decided, her mouth opened.
“Yes,” she said. Just like when he had invited her to the party. It simply came out, as though her true desires could no longer be repressed.
Jacks smiled a dripping, radiant smile. A flash of lightning lit the roof, followed closely by a bark of thunder. ~ Scott Speer,
325:The Earth
Spring bursts violently
into Moscow houses.
Moths flutter about
crawl on summer hats,
and furs hide secretly.
Pots of wallflowers and stock
stand, in the window, just,
of wooden second storeys,
the rooms breathe liberty,
the smell of attics is dust.
The street is friends
with the bleary glass,
and white night and sunset
at one, by the river, pass.
In the passage you’ll know
what’s going on below
and April’s casual flow
of words with drops of thaw.
It’s a thousand stories veiled
in a human sadness,
and twilight along the fence
grows chill with the tale.
Outside, or snug at home
the same fire and hesitation:
everywhere air’s unsure.
The same cut willow twigs,
the same white swell of buds,
at crossroads, windows above,
in streets, and workshop-doors.
Then why does the far horizon weep
in mist, and the soil smell bitter?
After all, it’s my calling, surely,
131
to see no distance is lonely,
and past the town boundary,
to see that earth doesn’t suffer.
That’s why in early spring
we meet, my friends and I,
and our evenings are – farewell documents,
our gatherings are – testaments,
so the secret stream of suffering
may warm the cold of life.
~ Boris Pasternak,
326:29. Instinct Is The Nose Of The Mind - Trust It

Instinct is almost impossible to define but it can be so important when we come to a crossroads on our journey through life.

Sometimes things just don’t ‘feel’ right - even if all the outward signs seem to be pointing us towards a certain course of action. When that happens, listen to that voice. It is God-given and it is our deep subconscious helping us.

You see, we all tend to act in accordance with our rational, conscious minds. But we have a clever, far more knowing and intelligent part of us that the smart adventurer learns to use as a key part of his arsenal - it is called our intuition, and no amount of money can buy it.

Talented climbers and adventurers know that to reach a summit or achieve a goal we have to use all the ‘weapons’ in our arsenal - not just the obvious ones, like strength, fitness and skill, which many people rely upon alone.

Sometimes that final push to the summit requires something beyond the normal. So don’t fight against that inner voice if it is speaking loudly to you. It is there to guide and protect you.

Listening carefully to this voice is how we distinguish ourselves from the rest of the crowd who so often barge through life, too busy or too proud even to acknowledge their intuition’s existence. ~ Bear Grylls,
327:When Felix came to this crossroads, the orthopedic shoe to drop wasn’t his. It was Bella’s. Year by year, I witnessed the progression in her difficulties. Felix remained in astonishingly good health right into his nineties. He had no medical crises and maintained his weekly exercise regimen. He continued to teach chaplaincy students about geriatrics and to serve on Orchard Cove’s health committee. He didn’t even have to stop driving. But Bella was fading. She lost her vision completely. Her hearing became poor. Her memory became markedly impaired. When we had dinner, she had to be reminded more than once that I was sitting across from her. She and Felix felt the sorrows of their losses but also the pleasures of what they still had. Although she might not have been able to remember me or others she didn’t know too well, she enjoyed company and conversation and sought both out. Moreover, she and Felix still had their own, private, decades-long conversation that had never stopped. He found great purpose in caring for her, and she, likewise, found great meaning in being there for him. The physical presence of each other gave them comfort. He dressed her, bathed her, helped feed her. When they walked, they held hands. At night, they lay in bed in each other’s arms, awake and nestling for a while, before finally drifting off to sleep. Those moments, Felix said, remained among their most cherished. He felt they knew each other, and loved each other, more than at any time in their nearly seventy years together. ~ Atul Gawande,
328:Mapmaking
It's an old desire: a sketch of part of the earth
There in your hands. You touch it, saying, There.
So make your map:
If you have no crossroads, no confluence of streams
To set your starting point, you simply pretend
You know where you are
And begin outlining a landscape, using a compass
And your measured stride toward landmarks: thrusts of bedrock,
Trees or boulders, whatever
Seems likely to be around after you've gone.
You fix your eyes on them, one at a time,
And learn the hard way
How hard it is to fabricate broken country.
You go where your line takes you: uphill or down,
Over or straight through,
Between and past the casual, accidental
Substance of this world. Once there, you turn back
To confirm your bearings,
To reconcile what you saw with what you see,
Comparing foresight and hindsight. These are moments
When your opinion
Of yourself as cartographer may suffer.
Your traverse ought to return to its beginning,
To a known point, though you,
Slipshod, footsore by dusk, may find your hope
Falls short of perfection: remember no one
Really depends on you
To do away with uncertainty forever.
Your piece of paper may seem in years to come
An amusing footnote
For wandering minds, a record of out-of-the-way
Transfixions (better preserved by photographers)
Whose terrain is so far askew
It should be left to divert imaginations
Like yours that enjoy believing they've mapped out
Some share of the unknown.
~ David Wagoner,
329:We stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we have selected to govern our lives. In selecting that value system, we are, in a very real way, making the most important choice we will ever make.

Those who believe there is one God who made all things and who governs the world by this providence will make many choices different from those who do not. Those who hold in reverence that being who gave them life and worship Him through adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving will make choices different from those who do not. Those who believe that mankind are all of a family and that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man will make many choices different from those who do not. Those who believe in a future state in which all that is wrong here will be made right will make many choices different from those who do not. Those who subscribe to the morals of Jesus will make many choices different from those who do not.

Since the foundation of all happiness is thinking rightly, and since correct action is dependent on correct opinion, we cannot be too careful in choosing the value system we allow to govern our thoughts and actions.

And to know that God governs in the affairs of men, that He hears and answers prayers, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, is, indeed, a powerful regulator of human conduct. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
330:Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
331:And no one else knows of this?” he asked gently.
I shook my head slowly, unable to remove my gaze from his faze. “Azmus discovered it by accident. Rode two days to reach me. I did send him…”
There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves.
“Why don’t you set aside that cloak and eat something?”
His voice was flat. I realized he probably felt even nastier about the situation than I did. I heard the scrape of a bowl on the table and the clink of a spoon. The ordinary sounds restored me somehow, and I untied my cloak and shrugged it off. At once a weight that seemed greater than my own left me. I made a surreptitious swipe at my eyes, straightened my shoulders, and did my best to assume nonchalance as I picked up my spoon. ~ Sherwood Smith,
332:Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

~ Jorge Luis Borges, Limits
,
333:The Pitiful Young Prince
Hooded crows fly at night
over the walls of Chang'an,
uttering harsh cries
above Welcoming Autumn Gate,
then head for people's houses,
pecking at the lofty roofs,
roofs beneath which high officials
scurry to escape barbarians.
The golden whip is broken in two,
the nine horses are run to death,*
but it is still not possible
for all of royal blood to flee together...
In plain sight below his waist
a precious ornament of blue coral,
the pitiful prince stands weeping
at the corner of the road.
When I ask, he refuses to tell
either name or surname;
he only speaks of his desperation,
and begs to become my slave.
For a hundred days now
he has lain hidden in brambles;
there is no whole skin left
on his entire body.
But the sons and grandsons of Gao-zu
all have the same nosesthe dragon-seed, naturally,
differs from that of ordinary men.
Jackals and wolves in the city,
dragons lurking in the wilds,
the prince had better take care
of that thousand-tael body!*
I don't dare talk long here
in plain view by the crossroads,
but for the sake of my prince
I will stay for a moment.
Last night the east wind
64
blew in the stench of blood,
and camels from the east
filled the former Capital.*
The Shuo-fang veterans
were known as skilled warriors,
they always seemed so fierce,
but now how foolish they look!
It is rumored that the Son of Heaven
has already abdicated,
but also that the Khan
is lending his support,
that the men of Hua gashed their faces
and begged to wipe out this disgrace.
Say nothing! Someone else
may be hiding and listening.
Alas, Prince, you must be careful,
stay on guard,
and may the spirits of the Five Tombs*
watch over you always.
~ Du Fu,
334:When we realize that the path is the goal, there’s a sense of workability. Trungpa Rinpoche said, “Whatever occurs in the confused mind is regarded as the path. Everything is workable. It is a fearless proclamation, the lion’s roar.” Everything that occurs in our confused mind we can regard as the path. Everything is workable. If we find ourselves in what seems like a rotten or painful situation and we think, “Well, how is this enlightenment?” we can just remember this notion of the path, that what seems undesirable in our lives doesn’t have to put us to sleep. What seems undesirable in our lives doesn’t have to trigger habitual reactions. We can let it show us where we’re at and let it remind us that the teachings encourage precision and gentleness, with loving-kindness toward every moment. When we live this way, we feel frequently—maybe continuously—at a crossroads, never knowing what’s ahead. It’s an insecure way to live. We often find ourselves in the middle of a dilemma—what should I do about the fact that somebody is angry with me? What should I do about the fact that I’m angry with somebody? Basically, the instruction is not to try to solve the problem but instead to use it as a question about how to let this very situation wake us up further rather than lull us into ignorance. We can use a difficult situation to encourage ourselves to take a leap, to step out into that ambiguity. This teaching applies to even the most horrendous situations life can dish out. Jean-Paul Sartre said that there are two ways to go to the gas chamber, free or not free. This is our choice in every moment. Do we relate to our circumstances with bitterness or with openness? That is why it can be said that whatever occurs can be regarded as the path and that all things, not just some things, are workable. This teaching is a fearless proclamation of what’s possible for ordinary people like you and me. ~ Pema Ch dr n,
335:You of all boys should know that Man is the Storytelling Animal, and that in stories are his identity, his meaning and his lifeblood. Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasise? You know as well as I do that they do not. Man alone burns with books.’ ‘But still, the Fire of Life … it is just a fairy tale,’ insisted Dog the bear and Bear the dog, together. Nobodaddy drew himself up indignantly. ‘Do I look,’ he demanded, ‘like a fairy to you? Do I resemble, perhaps, an elf? Do gossamer wings sprout from my shoulders? Do you see even a trace of pixie dust? I tell you now that the Fire of Life is as real as I am, and that only that Unquenchable Blaze will do what you all wish done. It will turn bear into Man and dog into Dog-Man, and it will also be the End of Me. Luka! You little murderer! Your eyes light up at the very thought! How thrilling! I am amongst assassins! What are we waiting for, then? Are we starting now? Let’s be off! Tick, tock! There is no time to lose!’ At this point Luka’s feet began to feel as if somebody was gently tickling their soles. Then the silver sun rose above the horizon, and something quite unprecedented began to happen to the neighbourhood, the neighbourhood that wasn’t Luka’s real neighbourhood, or not quite. Why was the sun silver, for one thing? And why was everything too brightly coloured, too smelly, too noisy? The sweetmeats on the street vendor’s barrow at the corner looked like they might taste odd, too. The fact that Luka was able to look at the street vendor’s barrow at all was a part of the strange situation, because the barrow was always positioned at the crossroads, just out of sight of his house, and yet here it was, right in front of him, with those oddly coloured, oddly tasting sweetmeats all over it, and those oddly coloured, oddly buzzing flies buzzing oddly all around it. How was this possible? Luka wondered. After all, he hadn’t moved a step, and there was the street vendor asleep under the barrow, so the barrow obviously hadn’t moved either; and how did the crossroads arrive as well, um, that was to say, how had he arrived at the crossroads? ~ Anonymous,
336:Traffic was in confusion for several days. For red to mean "stop' was considered impossibly counterrevolutionary. It should of course mean "go." And traffic should not keep to the right, as was the practice, it should be on the left. For a few days we ordered the traffic policemen aside and controlled the traffic ourselves. I was stationed at a street corner telling cyclists to ride on the left. In Chengdu there were not many cars or traffic lights, but at the few big crossroads there was chaos. In the end, the old rules reasserted themselves, owing to Zhou Enlai, who managed to convince the Peking Red Guard leaders. But the youngsters found justifications for this: I was told by a Red Guard in my school that in Britain traffic kept to the left, so ours had to keep to the right to show our anti-imperialist spirit. She did not mention America.

As a child I had always shied away from collective activity. Now, at fourteen, I felt even more averse to it. I suppressed this dread because of the constant sense of guilt I had come to feel, through my education, when I was out of step with Mao. I kept telling myself that I must train my thoughts according to the new revolutionary theories and practices. If there was anything I did not understand, I must reform myself and adapt. However, I found myself trying very hard to avoid militant acts such as stopping passersby and cutting their long hair, or narrow trouser legs, or skirts, or breaking their semi-high-heeled shoes. These things had now become signs of bourgeois decadence, according to the Peking Red Guards.

My own hair came to the critical attention of my schoolmates. I had to have it cut to the level of my earlobes. Secretly, though much ashamed of myself for being so "petty bourgeois," I shed tears over losing my long plaits. As a young child, my nurse had a way of doing my hair which made it stand up on top of my head like a willow branch. She called it "fireworks shooting up to the sky." Until the early 1960s I wore my hair in two coils, with rings of little silk flowers wound around them. In the mornings, while I hurried through my breakfast, my grandmother or our maid would be doing my hair with loving hands. Of all the colors for the silk flowers, my favorite was pink. ~ Jung Chang,
337:The rose is a symbol of the inner mysteries of Witchcraft. A red rose symbolizes the mysteries as they reside in Nature, within the living things. The white rose symbolizes the Otherworld and the mysteries hidden in secret places. When a single rose appears with white petals in the center of red petals, this represents the mysteries joined together within one reality. Thorns appearing with the rose represent challenges and the dedication required to fully grasp the enlightenment of the rose. One of the symbolisms associated with the rose reveals the covenant between the Witch and the Faery. In this, we find that both are stewards of the portal that opens to the inner mysteries. The Faery holds the celestial key, and the Witch bears the terrestrial key. When the two are joined together, they form an X—the sign of the crossroads. In this formation, where the keys cross we find a third point, the in-between place at the center. This is where the portal exists, and this is where it opens between the worlds. Look at the shape of the X and you can see four pointed tip markers (the V shapes). The upper half of the X points down, and the lower half points up. On the sides of the X, you can see that the left and right halves point to the center. This shows us that when the celestial and terrestrial realms join, they pull together the left ways and the right ways. These are occult terms for esoteric and exoteric modes of consciousness. In the fusion, everything briefly loses its distinction, its ability to mask the opposite reality, and in doing so, the secret third reality emerges in the center of it all. If this sounds confusing or nonsensical, then the guardian of that portal is doing its job well. The material in this book will connect you with an entity connected to the rose and its mystery. This is the previously mentioned She of the Thorn-Blooded Rose. With her guidance, you can be directed to the portal, and through it you can meet a variety of beings and entities. However, her primary task is to connect you with the Greenwood Realm and the plant spirits within it. In your journey to encounter these spirits, you will pass through the organic memory of the earth. You'll walk upon roads of mystical concepts and be accompanied by the Old Ones of ~ Raven Grimassi,
338:Where are you?” she shouted. “Don’t you see us?” taunted the woman’s voice. “I thought Hecate chose you for your skill.” Another bout of queasiness churned through Hazel’s gut. On her shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which didn’t help. Dark spots floated in Hazel’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors. The giant Clytius was shrouded in the black smoke, just as she’d seen in her vision at the crossroads, but now Hazel could dimly make out his form—dragon-like legs with ash-colored scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armor; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death’s (Hazel should know, since she had met Death personally). His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying. Leo whistled. “You know, Clytius…for such a big dude, you’ve got a beautiful voice.” “Idiot,” hissed the woman. Halfway between Hazel and the giant, the air shimmered. The sorceress appeared. She wore an elegant sleeveless dress of woven gold, her dark hair piled into a cone, encircled with diamonds and emeralds. Around her neck hung a pendant like a miniature maze, on a cord set with rubies that made Hazel think of crystallized blood drops. The woman was beautiful in a timeless, regal way—like a statue you might admire but could never love. Her eyes sparkled with malice. “Pasiphaë,” Hazel said. The woman inclined her head. “My dear Hazel Levesque.” Leo coughed. “You two know each other? Like Underworld chums, or—” “Silence, fool.” Pasiphaë’s voice was soft, but full of venom. “I have no use for demigod boys—always so full of themselves, so brash and destructive.” “Hey, lady,” Leo protested. “I don’t destroy things much. I’m a son of Hephaestus.” “A tinkerer,” snapped Pasiphaë. “Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.” Leo blinked. “Daedalus…like, the Daedalus? Well, then, you should know all about us tinkerers. We’re more into fixing, building, occasionally sticking wads of oilcloth in the mouths of rude ladies—” “Leo.” Hazel put her arm across his chest. She had a feeling the sorceress was about to turn him into something unpleasant if he didn’t shut up. “Let me take this, okay? ~ Rick Riordan,
339:I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving. “I know a charm that will heal with a touch. “I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy. “I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks. “A fifth charm: I can catch a bullet in flight and take no harm from it.” His words were quiet, urgent. Gone was the hectoring tone, gone was the grin. Wednesday spoke as if he were reciting the words of a religious ritual, as if he were speaking something dark and painful. “A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender. “A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it. “An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship. “A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore. “Those were the first nine charms I learned. Nine nights I hung on the bare tree, my side pierced with a spear’s point. I swayed and blew in the cold winds and the hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the worlds opened to me. “For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again. “An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearth and their home. “A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. “A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child’s head, that child will not fall in battle. “A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them. “A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams.” His voice was so low now that Shadow had to strain to hear it over the plane’s engine noise. “A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. “A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. “And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.” He sighed, and then stopped talking. Shadow could feel his skin crawl. It was as if he had just seen a door open to another place, somewhere worlds away where hanged men blew in the wind at every crossroads, where witches shrieked overhead in the night. ~ Neil Gaiman,
340:The Horned Master governs the generative powers of the kingdom of the beasts, the raw forces of life, death and renewal which sustains the natural world.” Nigel A Jackson. The Call of the Horned Piper: 38 The Art and Craft of the Witches is found at the crossroad, where this world and the other side meets and all possibility become reality. This simple fact is often forgotten as one rushes to the Sabbath or occupies oneself with formalities of ritual. The cross marks the four quarters, the four elements, the path of Sun, Moon and Stars. The cross was fused or confused with the Greek staurus, meaning ‘rod’, ‘rood’ or ‘pole’. Various forms of phallic worship are simply, veneration for the cosmic point of possibility and becoming. It is at the crossroads we will gain all or lose all and it is natural that it is at the crossroads we gain perspective. The crossroad is a place of choice, the spirit-denizens of the crossroads are said to be tricky and unreliable and it is of course where we find the Devil. One of the most famous legends of recent times concerns the blues-man Robert Johnson (1911– 1938). He claimed that, one night, just before midnight he had gone to the crossroads. He took out his guitar and played, whereupon a big black guy appeared, tuned his guitar, played a song backwards and handed it back.2 This incident altered Johnson’s playing and his finest and most everlasting compositions were the fruit of the few years of life left to him. This legend tells us how he needed to bury himself at the crossroads, offering himself to the powers dwelling there. Business done with the Devil is said to give him the upper hand. The ill omens and malefica associated with such deals is present in Johnson’s story. He got fame and women, but he died less than three years later before he reached thirty. His body was found poisoned at a crossroads, the murderer’s identity a mystery. Around the Mississippi no less than three tombs carry the name of Robert Leroy Johnson. The image of the Devil remains one of threat, blessing, beauty and opportunity. Where we find the Devil we find danger, unpredictability and chaos. If he offers a deal we know we are in for a complicated bargain. The Devil says that change is good, that we need movement in order to progress. His world is about cunning and ordeal entwined like the serpents of past and future on the pole of ascent. It is to the crossroads we go to make decisions. It is at the crossroads we set the course for the journey. It is at the crossroads we confront ourselves and realize our ~ Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold,
341:Molech had the advantage. This was his turf and his dwelling. He had spent much of his time over the millennia below the surface, which made his skin pale white and his eyes unable to see well when up above on the surface. But down below, he was the god of the underworld. He could see better than even Mikael’s preternatural night vision. Mikael didn’t know what he was running into down here. He arrived at a fork in the small tunnel. He looked at the dirt and could see that his adversary had gone to the right. Mikael followed. The tunnels were quite small, only big enough for the bulky eight foot deity to move, with little leeway. For Mikael, there was more room because he was smaller, but not by much. He stopped again. Another split. But this time, three options. He took the middle way. Mikael figured that by now, his comrade archangels would have moved the stone away and were on their way to join him. He felt his pathway was circling back. When he saw another crossroads, he realized what he was now inside: a maze. The mole god had burrowed out a complex labyrinth of tunnels that seemed to Mikael a web of confusion. The rock was harder and the dust sparser, making it even more difficult for Mikael to follow his prey’s foot prints. About the only thing he could follow now was the creature’s stench. He heard the sound of footsteps in the dark, not far from him. He picked up his pace, trying not to make as much noise as the clumsy brute was making. He turned a corner and saw the deity jump down into an opening in the rocky floor. When he reached it, he saw it was an opening that led deeper still, to a lower level. He heard the voices of his comrades in the distance, shouting for him. He decided he would take this one time to give some direction, even though it would also warn Molech. But he needed his comrades. He shouted, “Down here, Angels! There’s an opening to a deeper level!” Then he jumped. He landed twenty feet below. Before him, a new opening to a new maze of tunnels. He thought, This has been one busy little worm. He followed the smell. His opponent now knew how close he was. Mikael turned another corner and saw the god waiting for him, before bolting down a pathway. Mikael responded instinctively to the sight of the fleeing divinity. It wasn’t until he was almost upon the pathway that it registered in his mind that he was being led into a trap. He slid to a stop. It was too late. He heard the sound of a release being tripped and rocks shifting. Above him. A triggered cave-in crushed him beneath a ton of rock. He was completely immobilized. He could not get to his weapons. He could only see through a thin crevice of some rocks as Molech walked up to him, laughed and spit at him, before disappearing deeper into the network of twisting tunnels. ~ Brian Godawa,
342:BACK AT THE railway station, Ivan Grigoryevich began to feel that there was no point in wandering about Leningrad any longer. He stood inside the cold, high building and pondered. And it is possible that one or two of the people who passed the gloomy old man looking up at the black departures board may have thought, ‘There – a Russian from the camps, a man at a crossroads, contemplating, choosing which path to follow.’ But he was not choosing a path; he was thinking. During the course of his life dozens of interrogators had understood that he was neither a monarchist, nor a Social Revolutionary, nor a Social Democrat; that he had never been part of either the Trotskyist or the Bukharinist opposition. He had never been an Orthodox Christian or an Old Believer; nor was he a Seventh Day Adventist. There in the station, thinking about the painful days he had just spent in Moscow and Leningrad, he remembered a conversation with a tsarist artillery general who had at one time slept next to him on the bed boards of a camp barrack. The old man had said, ‘I’m not leaving the camp to go anywhere else. It’s warm in here. There are people I know. Now and again someone gives me a lump of sugar, or a bit of pie from a food parcel.’ He had met such old men more than once. They had lost all desire to leave the camp. It was their home. They were fed at regular hours. Kind comrades sometimes gave them little scraps. There was the warmth of the stove. Where indeed were they to go? In the calcified depths of their hearts some of them stored memories of the brilliance of the chandeliers in the palaces of Tsarskoye Selo,37 or of the winter sun in Nice. Others remembered their neighbour, Mendeleyev, coming round to drink tea with them; or they remembered Scriabin, Repin or the young Blok. Others preserved, beneath ash that was still warm, the memories of Plekhanov, Gershuni and Trigoni, of friends of the great Zhelyabov. There had been instances of old men being released from a camp and asking to be readmitted. The whirl of life outside had knocked them off their feet. Their legs were weak and trembling, and they had been terrified by the cold and the solitude of the vast cities. Now Ivan Grigoryevich felt like going back again behind the barbed wire himself. He wanted to seek out those who had grown so accustomed to their barrack stoves, so at home with their warm rags and their bowls of thin gruel. He wanted to say to them, ‘Yes, freedom really is terrifying.’ And he would have told these frail old men how he had visited a close relative, how he had stood outside the home of the woman he loved, how he had bumped into a comrade from his student days who had offered to help him. And then he would have gone on to say to these old men of the camps that there is no higher happiness than to leave the camp, even blind and legless, to creep out of the camp on one’s stomach and die – even only ten yards from that accursed barbed w ~ Vasily Grossman,
343:The forestland thickened at one point, and without warning it opened onto a road. Fading back behind a screen of ferns, I watched the traffic. It appeared I’d reached a major crossroads. A stone marker at the intersection indicated the Akaeriki road downhill, and to the north lay the town of Thoresk.
A town. Surely one anonymous female could lose herself in a town? And while she was at it, find some shelter?
Big raindrops started plopping in the leaves around me. The coming storm wouldn’t be warded by tree branches and leaves, that was for certain. Clutching my half-empty basket to my side, I started up the road, careful not to limp if anyone came into view from the opposite direction.
I saw a line of slow wagons up ahead, with a group of small children gamboling around them. I hurried my pace slightly so I would look like I belonged with them; I had nearly caught up when a deep thundering noise seemed to vibrate up from the ground.
“Cavalcade! Cavalcade!” a high childish voice shrieked.
The farmers clucked at their oxen and the wagons hulked and swung, metal frames creaking, over to one side. The children ran up the grassy bank beside the road, hopping and shrieking with excitement.
Feeling my knees go suddenly watery, I scrambled up the bank as well, then sat in the grass with my basket on my lap. I checked my kerchief surreptitiously and snatched my hand down as two banner-carrying outriders galloped into view around the bend I’d walked so shortly before.
Behind them a single rider cantered on a nervous white horse. The rider was short but strongly built. A gray beard, finicky mustache, and long hair marked him as a noble; his mouth and eyes were narrowed, whether in habit or in anger I didn’t know--but my instinctive reaction to him was fear.
He wore the plumed helm of a commander, and his battle tunic was brown velvet. He had passed by before I realized that I had very nearly come face-to-face with Baron Nenthar Debegri, Galdran Merindar’s former--and now present--commander.
Then behind him came row on row of soldiers, all formidably armed, riding three abreast. Dust and mud flew from the horses’ hooves, and the noise was enough to set the oxen bellowing in distress and pulling at their traces. Seven, eight, nine ridings--a full wing.
A full wing of warriors, all to search for me? I didn’t know whether to laugh or to faint in terror. So I just sat there numbly and watched them all ride by--a very strange kind of review.
As the end of the cavalcade at last drew nigh, the children were already skidding down the bank. My eyes, caught by a change in color, lifted. Instead of rows of brown-and-green battle gear, the last portion were in blue with black and white, their device three stars above a coronet. As my astonished mind registered that this was the Renselaeus device, my gaze was drawn to the single rider leading their formation.
A single rider on a dapple-gray. Tall in the saddle, long blond hair flying in the wind, hat so low it shadowed the upper portion of his face, the Marquis of Shevraeth rode by.
And as he drew abreast, his head lifted slightly, turned, and he stared straight into my eyes. ~ Sherwood Smith,
344:Prayers To Lord Murugan
Lord of new arrivals
lovers and rivals:
arrive
at once with cockfight and banner—
dance till on this and the next three
hills
women's hands and the garlands
on the chests of men will turn like
chariotwheels
O where are the cockscombs and where
the beaks glinting with new knives
at crossroads
when will orange banners burn
among blue trumpet flowers and the shade
of trees
waiting for lightnings?
Twelve etched arrowheads
for eyes and six unforeseen
faces, and you were not
embarrassed.
Unlike other gods
you find work
for every face,
and made
eyes at only one
woman. And your arms
are like faces with proper
names.
15
3
Lord of green
growing things, give us
a hand
in our fight
with the fruit fly.
Tell us,
will the red flower ever
come to the branches
of the blueprint
city?
Lord of great changes and small
cells: exchange our painted grey
pottery
for iron copper the leap of stone horses
our yellow grass and lily seed
for rams!
flesh and scarlet rice for the carnivals
on rivers O dawn of nightmare virgins
bring us
your white-haired witches who wear
three colours even in sleep.
Lord of the spoor of the tigress,
outside our town hyenas
and civet cats live
on the kills of leopards
and tigers
too weak to finish what's begun.
16
Rajahs stand in photographs
over ninefoot silken tigresses
that sycophants have shot.
Sleeping under country fans
hearts are worm cans
turning over continually
for the great shadows
of fish in the open
waters.
We eat legends and leavings,
remember the ivory, the apes,
the peacocks we sent in the Bible
to Solomon, the medicines for smallpox,
the similes
for muslin: wavering snakeskins,
a cloud of steam
Ever-rehearsing astronauts,
we purify and return
our urine
to the circling body
and burn our faeces
for fuel to reach the moon
through the sky behind
the navel.
Master of red bloodstains,
our blood is brown;
our collars white.
Other lives and sixtyfour rumoured arts
tingle,
pins and needles
at amputees' fingertips
in phantom muscle
17
7
Lord of the twelve right hands
why are we your mirror men
with the two left hands
capable only of casting
reflections? Lord
of faces,
find us the face
we lost early
this morning.
Lord of headlines,
help us read
the small print.
Lord of the sixth sense,
give us back
our five senses.
Lord of solutions,
teach us to dissolve
and not to drown.
Deliver us O presence
from proxies
and absences
from sanskrit and the mythologies
of night and the several
roundtable mornings
of London and return
the future to what
it was.
18
10
Lord, return us.
Brings us back
to a litter
of six new pigs in a slum
and a sudden quarter
of harvest
Lord of the last-born
give us
birth.
11
Lord of lost travellers,
find us. Hunt us
down.
Lord of answers,
cure us at once
of prayers.
~ A. K. Ramanujan,
345:The great self-limitation practiced by man for ten centuries yielded, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the whole flower of the so-called "Renaissance." The root, usually, does not resemble the fruit in appearance, but there is an undeniable connection between the root's strength and juiciness and the beauty and taste of the fruit. The Middle Ages, it seems, have nothing in common with the Renaissance and are opposite to it in every way; nonetheless, all the abundance and ebullience of human energies during the Renaissance were based not at all on the supposedly "renascent" classical world, nor on the imitated Plato and Virgil, nor on manuscripts torn from the basements of old monasteries, but precisely on those monasteries, on those stern Franciscians and cruel Dominicans, on Saints Bonaventure, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Middle Ages were a great repository of human energies: in the medieval man's asceticism, self-abnegation, and contempt for his own beauty, his own energies, and his own mind, these energies, this heart, and this mind were stored up until the right time. The Renaissance was the epoch of the discovery of this trove: the thin layer of soil covering it was suddenly thrown aside, and to the amazement of following centuries dazzling, incalculable treasures glittered there; yesterday's pauper and wretched beggar, who only knew how to stand on crossroads and bellow psalms in an inharmonious voice, suddenly started to bloom with poetry, strength, beauty, and intelligence. Whence came all this? From the ancient world, which had exhausted its vital powers? From moldy parchments? But did Plato really write his dialogues with the same keen enjoyment with which Marsilio Ficino annotated them? And did the Romans, when reading the Greeks, really experience the same emotions as Petrarch, when, for ignorance of Greek, he could only move his precious manuscripts from place to place, kiss them now and then, and gaze sadly at their incomprehensible text? All these manuscripts, in convenient and accurate editions, lie before us too: why don't they lead us to a "renascence" among us? Why didn't the Greeks bring about a "renascence" in Rome? And why didn't Greco-Roman literature produce anything similar to the Italian Renaissance in Gaul and Africa from the second to the fourth century? The secret of the Renaissance of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries does not lie in ancient literature: this literature was only the spade that threw the soil off the treasures buried underneath; the secret lies in the treasures themselves; in the fact that between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, under the influence of the strict ascetic ideal of mortifying the flesh and restraining the impulses of his spirit, man only stored up his energies and expended nothing. During this great thousand-year silence his soul matured for The Divine Comedy; during this forced closing of eyes to the world - an interesting, albeit sinful world-Galileo was maturing, Copernicus, and the school of careful experimentation founded by Bacon; during the struggle with the Moors the talents of Velasquez and Murillo were forged; and in the prayers of the thousand years leading up to the sixteenth century the Madonna images of that century were drawn, images to which we are able to pray but which no one is able to imitate.

("On Symbolists And Decadents") ~ Vasily Rozanov,
346:And no one else knows of this?” he asked gently.
I shook my head slowly, unable to remove my gaze from his faze. “Azmus discovered it by accident. Rode two days to reach me. I did send him…”
There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves.
“Why don’t you set aside that cloak and eat something?”
His voice was flat. I realized he probably felt even nastier about the situation than I did. I heard the scrape of a bowl on the table and the clink of a spoon. The ordinary sounds restored me somehow, and I untied my cloak and shrugged it off. At once a weight that seemed greater than my own left me. I made a surreptitious swipe at my eyes, straightened my shoulders, and did my best to assume nonchalance as I picked up my spoon.
After a short time, he said, “Don’t you have any questions for me?”
I glanced up, my spoon poised midway between my bowl and my mouth. “Of course,” I said. “But I thought--” I started to wave my hand, realizing too late it still held the spoon, and winced as stew spattered down the table. Somehow the ridiculousness of it released some of the tension. As I mopped at the mess with a corner of my cloak, I said, “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. So you knew about the plot all along?”
“Pretty much from the beginning, though the timing is new. I surmised they would make their move in the fall, but something seems to have precipitated action. My first warning was from Elenet, who had found out a great deal from the Duke’s servants. That was her real reason for coming to Court, to tell me herself.”
“What about Flauvic?”
“It would appear,” he said carefully, “that he disassociated with this plan of his mother’s.”
“Was that the argument he alluded to?”
He did not ask when. “Perhaps. Though that might have been for effect. I can believe it only because it is uncharacteristic for him to lend himself to so stupid and clumsy a plan.”
“Finesse,” I drawled in a parody of a courtier’s voice. “He’d want finesse, and to make everyone else look foolish.”
Shevraeth smiled slightly. “Am I to understand you were not favorably impressed with Lord Flauvic?”
“As far as I’m concerned, he and Fialma are both thorns,” I said, “though admittedly he is very pretty to look at. More so than his sour pickle of a sister. Anyway, I hope you aren’t trusting him as far as you can lift a mountain, because I wouldn’t.”
“His house is being watched. He can’t stir a step outside without half a riding being within earshot.”
“And he probably knows it,” I said, grinning. “Last question, why are you riding alone? Wouldn’t things be more effective with your army?”
“I move fastest alone,” he said. “And my own people are in place, and have been for some time. ~ Sherwood Smith,
347:Tell me where you got your information,” he said.
“Azmus. Our old spy.” My lips were numb, and I started to shiver. Hugging my arms against my stomach, I said, “My reasons were partly stupid and partly well-meaning, but I sent him to find out what the Marquise was after. She wrote me during winter--but you knew about that.”
He nodded.
“And you even tried to warn me, though at the time I saw it as a threat, because--well, because.” I felt too sick inside to go on about that. Drawing a shaky breath, I said, “And again. At her party, when she took me into the conservatory. She tried again to get me to join her. Said I hadn’t kept my vows to Papa. So I summoned Azmus to help me find out what to do. The right thing. I know I can’t prove it,” I finished lamely.
He pulled absently at the fingers of one glove, then looked down at it, and straightened it again. Unnecessary movements from him were so rare, I wondered if he too was fighting for clear thought.
He lifted his gaze to me. “And now? You were riding to the border?”
“No,” I said. “To Orbanith.”
Again he showed surprise.
“It’s the other thing that Azmus found out,” I said quickly. “I sent him to tell you as soon as I learned--but there’s no way for you to know that’s true. I realize it. Still, I did. I have to go because I know how to reach the Hill Folk.”
“The Hill Folk?”
“Yes,” I said, leaning forward. “The kinthus. The Merindars have it stowed in wagons, and they’re going to burn it up-slope. Carried on the winds, it can kill Hill Folk over a full day’s ride, all at once. That’s how they’re paying Denlieff, with our woods, not with money at all. They’re breaking our Covenant! I have to warn the Hill Folk!”
“Orbanith. Why there, why this road?”
“Mora and the servants told me this was the fastest way to Orbanith.”
“Why did you not go north to Tlanth where you know the Hill Folk?”
I shook my head impatiently. “You don’t know them. You can’t know them. They don’t have names, or if they do, they don’t tell them to us. They seem to be aware of each other’s concerns, for if you see one, then suddenly others will appear, all silent. And if they act, it’s at once. Some of the old songs say that they walk in one another’s dreams, which I think is a poetic way of saying they can speak mind to mind. I don’t know. I must get to the mountains to warn them, and the mountains that source the Piaum River are the closest to Remalna-city.”
“And no one else knows of this?” he asked gently.
I shook my head slowly, unable to remove my gaze from his faze. “Azmus discovered it by accident. Rode two days to reach me. I did send him…”
There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves. ~ Sherwood Smith,
348:My favourite quotes, Part Two
-- from Michael Connelly's "Harry Bosch" series

The Black Box

On Bosch’s first call to Henrik, the twin brother of Anneke -

Henrik: "I am happy to talk now. Please, go ahead.”

“Thank you. I, uh, first want to say as I said in my email that the investigation of your sister’s death is high priority. I am actively working on it. Though it was twenty years ago, I’m sure your sister’s death is something that hurts till this day. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Detective. She was very beautiful and very excited about things. I miss her very much.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Over the years, Bosch had talked to many people who had lost loved ones to violence. There were too many to count but it never got any easier and his empathy never withered.


The Burning Room 2

Grace was a young saxophonist with a powerful sound. She also sang.

The song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and she produced a sound from the horn that no human voice could ever touch. It was plaintive and sad but it came with an undeniable wave of underlying hope.

It made Bosch think that there was still a chance for him, that he could still find whatever it was he was looking for, no matter how short his time was.

----------------

He grabbed his briefcase off his chair and walked toward the exit door. Before he got there, he heard someone clapping behind him. He turned back and saw it was Soto, standing by her desk. Soon Tim Marcia rose up from his cubicle and started to clap. Then Mitzi Roberts did the same and then the other detectives. Bosch put his back against the door, ready to push through. He nodded his thanks and held his fist up at chest level and shook it. He then went through the door and was gone.



The Burning Room 3

“What do you want to know, Bosch?”

Harry nodded. His instinct was right. The good ones all had that hollow space inside. The empty place where the fire always burns. For something. Call it justice. Call it the need to know. Call it the need to believe that those who are evil will not remain hidden in darkness forever.

At the end of the day Rodriguez was a good cop and he wanted what Bosch wanted. He could not remain angry and mute if it might cost Orlando Merced his due.

------------

“I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away.”


“What is the other, Henrik?” Though he knew the answer.

“Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch.”

Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for.

“So am I, Henrik,” he said. “So am I.”


Angle of Investigation

1972

They were heading south on Vermont through territory unfamiliar to him. It was only his second day with Eckersly and his second on the job.

Now

He knew that passion was a key element in any investigation. Passion was the fuel that kept his fire burning. So he purposely sought the personal connection or, short of that, the personal outrage in every case. It kept him locked in and focused. But it wasn’t the Laura syndrome. It wasn’t the same as falling in love with a dead woman. By no means was Bosch in love with June Wilkins. He was in love with the idea of reaching back across time and catching the man who had killed her.


The Scarecrow

At one time the newsroom was the best place in the world to work. A bustling place of camaraderie, competition, gossip, cynical wit and humor, it was at the crossroads of ideas and debate. It produced stories and pages that were vibrant and intelligent, that set the agenda for what was discussed and considered important in a city as diverse and exciting as Los Angeles. ~ Michael Connelly,
349:Paris
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means to conquer and the ways,
And coming where the crossroads separate
And down each vista glories and wonders wait,
Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair
You know not which to choose, and hesitate --
Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom
Of some old quarter take a little room
That looks off over Paris and its towers
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, --
So high that you can hear a mating dove
Croon down the chimney from the roof above,
See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is
To wake between Our Lady and our love.
And have a little balcony to bring
Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming,
That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands,
And swallows circle over in the Spring.
There of an evening you shall sit at ease
In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees,
There with your little darling in your arms,
53
Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise.
And looking out over the domes and towers
That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours,
While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them
Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers,
You cannot fail to think, as I have done,
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one
Who measures life's attainment by the hours
That Joy has rescued from oblivion.
II
Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west.
The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats.
The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves:
Come out under the lights and leaves
to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . .
Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant.
Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport."
Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay,
The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat.
And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine
On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . .
But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along
And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel.
54
Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic:
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport;
Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads,
and courtezans like powdered moths,
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads;
And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties;
And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press,
And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you:
All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what
Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young.
"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!"
Friends greet and banter as they pass.
'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere,
A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood
Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . .
The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer,
And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme.
And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls,
And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war.
But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet,
Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights.
55
Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere
So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place.
Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls,
Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street.
From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there
Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall,
That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue
The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . .
Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance,
And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen.
Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim,
Docked, in the model's present whim, `frise' and banged above the brows.
Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays,
In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness,
As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them
In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal.
Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete,
Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes,
And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist,
She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . .
But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins
56
As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start.
Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield
The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round,
Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath
To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest.
Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see
The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling.
Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem
To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise,
Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued,
In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight.
And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance
They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . .
Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair,
And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball.
Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile
In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse:
The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees,
Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their `brune' and `blonde'. . . .
Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris -- not as many do,
Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show --
57
But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day
Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland.
And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife --
Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key,
And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands.
And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory,
Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed:
When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood,
And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice,
At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled,
The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand.
III
Choral Song
Have ye gazed on its grandeur
Or stood where it stands
With opal and amber
Adorning the lands,
And orcharded domes
Of the hue of all flowers?
Sweet melody roams
Through its blossoming bowers,
Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour.
A city resplendent,
58
Fulfilled of good things,
On its ramparts are pendent
The bucklers of kings.
Broad banners unfurled
Are afloat in its air.
The lords of the world
Look for harborage there.
None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair.
'Tis the city of Lovers,
There many paths meet.
Blessed he above others,
With faltering feet,
Who past its proud spires
Intends not nor hears
The noise of its lyres
Grow faint in his ears!
Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears.
It was thither, ambitious,
We came for Youth's right,
When our lips yearned for kisses
As moths for the light,
When our souls cried for Love
As for life-giving rain
Wan leaves of the grove,
Withered grass of the plain,
And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain.
Under arbor and trellis,
Full of flutes, full of flowers,
What mad fortunes befell us,
What glad orgies were ours!
In the days of our youth,
In our festal attire,
When the sweet flesh was smooth,
When the swift blood was fire,
And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!
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~ Alan Seeger,
350:The Family Saga
How unpleasant are those names, and yet
their bitter strength is splendid, splendid
too the human love that lighted the seven wicks
every nightfall. Wasn't it they that reared them all?
Laachi had planted the pomegranate of desire
in the south-eastern corner where it grew splendid;
and Uppali had a mantara in the north-east side.
Thus they grew, the pomegranate and the mantara,
fresh creepers always winding up the branches,
and fresh flowers blossoming on the creepers.
Flowers, even while withering in the dusk
or going off to eternity, guarded their pollen,
and were disinclined to sever connections. They
turned into fruit and ripened and grew sweet;
thus grew the pomegranate and the mantara
as the dusk turned into darkness, darkness into day,
day into darkness again, and again came the day seven wicks into five, five into three, and then one,
and again one into three into five into seven.
Black clouds fostered and fondled by summer
shed their tears, the shores of the lagoons
swayed, while there stood the brave one,
his mind unperturbed by the thunder-storm,
his feet unswerving in the wild roaring billows,
his hands unwearied; the brave one stood there
invoking with magic chants the lord of grains,
who would shower plenty on the virgin land,
rousing her and filling her with grain and gold.
His orders became dams and dykes, his thoughts
manifested as a thousand farmhands; with brushwood
and brambles they erected the dykes, the lagoons
drew back and yielded the fertile land, saying,
as the sea once said to a Rama long ago:
O Kesava, may your hands be fruitful, be fruitful;
Immortal thoughts are indeed the glory of the earth;
make you this earth rich with grain and fruit!
O Kesava, may your hands be fruitful!
37
II
The month of the Virgin passed, and the dewy sweetness
of Libra arrived, as earthen dykes arose, and lifting
the watery skirt, the lagoon told the farmhand Kunjan:
Go now, and whisper into your master's ears,
and tell him, the land is ready to receive the seed;
the sowing must be done with a full harvest in view.
The Pleiades festival of lights, and the Betelgeuse
festival of song and dance passed by; rich manure
flowed down from the hills; hundreds of workers
in country-boats; the spell of monsoon brought
the season of replanting the seedlings. No one
seems to have noticed how in two days' time
the seeds had sprouted, how two and three and four
leaves unfurled, how the flowers got fertilised
and turned yellowish. While the eyes kept a busy watch,
the emeralds of Capricorn arrived, promising pots of plenty;
the sprouted seeds blossomed and ripened to harvest.
The measuring baskets overflowed; half-filled bellies
got overfilled; the festival of harvest sang
of fullness at the new year!
III
The tale of a family with promises
yet to be fulfilled lengthens in many ways,
Recall now the splendour that crossed
the seas, the country and the city
made fragrant by a full moon in spring,
the light-hearted jokes and little acts of goodness;
recall the royal houses, the ministerial abodes,
paved with courage of diplomacy or
simple cleverness, the leadership of universities,
the life at the embassies; recall also
another figure, a figure that is cut up
like shadows into fragments in broken dream or sleep,
like a pledge unredeemed, like a sobbing whisper,
like a wisp of moist memory that makes you restless,
like the scent of a flower moaning through the breeze:
O Kesava, did your hands disappear
into an autumnal night of the dark moon?
On the pomegranate, the eight-petalled flower
blossomed abruptly, fell off its stalk into grief.
38
How many springs have come and gone, and yet'
they do return with fresh flowers;
how many flowers wither away, and yet
the gardens return to life; recall the mother
who rocked you in her lap and told stories
to entertain you and sang lullabies,
and fed you on the elixir of her breasts.
Recall again the promises, old times
that were brought home for confinement,
with the future yet to be born, families
that came together only to part, candle flames
that burn in the blaze of parting; the tale
of a family with many a pledge unredeemed yet
lengthens in many ways, many ways...
IV
Time is spacious indeed, my love,
let us give up the weeping habit.
From what great depths emerge
even our gentlest smiles!
Don't we see, as we sit together
on the seashore, don't we see
the moon disc slowly unfold
and turn into the purple of
mango leaves and then into white,
tickling the sea into wakefulness,
and a thousand peacocks dance
with spread wings over the billows
rising from the depths? Don't we see
the innocence in the eyes of
guideless children disappear
as they get up and stretch
their hands and legs and emerge
into a shyness that petitions love
through a lotus leaf, and burst into
a Shakuntala, her accusing finger
pointed at the king, and then at the end
dissolve into a serenity, entrusting
the son with the father under the Kashyapa
shade. Bereaved are we all, separated
for long are the earth and heaven,
melting and rolling under the heat
39
of a grief, caused by an old separation;
melting and rolling and flowing are
these stringed stars and rivers and evenings all are bereaved and in isolation for ever,
in the heart of the jungle the granite rocks
melt, and in their springs there drip
the nights that rock the ocean; they too
are bereaved. Once during the night
I walked among the underworlds,
and there I saw, seated at a table,
one recording the history of man;
birth, birth = death, the birth of death,
and death meant the death of birth.
He too was slowly dying ...
So shall we end this lamentation.
Spacious indeed is Time, and my beloved,
this weeping habit we have to give up.
Tales that please must be told;
That's what human life is for,
If the poet's tongue matches in length
the ears of those that listen,
it will not bore; the tellers and
hearers will be of one string.
The tale of the bud on the temple tree,
rocked to sleep by the beatings
of bats' wings is not exactly a new one.
The clock with its eyes on the midday sun
striking eight, which startled
the village girl, is an absurd tale.
At the crossroads the hussy spits out
her betel roll, stretching her tongue:
unable to retell her tale of abuse,
the puranas have remained eighteen till now,
There is hunchback Janaki in the neighbourhood;
her hump was straightened by Kittan, but
it was Raman's name that was dragged into it;
his manners do not reveal it, though,
Where that hunchback neighbour is gone
is not quite known, nor do we know
how she got her bow-style ear-rings,
40
Raman perhaps knows it, but how can
we ask him, for he too is eager
to find out who really bit off his earlobes.
Many such tales fester in my village,
but they won't be very pleasing to you;
they will fill your ears with discomfort.
Once I was walking on the bank of backwaters,
my eyes ploughing the rice-fields, and I saw
and heard around endless tragedies, with a few
light comedies thrown in, all turning into
farces and riddles. The eyes were drawn in,
the ears rolled up; lengthening nights
stretched themselves over the rivers.
``Sweet rose, fold yourself; you are not
meant to bloom in this sultry daylight;
your scent and honey shouldn't be wasted
on this dry sand''; whose lament is that?
How did this song some to be heard
here on this earth where river sand
is spread over thick layers of mud?
The elders stand - tall palm trees of old
with wrinkled leaves and broken ribs;
their long penance has come to an end.
Time-fostered beetles and insects and vermin
have taken their place to gnaw at the leaf
and spine and trunk and roots and all.
Over the mud flows the river,
over the river flows darkness,
above the darkness are the blue heavens;
all is dark, all; but there is light
even in this darkness; dark is itself light;
to assert that is the task of man.
As a child I had one great sorrow;
it was that my village had no hill in it;
but now that sorrow is gone, for I see
hills of wickedness all around,
I see the social man is the source
of all power, and not the individual,
I see the bridge across the river of sin
built by the Panchayat. Gone is my grief;
holy and divine is the glory of man!
41
VI
Sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man!
To the neighbourhood girl
whose belly is empty
he gives a full belly;
sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man!
Picking up the songbird
shot down in game,
the woodsman comes singing
of anger and grief and compassion.
Sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man
who pierces that woodsman
with another arrow.
Liberty, equality,
co-operation, fraternity;
truths are indeed of many kinds;
so sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man,
who roasts and fries
a generous spirit
and serves it for dinner.
~ Ayyappa Paniker,
351: ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE
1

When Zarathustra had said farewell to the town to
which his heart was attached, and which was named
The Motley Cow, many who called themselves his disciples followed him and escorted him. Thus they came
to a crossroads; then Zarathustra told them that he now
wanted to walk alone, for he liked to walk alone. His
disciples gave him as a farewell present a staff with a
golden handle on which a serpent coiled around the
sun. Zarathustra was delighted with the staff and leaned
on it; then he spoke thus to his disciples:
Tell me: how did gold attain the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and
gentle in its splendor; it always gives itself. Only as the
image of the highest virtue did gold attain the highest
value. Goldlike gleam the eyes of the giver. Golden
splendor makes peace between moon and sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue and useless; it is gleaming and
gentle in its splendor: a gift-giving virtue is the highest
virtue.
Verily, I have found you out, my disciples: you strive,
as I do, for the gift-giving virtue. What would you have
in common with cats and wolves? This is your thirst: to
75
become sacrifices and gifts yourselves; and that is why
you thirst to pile up all the riches in your soul. Insatiably your soul strives for treasures and gems, because
your virtue is insatiable in wanting to give. You force
all things to and into yourself that they may flow back
out of your well as the gifts of your love. Verily, such
a gift-giving love must approach all values as a robber;
but whole and holy I call this selfishness.
There is also another selfishness, an all-too-poor and
hungry one that always wants to steal-the selfishness
of the sick: sick selfishness. With the eyes of a thief it
looks at everything splendid; with the greed of hunger
it sizes up those who have much to eat; and always it
sneaks around the table of those who give. Sickness
speaks out of such craving and invisible degeneration;
the thievish greed of this selfishness speaks of a diseased
body.
Tell me, my brothers: what do we consider bad and
worst of all? Is it not degeneration?And it is degeneration that we always infer where the gift-giving soul is
lacking. Upward goes our way, from genus to overgenus. But we shudder at the degenerate sense which
says, "Everything for me." Upward flies our sense: thus
it is a parable of our body, a parable of elevation.
Parables of such elevations are the names of the virtues.
Thus the body goes through history, becoming and
fighting. And the spirit-what is that to the body? The
herald of its fights and victories, companion and echo.
All names of good and evil are parables: they do not
define, they merely hint. A fool is he who wants knowledge of them!
Watch for every hour, my brothers, in which your
spirit wants to speak in parables: there lies the origin
of your virtue. There your body is elevated and resurrected; with its rapture it delights the spirit so that it
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turns creator and esteemer and lover and benefactor of
all things.
When your heart flows broad and full like a river, a
blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the
origin of your virtue.
When you are above praise and blame, and your will
wants to comm and all things, like a lover's will: there is
the origin of your virtue.
When you despise the agreeable and the soft bed and
cannot bed yourself far enough from the soft: there is
the origin of your virtue.
When you will with a single will and you call this
cessation of all need "necessity": there is the origin of
your virtue.
Verily, a new good and evil is she. Verily, a new deep
murmur and the voice of a new well
Power is she, this new virtue; a dominant thought is
she, and around her a wise soul: a golden sun, and
around it the serpent of knowledge.
2

Here Zarathustra fell silent for a while and looked
lovingly at his disciples. Then he continued to speak
thus, and the tone of his voice had changed:
Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the
power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your
knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg
and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly
things and beat with their wings against eternal walls.
Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has
flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew
away, as I do-back to the body, back to life, that it
may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.
In a hundred ways, thus far, have spirit as well as
virtue flown away and made mistakes. Alas, all this de-
77
lusion and all these mistakes still dwell in our body:
they have there become body and will.
In a hundred ways, thus far, spirit as well as virtue
has tried and erred. Indeed, an experiment was man.
Alas, much ignorance and error have become body
within us.
Not only the reason of millennia, but their madness
too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir. Still
we fight step by step with the giant, accident; and over
the whole of humanity there has ruled so far only nonsense-no sense.
Let your spirit and your virtue serve the sense of the
earth, my brothers; and let the value of all things be
posited newly by you. For that shall you be fighters! For
that shall you be creators!
With knowledge, the body purifies itself; making experiments with knowledge, it elevates itself; in the
lover of knowledge all instincts become holy; in the
elevated, the soul becomes gay.
Physician, help yourself: thus you help your patient
too. Let this be his best help that he may behold with
his eyes the man who heals himself.
There are a thousand paths that have never yet been
trodden-a thousand health and hidden isles of life.
Even now, man and man's earth are unexhausted and
undiscovered.
Wake and listen, you that are lonely! From the future
come winds with secret wing-beats; and good tidings
are proclaimed to delicate ears. You that are lonely today, you that are withdrawing, you shall one day be
the people: out of you, who have chosen yourselves,
there shall grow a chosen people-and out of them, the
overman. Verily, the earth shall yet become a site of
recovery. And even now a new fragrance surrounds it,
bringing salvation-and a new hope.
3
When Zarathustra had said these words he became
silent, like one who has not yet said his last word; long
he weighed his staff in his hand, doubtfully. At last he
spoke thus, and the tone of his voice had changed.
Now I go alone, my disciples. You too go now, alone.
Thus I want it. Verily, I counsel you: go away from me
and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of
him! Perhaps he deceived you.
The man of knowledge must not only love his
enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains
nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck
at my wreath?
You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles
one day? Beware lest a statue slay you.
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters
Zarathustra? You are my believers-but what matter all
believers? You had not yet sought yourselves: and you
found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith
amounts to so little.
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only
when you have all denied me will I return to you.
Verily, my brothers, with different eyes shall I then
seek my lost ones; with a different love shall I then love
you.
And once again you shall become my friends and the
children of a single hope-and then shall I be with you
the third time, that I may celebrate the great noon with
you.
And that is the great noon when man stands in the
middle of his way between beast and overman and
celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope:
for it is the way to a new morning.
79

Then will he who goes under bless himself for being
one who goes over and beyond; and the sun of his
knowledge will stand at high noon for him.
"Dead are all gods: now we want the overman to
live"-on that great noon, let this be our last will.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Second Part
. . . and only when you have all denied me will
I return to you.
Verily, my brothers, with different eyes shall I
then seek my lost ones; with a different love shall
I then love you. (Zarathustra, "On the Gift-Giving Virtue." 1, p. 78)
TRANSLATOR S NOTES

1. The Child with the Mirror: Transition to Part Two with

its partly new style: "A new speech comes to me.
My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn soles."
2. Upon the Blessed Isles: The creative life versus belief
in God: "God is a conjecture." The polemic against the
opening lines of the final chorus in Goethe's Faust is taken
up again in the chapter "On Poets" (see comments, p. 81 ).
But the lines immediately following in praise of impermanence and creation are thoroughly in the spirit of Goethe.
3. On the Pitying: A return to the style of Part One and
a major statement of Nietzsche's ideas on pity, ressentiment,
and repression.
4. On Priests: Relatively mild, compared to the portrait
of the priest in The Antichrist five years later.
5. On the Virtuous: A typology of different conceptions of
virtue, with vivisectional intent. Nietzsche denounces "the
filth of the words: revenge, punishment, reward, retri bution," which he associates with Christianity; but also
that rigorism for which "virtue is the spasm under
the scourge" and those who "call it virtue when their
vices grow lazy." The pun on "I am just" is, in German:
wenn sie sagen: "ich bin gerecht," so klingt es immer
gleich wie: "ich bin gerdcht!"
6. On the Rabble: The theme of Zarathustra's nausea is
developed ad nauseam in later chapters. La Nausge-to
speak in Sartre's terms-is one of his chief trials, and its
eventual conquest is his greatest triumph. "I often grew
weary of the spirit when I found that even the rabble had
esprit" may help to account for some of Nietzsche's remarks
elsewhere. Generally he celebrates the spirit-not in opposition to the body but as mens sana in corpore sano.
7. On the Tarantulas: One of the central motifs of Nietzsche's philosophy is stated in italics: "that man be delivered
from revenge." In this chapter, the claim of human equality
is criticized as an expression of the ressentiment of the subequal.
8. On the Famous Wise Men: One cannot serve two
masters: the people and the truth. The philosophers of
the past have too often rationalized popular prejudices. But
the service of truth is a passion and martyrdom, for "spirit
is the life that itself cuts into life: with its agony it
increases its own knowledge." The song of songs on the
spirit in this chapter may seem to contradict Nietzsche's
insistence, in the chapter "On the Despisers of the Body,"
that the spirit is a mere instrument. Both themes are
central in Nietzsche's thought, and their apparent contradiction is partly due to the fact that both are stated metaphorically. For, in truth, Nietzsche denies any crude dualism of body and spirit as a popular prejudice. The life of
the spirit and the life of the body are aspects of a single
life. But up to a point the contradiction can also be resolved
metaphorically: life uses the spirit against its present form
to attain a higher perfection. Man's enhancement is
inseparable from the spirit; but Nietzsche denounces the
occasional efforts of the spirit to destroy life instead of
pruning it.
81
9. The Night Song: "Light am I; ah, that I were nightly"
io. The Dancing Song: Life and wisdom as jealous women.
ii.
The Tomb Song: "Invulnerable am I only in the heel."
12. On Self-Overcoming: The first long discussion of the
will to power marks, together with the chapters "On the
Pitying" and "On the Tarantulas," one of the high points
of Part Two. Philosophically, however, it raises many difficulties. (See my Nietzsche, 6, III.)
13.

On Those Who Are Sublime: The doctrine of self-

overcoming is here guarded against misunderstandings: far
from favoring austere heroics, Nietzsche praises humor (and
practices it: witness the whole of Zarathustra, especially
Part Four) and, no less, gracefulness and graciousness.
The three sentences near the end, beginning "And there
is nobody . . .

,"

represent a wonderfully concise statement

of much of his philosophy.
14. On the Land of Education: Against modern eclecticism
and lack of style. "Rather would I be a day laborer in
Hades . . :": in the Odyssey, the shade of Achilles would
rather be a day laborer on the smallest field than king of
all the dead in Hades. Zarathustra abounds in similar
allusions. "Everything deserves to perish," for example, is
an abbreviation of a dictum of Goethe's Mephistopheles.
15. On Immaculate Perception: Labored sexual imagery,
already notable in "The Dancing Song," keeps this critique
of detachment from becoming incisive. Not arid but,
judged by high standards, a mismatch of message and
metaphor. Or put positively: something of a personal document. Therefore the German references to the sun as
feminine have been retained in translation. "Loving and
perishing (Lieben und Untergehn)" do not rhyme in
German either.
16. On Scholars: Nietzsche's, not Zarathustra's, autobiography.
17. On Poets: This chapter is full of allusions to the final
chorus in Goethe's Faust, which might be translated thus:
What is destructible
Is but a parable;
82
What fails ineluctably
The undeclarable,
Here it was seen,
Here it was action;
The Eternal-Feminine
Lures to perfection.
i8. On Great Events: How successful Nietzsche's attempts
at narrative are is at least debatable. Here the story
distracts from his statement of his anti-political attitude.
But the curious mixture of the solemn and frivolous, myth,
epigram, and "bow-wow," is of course entirely intentional.
Even the similarity between the ghost's cry and the words
of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderl and probably would
not have dismayed Nietzsche in the least.
1g. The Soothsayer: In the chapter "On the Adder's Bite"
a brief parable introduces some of Zarathustra's finest sayings; but here the parable is offered for its own sake, and
we feel closer to Rimbaud than to Proverbs. The soothsayer
reappears in Part Four.
20. On Redemption: In the conception of inverse cripples
and the remarks on revenge and punishment Zarathustra's
moral pathos reappears to some extent; but the mood of
the preceding chapter figures in his subsequent reflections,
which lead up to, but stop short of, Nietzsche's notion of
the eternal recurrence of the same events.
21. On Human Prudence: First: better to be deceived
occasionally than always to watch out for deceivers. Second:
vanity versus pride. Third: men today (1883) are too
concerned about petty evil, but great things are possible
only where great evil is harnessed.
22. The Stillest Hour: Zarathustra cannot yet get himself
to proclaim the eternal recurrence and hence he must
leave in order to "ripen."
83
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE
,

IN CHAPTERS [18/18]



   7 Integral Yoga
   4 Poetry
   2 Zen
   2 Philosophy
   1 Science
   1 Christianity


   3 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   2 The Mother
   2 Taigu Ryokan
   2 Satprem
   2 Jorge Luis Borges


   2 Ryokan - Poems
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04


0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a Crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species.
  In view of this situation it is doubly reassuring to know that, even in the midst of chaotic concepts and conditions there still remains a door through which man, individually, can enter into a vast store-house of knowledge, knowledge as dependable and immutable as the measured tread of Eternity.

0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   He was a professor at Montpellier University and lived nearby. And there were several roads leading to his house. This man would leave the university and come to the crossing where all those roads branched out, all eventually leading to his house, one this way, one that way, one from this side. So he himself used to explain how every day he would stop there at the Crossroads and deliberate, Which one shall I take? Each had its advantages and disadvantages. So all this would go through his head, the advantages and disadvantages and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing which road to take home!
   He gave this as an example of thoughts inadequacy for action: if you begin to think, you cant act.

03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The human frame is the abode of the gods; it is a temple of God, as we all know. But the most significant thing about it is that the gods alone do not dwell there: all being, all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine. The Pashu (the animal), the Pishacha (the demon), the Asura (the Titan), and the Deva (the god), all find comfortable lodging in itthere are many chambers indeed in this mansion of the Lord. Man was made after the image of God and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his entire host with him. This duality of the divine and the undivine, the characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame, has, been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance, the frame of Matter, just because this Matter in Ignorance is to be smelted, purified, given its original and intrinsic substance, shape and character. The human person in its actual form is not obviously something absolutely perfect and divine. The type, the norm it represents is divine, but it has been overlaid with all obscure and base elementsit has to be washed and cleaned thoroughly, smelted and reconditioned. The dark ungodly elements mar and vitiate; they must be removed on the one hand, but on the other, they point out and test the salvaging work that has to be done and is being done. Man is always at the Crossroads. This is his especial difficulty and this is also his unique opportunity. His consciousness has a double valency, in contradistinction to the animal's which is, it can be said, monovalent, in that it is amoral, has not the sense of divided loyalty and hence the merit of choice. The movements of the animal follow a fixed stereotyped pattern; it has not got to deviate from the beaten track of its instincts. But man with his sense of the moral, of the good, of the progressive is at every step of his life faced with a dilemma, has to pause at a parting of the ways, always looks before and after and is puzzled at a cas de conscience. That, we have said, has been made for him the condition of growth, of a conscious and willed change with an ever-increasing tempo towards perfect perfection. That furnishes the occasion and circumstance by which he rises to divinity itself, becomes the Divine. He becomes the Divine thus not merely in the own home of the Divine, but on all the levels of the manifestation: all the planes of consciousness with all the hierarchy of beingspowers and personalitiesfind a new play of harmony, a supreme and global fulfilment in the transfigured human vehicle. The frame itself that encases the human consciousness acts as a living condenser: the very contour in its definiteness seems to exert a pressure towards an ever larger and higher synthesis, it may be compared to a kind of field office (Einsteinian, for example) that controls, regulates, moves and configurates all elements within its range. The human frame even as a frame possesses a magic virtue.
   Vaishnavism sees the Divine as a human person, the human person par excellence. Krishna's body is a radiant form of consciousness (cinmaya), no doubt, but it is as definite, determinate, and concrete as the physical body, it is the physical itself but in its true substance. And its exquisiteness consists in its being human in form. The Vedantin's Maya does not touch it, it is beyond the illusory consciousness. For they say Goloka stands above Brahmaloka.

10.05 - Mind and the Mental World, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The mental world, the world of thoughts, is a world in itself It is autonomous. It moves in its own way with its own laws. We human beings, we believe that it is we who think, that is, produce or create our thoughts. We are the makers of our notions and ideas. But in reality it is not so. Thoughts, ideas, notions, all movements of the mind are self-existent realities. They go about or flow on like the waves of a vast sea. Human beings are mere instruments, receptacles that capture or seize some undulations of this vast ocean. Man is man, that is to say, a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind is a sort of Crossroads where all kinds of thoughts from all places meet, cross one another and make an ideal market place. In fact, an individual does not possess any thought-movement which can be called his own. He only catches a contagion. And like a contagion thought-movements pass from one person to another although one may think or feel that the movement is one's own.
   In order to have one's own thought, in order to think by oneself, a long process of education and training is necessary. A growing personal individual consciousness is the first requisite and for that one must do what the Vedic Rishi I spoke of sought to do, gather the thoughts that one has, collect them, sift them and try to have a control over them. One must develop the habit of admitting certain thoughts and rejecting others. Thoughts that are useful, that carry light and peacefulness and happiness, are naturally those that are worth accepting. Those that are of a contrary nature should be pushed out. This is an exercise that develops the individual consciousness and the individual will.

10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Thus a crisis very similar to that which Ashwapati had to face now confronts Savitri also. Both of them were at the Crossroads away from the earth in the pure delights of the heavens or in the world labouring on earth's soil. Savitri's soul was now revealed to her in its fullness. She viewed the mighty destiny for which she had come down and the great work she had to achieve here upon earth, not any personal or individual human satisfaction or achievement but a cosmic fulfilment, a global human realisation. The godhead in Savitri is now fully awake, established in its plenitude the Divinity incarnate in the human frame. All the godheads, all the goddess-emanations now entered into her and moulded the totality of her mighty stature.
   Here begins then the second stage of her mission,her work and achievement, the conquest of Death. Only the Divine human being can conquer Death. Savitri follows Death step by step revealing gradually the mystery of death, his personality and his true mission, although the dark God thinks that it is he who is taking away Satyavan and Savitri along with him, to his own home, his black annihilation. For Death is that in its first appearance, it is utter destruction, nothing-ness, non-existence. So the mighty Godhead declares in an imperious tone to the mortal woman Savitri:

1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
  And were standing at the Crossroads,
  Sat down on his lion seat.

1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  9. The Crossroads
  but HERE THERE is a grave uncertainty to be resolved. The fu-
  --
  as it stands at the Crossroads, faced by the need to decide upon its
  future?

1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  (2005), The Chaos Point The World at the Crossroads (2006), and Worldshift
  2012: Making Green Business, New Politics & Higher Consciousness Work

1.07 - Hui Ch'ao Asks about Buddha, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
  hand for people in the Crossroads, and won't consider it a dif
  ficult thing, either.

1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  From then on, each thing is, simply and absolutely. We are at that meeting point of being, and we look at the great world, brand new. There is no hope for anything else, no expectation, no regret or desire if it is not there at that moment, it will never be there! Everything is there, the total totality of all possible futures. Water may flow, and the faces and thunder of the world, the costume of the moment, the cry of the passerby, the flying seed. The great kaleidoscope turns and strews beings, events, countries and their kings, and this fleeting second, colors them blue, red or gold, but there is still the same look at the meeting point, the same second and the same thing in different colors, the same beings with their sorrows, with white skin or dark, in this century or another. There is nothing new under the sun, nothing to expect! There is that one little second to delve into, delve into and deepen, to live totally, as if forever and ever; there is that unique thing that passes, that unique being, that speck of pollen or dust, that unique happening in the world. Then everything begins to be filled with such total meaning, to extend and branch out to the four corners of the world, to vibrate with total significance, as if this face, that chance encounter, that passing blue or black hue, this unexpected stumbling or bird feather floating in the wind brought us a message each thing is a message, a sign of our position and the position of the whole. Nothing exists in relation to this little shadow anymore, to its needs, its desires, its expectation of things or people everything is without plus or minus, good or evil, rejection or choice or preference or will of any kind. What could we possibly want? We already have everything, forever. What else is there! Each passing circumstance divulges its keynote, its pure music, its innermost meaning, without addition or subtraction, without false visual color through things and beings we watch one and the same tranquil eternity unfolding. We are in our point of eternity, in a look of truth. We are at that Crossroads of being, which, for a moment, seems to open innumerably upon everything. One full little second. Where is the lack, the vain, the missing? Where is the big, the infinite, the useful or useless? We have arrived; we are right in the Thing. There is no more quest for rosewood in the forest of the great world; everything is rosewood and each thing is the one essence. A kind of warm gold begins to glow everywhere.
  And the seeker has put his finger on the fourth golden rule of the passage: Each second totally and clearly.

1.22 - ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  to a Crossroads; then Zarathustra told them that he now
  wanted to walk alone, for he liked to walk alone. His

1962 02 03, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You know the story of the philosopher who lived in the south of France I do not remember his name, a very well-known man who was a professor at the University of Montpellier and who lived on the outskirts of the city? There were several roads leading to his house. Every day this man would leave his university and arrive at the Crossroads where all the roads leading to his house branched outthis way, that way, another way. And every day he would stop and ask himself, Which one shall I take? Each one had its advantages and disadvantages. And all this went on in his head, the advantages and disadvantages, and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing his way home.
   He used to give that as an example of the thoughts incapacity for action: if one begins to think, one can no longer act.

1.jlb - Limits, #Borges - Poems, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  To you the Crossroads seem wide open,
  Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

1.tr - Begging, #Ryokan - Poems, #Taigu Ryokan, #Buddhism
    today's begging is finished; at the Crossroads
    i wander by the side of hachiman shrine

1.tr - The Way Of The Holy Fool, #Ryokan - Poems, #Taigu Ryokan, #Buddhism
  At the Crossroads this year, after
  begging all day

2.07 - I Also Try to Tell My Tale, #The Castle of Crossed Destinies, #Italo Calvino, #Fiction
  All this is like a dream which the word bears within itself and which, passing through him who writes, is freed and frees him. In writing, what speaks is what is repressed. And then the white-bearded Pope could be the great shepherd of souls and interpreter of dreams Sigismund of Vindobona, and for confirmation, the only thing is to see if somewhere in the rectangle of tarots it is possible to read that story which, according to the teachings of his doctrine, is hidden in the warp of all stories. You take a young man, Page of Coins, who wants to drive from himself a dark prophecy: patricide and marriage to his own mother. You send him off at random on a richly adorned Chariot. The Two of Clubs marks a Crossroads on the dusty highway, or, rather, it is the Crossroads, and he who has been there can recognize the place where the road that comes from Corinth crosses the one that leads to Thebes. The Ace of Clubs reports a street-or, rather, road-brawl, when two chariots refuse to give way and remain with the axles of their wheels locked, and the drivers leap to the ground enraged and dusty, shouting exactly like truckdrivers, insulting each other, calling each other's father and mother pig and cow, and if one draws a knife from his pocket, the consequences are likely to be fatal. In fact, here there is the Ace of Swords, there is The Fool, there is Death: it is the stranger, the one coming from Thebes, who is left on the ground; that will teach him to control his nerves; you, Oedipus, did not do it on purpose, we know that; it was temporary insanity; but meanwhile you had flung yourself on him, armed, as if all your life you had been waiting for nothing else. Among the next cards there is The Wheel of Fortune, or Sphinx, there is the entrance into Thebes like a triumphant Emperor, there are the cups of the feast of the wedding with Queen Jocasta, whom we see here portrayed as the Queen of Coins, in widow's weeds, a desirable if mature woman. But the prophecy is fulfilled: the plague infests Thebes, a cloud of germs falls on the city, floods the streets and the houses with miasmas, bodies erupt in red and blue buboes and drop like flies in the streets, lapping the water of the muddy puddles with parched lips. In these cases the only thing to do is consult the Delphic Sibyl, asking her to explain what laws or taboos have been violated: the old woman with the tiara and the open book, tagged with the strange epithet of Popess, is she. If you like, in the Arcanum called Judgment or The Angel you can recognize the primal scene to which the Sigismundian doctrine of dreams harks back: the tender little angel who wakes at night and among the clouds of sleep sees the grownups doing something, he does not know what, all naked and in incomprehensible positions, Mummy and Daddy and other guests. In the dream fate speaks. We can only make note of it. Oedipus, who knew nothing about it, tears out the light of his eyes: literally, the Hermit tarot shows him as he takes a light from his eyes, and sets off on the road to Colonus with the pilgrim's cloak and staff.
  Of all this, writing warns like the oracle and purifies like the tragedy. So it is nothing to make a problem of. Writing, in short, has a subsoil which belongs to the species, or at least to civilization, or at least to certain income brackets. And I? And that amount, large or small, of myself, exquisitely personal, that I believed I was putting into it? If I can call up an author's shade to accompany my distrustful steps in the territories of individual destiny, of the ego, of (as they now say) "real life," it should be that of the Egotist of Grenoble, the provincial out to conquer the world, whom I once read as if I were expecting from him the story I was to write (or live: there was a confusion between the two verbs, in him, or in the me of that time). Which of these cards would he point out to me, if he were still to answer my call? The cards of the novel I have not written, with Love and all the energy it sets in motion and the fears and the deceits, the triumphal Chariot of ambition, the World that comes toward you, the happiness promised by beauty? But here I see only the blocks of scenes that are repeated, the same, the routine of the daily grind, beauty as the picture magazines photograph it. Was this the prescription I was expecting from him? (For the novel and for something obscurely related to the novel: "life"?) What is it that kept all this together and has gone away?

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  cisterns, rivers, wells, Crossroads, and markets. The Egyptians say that the pillarlike whirlwinds of sand raised in the
  desert are caused by the flight of an evil Jinnee. They also

The Garden of Forking Paths 2, #Selected Fictions, #unset, #Zen
  Without waiting for my answer, another said, "The house is a long way from here, but you won't get lost if you take this road to the left and at every Crossroads turn again to your left." I tossed them a coin (my last), descended a few stone steps and started down the solitary road. It went downhill, slowly. It was of elemental earth; overhead the banches were tangled; the low, full moon seemed to accompany me.
  For an instant, I thought that Richard Madden in some way had penetrated my desperate plan. Very quickly, I understood that that was impossible. The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common procedure for discovering the central point of certain labyrinths. I have some understanding of labyrinths: not for nothing am I the great grandson of that Ts'ui Pen who was governor of Yunnan and who renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even more populous than the Hung Lu Meng and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become lost. Thirteen years he dedicated to these heterogeneous tasks, but the hand of a stranger murdered him-and his novel was incoherent and no one found the labyrinth. Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms. . . I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars. Absorbed in these illusory images, I forgot my destiny of one pursued. I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day worked on me, as well as the slope of the road which eliminated any possibility of weariness. The afternoon was intimate, infinite. The road descended and forked among the now confused meadows. A high-pitched, almost syllabic music approached and receded in the shifting of the wind, dimmed by leaves and distance. I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets. Thus I arrived before a tall, rusty gate. Between the iron bars I made out a poplar grove and a pavilion. I understood suddenly two things, the first trivial, the second almost unbelievable: the music came from the pavilion, and the music was Chinese. For precisely that reason I had openly accepted it without paying it any heed. I do not remember whether there was a bell or whether I knocked with my hand. The sparkling of the music continued.

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun crossroads

The noun crossroads has 3 senses (first 3 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (4) hamlet, crossroads ::: (a community of people smaller than a village)
2. (1) juncture, critical point, crossroads ::: (a crisis situation or point in time when a critical decision must be made; "at that juncture he had no idea what to do"; "he must be made to realize that the company stands at a critical point")
3. (1) crossroads ::: (a point where a choice must be made; "Freud's work stands at the crossroads between psychology and neurology")

--- Overview of noun crossroad

The noun crossroad has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (1) intersection, crossroad, crossway, crossing, carrefour ::: (a junction where one street or road crosses another)


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun crossroads

3 senses of crossroads                        

Sense 1
hamlet, crossroads
   => community
     => gathering, assemblage
       => social group
         => group, grouping
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity

Sense 2
juncture, critical point, crossroads
   => crisis
     => situation
       => difficulty
         => condition, status
           => state
             => attribute
               => abstraction, abstract entity
                 => entity

Sense 3
crossroads
   => overlap, convergence, intersection
     => representation, mental representation, internal representation
       => content, cognitive content, mental object
         => cognition, knowledge, noesis
           => psychological feature
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity

Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun crossroad

1 sense of crossroad                          

Sense 1
intersection, crossroad, crossway, crossing, carrefour
   => junction
     => topographic point, place, spot
       => point
         => location
           => object, physical object
             => physical entity
               => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun crossroads

1 of 3 senses of crossroads                      

Sense 2
juncture, critical point, crossroads
   => criticality

Hyponyms of noun crossroad

1 sense of crossroad                          

Sense 1
intersection, crossroad, crossway, crossing, carrefour
   => corner, street corner, turning point
   => level crossing, grade crossing


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun crossroads

3 senses of crossroads                        

Sense 1
hamlet, crossroads
   => community

Sense 2
juncture, critical point, crossroads
   => crisis

Sense 3
crossroads
   => overlap, convergence, intersection

Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun crossroad

1 sense of crossroad                          

Sense 1
intersection, crossroad, crossway, crossing, carrefour
   => junction




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun crossroads

3 senses of crossroads                        

Sense 1
hamlet, crossroads
  -> community
   => parish
   => convent
   => house
   => Ummah, Umma, Muslim Ummah, Islamic Ummah, Islam Nation
   => speech community
   => neighborhood, neighbourhood
   => village, small town, settlement
   => hamlet, crossroads
   => horde
   HAS INSTANCE=> Achomawi
   HAS INSTANCE=> Akwa'ala
   => Aleut
   => Circassian
   HAS INSTANCE=> Inca, Inka
   HAS INSTANCE=> Quechua, Kechua
   HAS INSTANCE=> Xhosa
   HAS INSTANCE=> Zulu

Sense 2
juncture, critical point, crossroads
  -> crisis
   => Dunkirk
   => exigency
   => juncture, critical point, crossroads
   => depression, slump, economic crisis

Sense 3
crossroads
  -> overlap, convergence, intersection
   => crossroads
   => interface

Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun crossroad

1 sense of crossroad                          

Sense 1
intersection, crossroad, crossway, crossing, carrefour
  -> junction
   => interchange
   => intersection, crossroad, crossway, crossing, carrefour
   => railway junction
   => T-junction
   => traffic circle, circle, rotary, roundabout




--- Grep of noun crossroads
crossroads

Grep of noun crossroad
crossroad
crossroads



IN WEBGEN [10000/245]

Wikipedia - America at the Crossroads -- Book by Francis Fukuyama
Wikipedia - At the Crossroads (film) -- 1943 film by Paul Guevremont
Wikipedia - Battle of Heartbreak Crossroads -- Engagement prior to the Battle of the Bulge
Wikipedia - Beyond the Crossroads -- 1922 film
Wikipedia - Carfax, Oxford -- Crossroads; central area of Oxford in England
Wikipedia - Church of the Crossroads
Wikipedia - Crossroads (1942 film) -- 1942 mystery film noir by Jack Conway
Wikipedia - Crossroads (1986 film) -- 1986 film by Walter Hill
Wikipedia - Crossroads (2002 film) -- 2002 American road comedy film
Wikipedia - Crossroads Centre -- Substance abuse treatment facility in Antigua
Wikipedia - Crossroads Community Cathedral -- Multicultural church located at the town line of East Hartford, and Manchester, Connecticut
Wikipedia - Crossroads (culture)
Wikipedia - Crossroads (GFriend song) -- 2020 single by GFriend
Wikipedia - Crossroads Guitar Festival
Wikipedia - Crossroads Kitchen -- Vegan restaurant in Los Angeles
Wikipedia - Crossroads Mall (Omaha) -- Shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
Wikipedia - Crossroads (mythology)
Wikipedia - Crossroads of America -- Nickname of Indiana, United States
Wikipedia - Crossroads of the West Council -- Council of the Boy Scouts of America
Wikipedia - Crossroads (quartet) -- Barbershop quartet
Wikipedia - Crossroads, Western Cape -- Suburb of Cape Town in Western Cape, South Africa
Wikipedia - Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capital
Wikipedia - Fast & Furious Crossroads -- 2020 racing video game developed by Slightly Mad Studios
Wikipedia - Hecate -- Greek goddess of magic and crossroads
Wikipedia - Hoosier Crossroads Conference -- High school athletic conference in central Indiana
Wikipedia - Let Me In: Crossroads -- 2010 comic series
Wikipedia - Life's Crossroads -- 1928 film
Wikipedia - Man at the Crossroads
Wikipedia - Marukos -- A legendary crossroads demon in Ilocano mythology
Wikipedia - Night at the Crossroads -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - Operation Crossroads Africa -- Non-profit organization
Wikipedia - Operation Crossroads -- 1946 nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll
Wikipedia - Quatre Bras -- French for crossroads
Wikipedia - ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads -- 2019 documentary film
Wikipedia - Terrapin Crossroads -- Music venue
Wikipedia - Tetrapylon -- Ancient Roman monument of cubic shape, generally built on a crossroads
Wikipedia - The Crossroads (1960 film) -- 1960 film
Wikipedia - The Crossroads of New York -- 1922 film
Wikipedia - WBFG (FM) -- Radio station in Parker's Crossroads, Tennessee
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Integral World - Dynamic Nature of the Number System, Part I: Mathematics at a Crossroads, Peter Collins
Integral World - Derrida and Wilber at the Crossroads of Metaphysics, Gregory Desilet
Integral World - Transpersonal Psychology at a Crossroads, Frank Visser
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Touched by an Angel (1994 - 2003) - Angels are dispatched from heaven to inspire people who are at a crossroads in their lives. Monica, an angel who at times still needs some guidance with her earthly assignments, reports to Tess, her tough, wise, and always loving supervisor. Joining them is Andrew, who, in addition to his duties as...
Crossroads Cafe (1996 - 1996) - Crossroads Cafe is a TV series debuting in the mid 1990s with a focus on teaching English and English skills to non-english speaking people. The show follows the lives of workers in a cafe and one customer. It is comedy and drama. The show is still airing on public television all over the US.
Misery(1990) - Based on Stephen King's novel and from the makers who adapted "The Princess Bride", Rob Reiner's Misery cast James Caan as a writer at a career crossroads. The film opens with Paul Sheldon (Caan) completing work on his latest novel, a break from his popular series of novels featuring the character M...
Crossroads(1986) - Eugene is an extraordinary talent in classic guitar, but he dreams of being a famous Blues guitarist. So he investigates to find a storied lost song. He asks the legendary Blues musician Willie Brown to help him, but Willie demands to free him from the old-people's prison first and to really learn t...
Crossroads(2002) - Crossroads is the story of three childhood friends, Lucy (Britney Spears), Kit (Zo Saldana) and Mimi (Taryn Manning), who, after eight years apart, rediscover their friendship on a cross-country trip. With barely a plan, practically no money, but plenty of dreams, the girls catch a lift with Mim...
Prey For Rock & Roll(2003) - Jacki, sexy punk rocker and lead singer of the all-girl band Clamdandy, is at a crossroads. With her birthday fast approaching, she must decide whether or not to keep the promise she made to herself over a decade earlier: Quit the music business at 40 if she hasn't made it by then. The decision gets...
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon(2000) - Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman's daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/1366/Detective_Conan_Movie_07__Crossroad_in_the_Ancient_Capital -- Adventure, Mystery, Comedy, Police, Shounen
https://myanimelist.net/manga/983/Crossroad
Beautiful Girls (1996) ::: 7.1/10 -- R | 1h 52min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 9 February 1996 (USA) -- A piano player at a crossroads in his life returns home to his friends and their own problems with life and love. Director: Ted Demme Writer: Scott Rosenberg
Crossroads (1986) ::: 7.1/10 -- R | 1h 39min | Drama, Music, Mystery | 14 March 1986 (USA) -- A wanna be blues guitar virtuoso seeks a long lost song by legendary musician, Robert Johnson. Director: Walter Hill Writer: John Fusco
Family Way (2012) ::: 6.6/10 -- Alles is familie (original title) -- Family Way Poster Finding themselves at a crossroads in their tumultuous lives, the members of a daftly dysfunctional family struggle to sort out their hopes, fears and expectations. Director: Joram Lrsen Writer: Kim van Kooten
God Help the Girl (2014) ::: 6.4/10 -- Unrated | 1h 52min | Drama, Music, Romance | 5 September 2014 (USA) -- As Eve begins writing songs as a way to sort through some emotional problems, she meets James and Cassie, two musicians each at crossroads of their own. Director: Stuart Murdoch Writer:
Maigret: Night at the Crossroads (2017) ::: 7.5/10 -- 1h 28min | Crime, Drama, Mystery | TV Movie 16 April 2017 -- Maigret: Night at the Crossroads tells a complex tale of murder, deceit and greed set in an isolated country community. Director: Sarah Harding Writers: Stewart Harcourt (screenplay by), Georges Simenon (from the novel by) Stars:
Wish I Was Here (2014) ::: 6.7/10 -- R | 1h 46min | Comedy, Drama | 25 July 2014 (USA) -- A struggling actor, father and husband finds himself at a major crossroads, which forces him to examine his life, his family and his career. Director: Zach Braff Writers:
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https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Fire_Emblem_0_(Cipher):_Life_and_Death,_Crossroads_of_Fate/Card_List
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Crossroad_Keep
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Aragne no Mushikago -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Fantasy Horror Mystery -- Aragne no Mushikago Aragne no Mushikago -- Life could be better for shy, anxious university student Rin. The apartment she has rented is hardly the sunny palace the rental listings suggested. The housing complex is rundown, grim and haunted by troubled souls lurking in dark corners. Ghastly crimes are occurring in the vicinity. And a grinning stranger makes his unsettling presence known. -- -- Beyond all this, Rin is coming to realize that something even more sinister is manifesting itself, something at the cursed crossroads of mythology, monstrosity and medical science. Determined to find out more, Rin visits the library, where she meets a sympathetic young staffer. But what she learns does not begin to put her mind at ease. -- -- (Source: Fantasia) -- Movie - Aug 18, 2018 -- 2,910 5.13
Detective Conan Movie 07: Crossroad in the Ancient Capital -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Adventure Mystery Comedy Police Shounen -- Detective Conan Movie 07: Crossroad in the Ancient Capital Detective Conan Movie 07: Crossroad in the Ancient Capital -- Under the cover of darkness, a masked samurai murders six men across the metropolis of Japan: three in Tokyo, one in Osaka, and the last in Kyoto. In their investigation, the police learn that each man was a member of the Genjibotaru—a thieves gang centered on the theft of Buddhist statues and artifacts and who go by the names of Minomoto no Yoshitune's servants. -- -- Without a clear motive or clues to the other members' identities, the case runs dry until a Kyoto temple calls for the famous Kogorou Mouri. Having received an anonymous letter containing a peculiar puzzle, the temple monks ask for his assistance in solving it to recover their long lost statue. Meanwhile, Conan Edogawa and high school detective Heiji Hattori team up in order to solve the cryptic puzzle and find the murderer, as Hattori searches for his childhood love. -- -- With Hattori's knowledge of Kyoto, the two scour the streets and gradually discover the truth, but not before the murderer strikes again—killing another Genjibotaru member and, after repeated attempts on Hattori's life, eventually kidnapping Hattori's childhood sweetheart. It is only by working together to bring buried clues to light can Conan and Hattori hope to end the rogue samurai's bloodshed and save Hattori's love. -- -- Movie - Apr 19, 2003 -- 40,896 7.83
Itou Junji: Collection -- -- Studio Deen -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Mystery Horror Psychological Supernatural Drama Thriller -- Itou Junji: Collection Itou Junji: Collection -- In the light of day and in the dead of night, mysterious horrors await in the darkest shadows of every corner. They are unexplainable, inescapable, and undefeatable. Be prepared, or you may become their next victim. -- -- Sit back in terror as traumatizing tales of unparalleled terror unfold. Tales, such as that of a cursed jade carving that opens holes all over its victims' bodies; deep nightmares that span decades; an attractive spirit at a misty crossroad that grants cursed advice; and a slug that grows inside a girl's mouth. Tread carefully, for the horrifying supernatural tales of the Itou Junji: Collection are not for the faint of heart. -- -- 101,194 6.19
Itou Junji: Collection -- -- Studio Deen -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Mystery Horror Psychological Supernatural Drama Thriller -- Itou Junji: Collection Itou Junji: Collection -- In the light of day and in the dead of night, mysterious horrors await in the darkest shadows of every corner. They are unexplainable, inescapable, and undefeatable. Be prepared, or you may become their next victim. -- -- Sit back in terror as traumatizing tales of unparalleled terror unfold. Tales, such as that of a cursed jade carving that opens holes all over its victims' bodies; deep nightmares that span decades; an attractive spirit at a misty crossroad that grants cursed advice; and a slug that grows inside a girl's mouth. Tread carefully, for the horrifying supernatural tales of the Itou Junji: Collection are not for the faint of heart. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 101,194 6.19
Nodame Cantabile: Finale -- -- J.C.Staff -- 11 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Josei Music Romance -- Nodame Cantabile: Finale Nodame Cantabile: Finale -- Shinichi Chiaki is quickly making a name for himself as the principal conductor of the revitalized Roux-Marlet Orchestra, and Megumi "Nodame" Noda has made leaps and bounds as a pianist at the Conservatoire de Paris. However, tensions mount between the two as Nodame feels left behind by Chiaki's growing success and his close friendship with legendary piano prodigy Rui Son. Disregarding her teacher Professor Charles Auclair's advice, Nodame enters another piano competition in an attempt to jumpstart her own performance career. -- -- Meanwhile, those around Chiaki and Nodame are at their own crossroads. Rui begins to doubt herself after hearing Nodame's playing and being denied tutelage from Auclair; Maestro Franz von Stresemann faces the reality of his mortality; pianists Yunlong Li and Tatiana Vishneva feverishly prepare for a competition, while the latter also struggles with her growing feelings for oboist and fellow student Yasunori Kuroki. -- -- As Chiaki, Nodame, and their friends continue on their respective journeys, they must not only strive to stay true to themselves, but also remember where it all started. -- -- 112,686 8.26
Yesterday wo Utatte -- -- Doga Kobo -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Drama Romance Seinen -- Yesterday wo Utatte Yesterday wo Utatte -- Rikuo Uozumi has all but resigned himself to a bleak future, aimlessly working at a convenience store in Tokyo after graduating from college. His monotonous life is interrupted when the peculiar Haru Nonaka makes a lively appearance, frequently dropping by his workplace to befriend him. When Rikuo learns that an old college friend and crush, Shinako Morinome, has moved back into town, he reaches out to further their relationship. Unbeknownst to Rikuo however, Shinako is carrying painful memories from her past that were holding her back from accepting his feelings. Meanwhile, as Haru continually opens up to Rikuo, he discovers that she, much like him, is living by herself and wants to step out of her comfort zone into an uncertain future. -- -- The past lingers long in the mind, and the future remains elusive. At a crossroads along their intertwined paths, these three experience what it means to let go of their feelings of yesterday and embrace the change that tomorrow brings. -- -- 224,381 6.98



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