inventory

1:Buddhism teaches that joy and happiness arise from letting go. Please sit down and take an inventory of your life. There are things you've been hanging on to that really are not useful and deprive you of your freedom. Find the courage to let them go." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:Take inventory of everyone with whom you have contact. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove

2:My inventory of people who can save me is down to just me. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove

3:A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove

4:Taking the inventory of your current work at all levels will automatically produce greater focus, alignment, and sense of priorities. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove

5:Time is the only commodity we deal with which cannot be counterfeited, stolen or placed in inventory. Remember, time is irreplaceable. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove

6:We need to transform all the stuff we’ve attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove

7:Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what's been on your mind so you can think about what you've been thinking about. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove

8:The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

9:To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove

10:When we analyse the picture into a large number of particles of paint, we lose the aesthetic significance of the picture. The particles of paint go into the scientific inventory, and it is claimed that everything that there really was in the picture is kept. But this way of keeping a thing may be much the same as losing it. The essence of a picture (as distinct from the paint) is arrangement.” ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove

11:So the next step is to develop awareness of all the self-limiting, fear-based beliefs that make you unhappy. You take an inventory of all that you believe, all your agreements, and through this process you begin the transformation. The Toltecs called this the Art of Transformation, and it’s a whole mastery. You achieve the Mastery of Transformation by changing the fear-based agreements that make you suffer, and reprogramming your own mind, in your own way. ~ don-miguel-ruiz, @wisdomtrove

12:The methods I present here are all based on three key objectives: (1) capturing all the things that might need to get done or have usefulness for you—now, later, someday, big, little, or in between—in a logical and trusted system outside your head and off your mind; (2) directing yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the inputs you let into your life so that you will always have a workable inventory of next actions that you can implement or renegotiate in the moment; and (3) curating and coordinating all of that content, utilizing the recognition of the multiple levels of commitments with yourself and others you will have at play, at any point in time. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:work in process’ or ‘inventory ~ Gene Kim,

2:work-in-progress (WIP) inventory] ~ Eric Ries,

3:Take inventory of everyone with whom you have contact. ~ Bruce Lee,

4:Constantly take inventory of what's important to you. ~ Dave Chappelle,

5:check the computer inventory against the actual stores. ~ Nathan Lowell,

6:A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory. ~ Albert Einstein,

7:My inventory of people who can save me is down to just me. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

8:Don't kid yourself. Be honest with yourself. Take your own inventory. ~ Jack Canfield,

9:The inventory, the value of my company, walks out the door every evening. ~ Bill Gates,

10:The more inventory a company has, the less likely they will have what they need. ~ Taiichi Ohno,

11:Time to go inward, man, I hope I have the nerve, to take inventory of the causes that I serve. ~ Rodney Crowell,

12:It should have been unbearable to face this sorry inventory, yet for some reason it was not. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

13:I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. ~ George Eliot,

14:I refused to even consider ordering less inventory. Grow or die, that’s what I believed, no matter the situation. ~ Phil Knight,

15:The continuing shortages of housing inventory are driving the price gains. There is no evidence of bubbles popping. ~ David Lereah,

16:The difference between quick ratio and current ratio is that the calculation of quick ratio excludes inventory balances. ~ Mike Piper,

17:When the chaos settles and the smoke clears, take inventory of who's still by your side. Walk into the light together. ~ Gabby Rivera,

18:A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty. ~ Charles Spurgeon,

19:Production cutbacks have remained in place in the third quarter and this has helped to further reduce inventory levels worldwide. ~ Lakshmi Mittal,

20:Taking the inventory of your current work at all levels will automatically produce greater focus, alignment, and sense of priorities. ~ David Allen,

21:Everyone has one—an inventory of lost things waiting to be found. Yearning to be acknowledged for the worth they once held in your life. ~ Lang Leav,

22:Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather sympathy we learn to feel for the pain of others. ~ Juan Gabriel,

23:We do not include the pleasures we enjoy in sleep in the inventory of the pleasures we have experienced in the course of our existence. ~ Marcel Proust,

24:When we don’t stop daily to inventory all the gazillion things going right in our lives, the crazy voices in our heads try to make us their ~ Pam Grout,

25:We have so much room for improvement. Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory... of how we are taking responsibility. ~ Nancy Pelosi,

26:A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

27:Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather the learned sympathy towards the pain of others. ~ Juan Gabriel V squez,

28:The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising. ~ Craig Charles,

29:I was a frequent mental inventory taker, scanning my consciousness for objects of concern, kind of like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts. ~ Anonymous,

30:I was a frequent mental inventory taker, scanning my consciousness for objects of concern, kind of like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts. ~ Dan Harris,

31:1997 and 1999 published the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) and the Transcendental-future Time Perspective Inventory (TFTPI).33 As ~ Philip G Zimbardo,

32:We need to transform all the “stuff” we’ve attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information. ~ David Allen,

33:Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather sympathy we learn to feel for the pain of others. With ~ Juan Gabriel V squez,

34:I don't do much more than organise other people's ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

35:If we don't take inventory every once in a while and give thanks to God for the great things He has done for us, we get totally out of perspective. ~ David Jeremiah,

36:Only by making an inventory of our agreements will we uncover all of the conflicts in the mind and eventually make order out of the chaos of the mitote. ~ Miguel Ruiz,

37:inventory-valuation method is used. The three most-used methods are known as FIFO, LIFO, and Average Cost. Under GAAP, a business can use any of the three. ~ Mike Piper,

38:We need to transform all the “stuff” we’ve attracted and accumulated into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information. Almost ~ David Allen,

39:Strapped by tight credit and plummeting sales, businesses have overhauled the way they manage supply chains, inventory, production practices, and staffing. ~ Janet Yellen,

40:...wisdom is in large part the knowledge of how to avoid doing dumb things, and thus grows globally as a function of the published inventory of stupid mistakes. ~ Tim Bray,

41:Take inventory of what you have to offer. Place a value on it. Respect it - because if you don't respect what you have to offer it's hard for other people to. ~ Nancy Pelosi,

42:So I add frigid to the list. To that stupid mental inventory I try so hard not to keep. An increasingly large list of all my flaws. My inadequacies. My failures. ~ Jessica Park,

43:The fact that Gene Weingarten and I and Bathroom Inventory are now part of some kind of Matrix of Poop strongly suggests that the Pulitzer is not what it once was. ~ Dave Barry,

44:Take inventory of yourself, see if any remnants of fear are standing in your way. Then you may grow... because nothing, absolutely nothing, can stand in your way. ~ Napoleon Hill,

45:The peculiar institution made Cora into a maker of lists as well. In her inventory of loss, people were not reduced to sums, but multiplied by their kindnesses. ~ Colson Whitehead,

46:Inventory Focus: Instead of berating yourself for not knowing something you don’t or can’t see, are you willing to be gentle with yourself while you wait for clarity? ~ Melody Beattie,

47:Mathematics catalogues everything that is not self-contradictory; within that vast inventory, physics is an island of structures rich enough to contain their own beholders. ~ Greg Egan,

48:What’s the inventory situation on this model? Is it the store’s hottest item, currently on backorder, or is it a dog the store manager will dump at any price? You don’t know. ~ Herb Cohen,

49:When a thing you love faces adversity, you start to feel more protective of it. Also, you take an inventory all the time. You ask yourself, "Is this worth all my fighting?" ~ Rashida Jones,

50:Yes, my bug-out bag is packed,” Faith said and grimaced. “‘Where’s your bug-out bag?’ ‘Is your bug-out bag packed?’ ‘What’s your inventory?’ ‘Why did I get the insane parents? ~ John Ringo,

51:I work hard, and managing an inventory-based business can be extremely stressful. The upside is that, as long as I get my job done, I can take time off pretty much any time I want. ~ Anne Taintor,

52:I say an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour out of the entire system. I say an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is worthless. Bottlenecks govern both throughput and inventory. ~ Eliyahu M Goldratt,

53:Love Others Today: Take an honest inventory of your relationships. Are you trying to buy anyone’s friendship for your own benefit instead of blessing that person out of sincere love? ~ Joyce Meyer,

54:our to-do list has become more of a guilt list. An inventory of everything we want to do, plan to do, think we should do, but never get to. More like an I’m-never-going-to-get-to-it list. ~ Peter Bregman,

55:That said, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating a quick, informal, short list of “if I have time, I’d really like to . . .” kinds of things, picked from your Next Actions inventory. ~ David Allen,

56:In a language, in the system of language, there are only differences. Therefore, a taxonomical operation an undertake the systematic, statistical, and classificatory inventory of a language. ~ Jacques Derrida,

57:With my recovery programme, I have to do a daily inventory of how my day has been. I am terribly dyslexic and have attention deficit disorder, so I have to carry a tape recorder everywhere I go. ~ Ozzy Osbourne,

58:Of course there are influences, of course there are things that are inspiring, but it's weird to think that I'm trying to keep a mental inventory of them and report them clearly to whomever might ask. ~ Emily Haines,

59:The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

60:To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust. ~ John F Kennedy,

61:The menus at failing restaurants offer too many dishes. The owners think making every dish under the sun will broaden the appeal of the restaurant. Instead it makes for crappy food (and creates inventory headaches). ~ Jason Fried,

62:she’d read enough of them to know that they were only as valuable as the contents of their writers’ minds—and to her it seemed that a great many writers, had they been merchants, would have precious little inventory. ~ Jim Butcher,

63:We take smaller companies and middle-sized companies, all around the world, and we do currency exchange for them; we raise bonds and equities for them; and we do inventory finance, trade finance, and custody of assets. ~ Jamie Dimon,

64:Yet, in most cases, platforms don’t create value units; instead, they are created by the producers who participate in the platform. Thus, platforms are “information factories” that have no control over inventory. ~ Geoffrey G Parker,

65:One out of every six American women has so much mercury in her womb that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases, including autism, blindness, mental retardation and heart, liver and kidney disease. ~ Robert F Kennedy Jr,

66:George took a quick inventory of their purchases, then laughed. “Bess, it’s a good thing we got you to leave that last department store or you wouldn’t have had enough money left to buy your ticket home,” she stated bluntly. ~ Carolyn Keene,

67:Second, they free up capital for more-productive uses. Toyota’s production system, for example, allowed the automaker to operate with two months’—rather than two years’—worth of inventory on hand, which freed up massive amounts of cash. ~ Anonymous,

68:Think about it: everybody you know, everyone that you meet, also know about 250 people. So every time you cultivate a relationship with one new person, you have actually expanded your personal inventory by 250 people - every single time. ~ Bob Burg,

69:Any improvement made after the bottleneck is useless, because it will always remain starved, waiting for work from the bottleneck. And any improvements made before the bottleneck merely results in more inventory piling up at the bottleneck. ~ Gene Kim,

70:He likes to know things. He checks out book and record collections when he visits people, looks in medicine cabinets, takes inventory in refrigerators. He eaves drops on conversations at public phone booths. He reads murder victims' mail. ~ John Sayles,

71:When you have made an inventory of the kind of things you tell yourself in different situations that make you angry, you might then go back over this list and ask yourself, “What was I needing that was being expressed through that judgment? ~ Anonymous,

72:I take very seriously this notion that my highest job is to live a better life, all the time and to the best of my ability. I need to monitor my own progress - take my own inventory - and clean my own closet. I am trying to do all that. ~ Marianne Williamson,

73:The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'knowing thyself'as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory. ~ Antonio Gramsci,

74:Alex, the goal is not to reduce operational expense by itself. The goal is not to improve one measurement in isolation. The goal is to reduce operational expense and reduce inventory while simultaneously increasing throughput,” says Jonah. ~ Eliyahu M Goldratt,

75:There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward. ~ Jeff Bezos,

76:Books were expensive, as well. But she’d read enough of them to know that they were only as valuable as the contents of their writers’ minds—and to her it seemed that a great many writers, had they been merchants, would have precious little inventory. ~ Jim Butcher,

77:She made a visual inventory of the disaster and confirmed that the girl was curled up like a snail, her head hidden between her arms: terrified but intact. "My God!" Rosa Cabarcas exclaimed. "What I wouldn’t have given for a love like this! ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,

78:Buddhism teaches that joy and happiness arise from letting go. Please sit down and take an inventory of your life. There are things you’ve been hanging on to that really are not useful and deprive you of your freedom. Find the courage to let them go. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,

79:I am the anti-trend guy? I don't believe in chasing trends. And before anyone shops, I believe you benefit from doing a closet inventory. Ask yourself what am I wearing, what am I not wearing, and you'll probably discover things you didn't even know you had. ~ Tim Gunn,

80:I was always a kid trying to make a buck. I borrowed a dollar from my dad, went to the penny candy store, bought a dollar's worth of candy, set up my booth, and sold candy for five cents apiece. Ate half my inventory, made $2.50, gave my dad back his dollar. ~ Guy Fieri,

81:Our mind takes an inventory of past events and uses them to project the probability of success in the future. Depending on the information it gathers, we either move forward—or the
fear response is triggered and forward progress is circumvented. Page 48 ~ Nick Ortner,

82:Instead of trying to fit an impossible ideal, I took a personal inventory of all my healthy body parts for which I am grateful: Straight Greek eyebrows. They start at the hairline at my temple and, left unchecked, will grow straight across my face and onto yours. ~ Tina Fey,

83:They’re measurements which express the goal of making money perfectly well, but which also permit you to develop operational rules for running your plant,” he says. “There are three of them. Their names are throughput, inventory and operational expense. ~ Eliyahu M Goldratt,

84:Do you realize that the only way you can create excess inventories is by having excess manpower?” he says. I think about it. After a minute, I have to conclude he’s right; machines don’t set up and run themselves. People had to create the excess inventory. ~ Eliyahu M Goldratt,

85:Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. ~ Geoffrey G Parker,

86:I asked one retailer, I said, "Let me ask you, are you going to raise prices next year?" They looked at me and said, "Not only are we not going to raise prices, we're going to have to lower prices, increase the quality of the goods, and turn the inventory quicker." ~ Ken Moelis,

87:I think I have terminal curiosity. So I always think that the future will be better and different than the past. As I look back and take inventory of myself, I'm very open-minded and flexible. People say the older you get, you get set in your ways. I don't think so. ~ Les Wexner,

88:Most of the well-developed world - Australia, Western Europe - they develop their resources base, they inventory it, they develop it, and they view it as a good source of jobs and revenue. We are a country that for too long has taken affordable energy for granted. ~ John S Watson,

89:Who are we, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopaedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way. ~ Italo Calvino,

90:As we begin to plan for a new human society, we need to foster common values about clean air, water, and other elements of self-sustenance. These, along with a complete inventory of Earth's resources, will form the basis for a holistic approach to cybernated decision-making. ~ Jacque Fresco,

91:In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters. And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production. ~ Alan Blinder,

92:Had he liked her all along? Was she the girl he saw every day and was I the girl who fed him and showered him with kisses once a week? It occurred to me that maybe all the time he omitted in our stolen conversations wasn’t simply long, boring hours of inventory. I was too angry to cry. ~ Kiera Cass,

93:Because profit for you is prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace, and so on and so forth; so that a man who, for example, openly and knowingly went against this whole inventory would, in your opinion – well, and also in mine, of course – be an obscurantist or a complete madman, right? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

94:Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable. ~ Italo Calvino,

95:technologies like payroll processing software, factory automation, computer-controlled machines, automated inventory control, and word processing have been deployed for routine work, substituting for workers in clerical tasks, on the factory floor, and doing rote information processing. ~ Erik Brynjolfsson,

96:She had no idea how George delighted in her funny ways, or watched her through the window as she stood outside, finishing an apple or nibbling sunflower seeds. She did not register his glances, his quick inventory of her clothes, his pleasure in her face and wrists. She did not know his heart. ~ Allegra Goodman,

97:Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” Indeed, ~ Kevin Kelly,

98:If you’d stop chattering, we could go get lunch.” “You’re the one who started the conversation by asking why I wear my purse.” “How was I to know you’d give me a full inventory of what you carry? Other women keep that a secret.” “I’m not like other women.” There’s an understatement. “I have noticed. ~ Cathy Marie Hake,

99:The numbers regarding Koch Industries’ pollution were incontrovertible. In 2012, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory database, which documents the toxic and carcinogenic output of eight thousand American companies, Koch Industries was the number one producer of toxic waste in the United States. ~ Jane Mayer,

100:I sat at the foot of a huge tree, a statue of the night, and tried to make an inventory of all I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt: dizziness, horror, stupor, astonishment, joy, enthusiasm, nausea, inescapable attraction. What had attracted me? It was difficult to say: Human kind cannot bear much reality. ~ Octavio Paz,

101:If I’m forced to be honest, here’s an account of how I left the world last week: worse, worse, better, worse, same, worse, same. Not an inventory to make one swell with pride. I don’t necessarily need to make the world a better place, mind you. Today, I will live by the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm. How ~ Maria Semple,

102:The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature. ~ Peter Medawar,

103:So what does the architecture of your application scream? When you look at the top-level directory structure, and the source files in the highest-level package, do they scream “Health Care System,” or “Accounting System,” or “Inventory Management System”? Or do they scream “Rails,” or “Spring/Hibernate,” or “ASP”? ~ Robert C Martin,

104:The greatest flaw of human beings is to remain glued to the inventory of reason. Reason doesn't deal with man as energy. Reason deals with instruments that create energy, but it has never seriously occurred to reason that we are better than instruments: we are organisms that create energy. We are bubbles of energy. ~ Carlos Castaneda,

105:Today I Pray Help me to take inventory each day of my stock of my new, healthy thoughts, throwing out the old ones as I happen upon them without regret or nostalgia. For I have outgrown those old ideas, which are as scuffed and run-over as an old pair of shoes. Now, in the light, I can see that they are filled with holes. ~ Anonymous,

106:Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Perhaps it's time to inventory the imprints and anchors in our own life. Even if they once were completely reasonable, are they still reasonable? Once the old choices are reconsidered, we can open ourselves to new decisions-and the new opportunities of a new day. ~ Dan Ariely,

107:innovators need to be disagreeable. By disagreeable, I don’t mean obnoxious or unpleasant. I mean that on that fifth dimension of the Big Five personality inventory, “agreeableness,” they tend to be on the far end of the continuum. They are people willing to take social risks—to do things that others might disapprove of. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,

108:Evaluate the external environment that affects you to assess the opportunities and threats you face with regard to your mission and objectives. Then, using value chain analysis, conduct an honest inventory of your personal strengths and weaknesses as they relate to that external environment. What actions do your results suggest? ~ Anonymous,

109:Good,” I say, and point out to everyone that Wal-Mart’s policies fit together—the bar codes, the integrated logistics, the frequent just-in-time deliveries, the large stores with low inventory—they are complements to one another, forming an integrated design. This whole design—structure, policies, and actions—is coherent. ~ Richard P Rumelt,

110:any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion. Astonishing, but true! Any improvement made after the bottleneck is useless, because it will always remain starved, waiting for work from the bottleneck. And any improvements made before the bottleneck merely results in more inventory piling up at the bottleneck. ~ Gene Kim,

111:Critics say Internet advertising suffers from limitless inventory, which depresses prices. These exclusive front-page sponsorships are not limitless. If HBO doesn't move quickly enough, Showtime can buy out Gawker and Jezebel for the key fall TV season. On any individual day, there isn't room for both of them; and that's healthy. ~ Nick Denton,

112:I wouldn’t so much as stick my head in a pool hall. Oh, look, this is as far as I go explaining what I am and am not like. I will not explain myself one more time. I will not make an inventory of my attributes for people or mention my goddamn sense of duty. I will not take one more round of his ridiculous, nonsensical crap!” Whereupon, ~ Philip Roth,

113:One of Coin's men lays a hand on my arm. Its not an aggressive move, really, but after the arena's I react defensively to any unfamiliar touch. I jerk my arm free and take off running down the halls. My mind does a quick inventory of my odd little hiding places and i wind up in the supply closet, curled up against a crate of chalk. ~ Suzanne Collins,

114:His inventory is eclectic; there's no evidence of pattern or purpose other than, I suppose, his own personal taste. So, no teenage wizards or vampire police here. That's a shame, because this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard. ~ Robin Sloan,

115:Everybody copied Atari products. So we started messing with them and it was fun. We bought enough chips that we could get them mislabeled. So we bankrupted at least two companies which copied our boards, and bought all the parts but they were the wrong parts, so they're sitting on all this inventory they can't sell because the games don't work. ~ Nolan Bushnell,

116:The greatest of poems is an inventory.
Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it
in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to
look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy
one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the
solitary island. ~ G K Chesterton,

117:A production line with high levels of model variety is more valuable when combined with an inventory and order processing system that minimizes the need for stocking finished goods, a sales process equipped to explain and encourage customization, and an advertising theme that stresses the benefits of product variations that meet a customer’s special needs. ~ Michael E Porter,

118:Gingers are my kryptonite. Always have been, always will be. Show me a hot redheaded guy and my pulse will start a’racing. And this guy? At least six feet three, sun-kissed skin, freckles scattered across his nose, his hair swept back from his chiseled features. Cheekbones that could cut glass. And those eyes, currently giving me the three-second inventory. I ~ Alice Clayton,

119:Perhaps you need to look up and around instead of back and down. Lift your eyes and see the amazing future which bursts with hope for you in God! Don’t spend your life mourning over what you have lost and what is already gone; take an inventory of what you have left and keep going, one foot in front of the other, one step of faith at a time. Remember, God is on your side! ~ Joyce Meyer,

120:Inventory
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
~ Dorothy Parker,

121:Besides knowing all about the world, Mr. Right is also an expert on your life and how you should live it. He has the answers to your conflicts at work, how you should spend your time, and how you should raise your children. He is especially knowledgeable about your faults, and he likes to inventory what is wrong with you, as if tearing you down were the way to improve you. ~ Lundy Bancroft,

122:Havas Media, observed in a March 3, 2015, essay on TechCrunch.com: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” Something ~ Thomas L Friedman,

123:Inventory:

"Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. ~ Dorothy Parker,

124:The drys seemingly are afraid of the truth. Why not take inventory and ascertain the true conditions. Let us not leave it to the charge of an antiprohibition organization, or to any other private association, let us have an official survey and let the American people know what is going on. A complete and honest and impartial survey would reveal incredible conditions. ~ Fiorello H La Guardia,

125:C-130 dropped the MOAB, the biggest conventional the United States has in its inventory. The MOAB hit the Tyson house, causing a massive explosion, bigger than the SWAT leader had really expected. The shockwave was big enough to rattle the SWAT team. They waited until the fire from the explosion died down before they went back onto the property to find out if anyone had survived. ~ Cliff Ball,

126:The cookbook gives a detailed description of ingredients and procedures but no proofs for its prescriptions or reasons for its recipes; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. ... Mathematics cannot be tested in exactly the same manner as a pudding; if all sorts of reasoning are debarred, a course of calculus may easily become an incoherent inventory of indigestible information. ~ George Polya,

127:A good rule in organizational analysis is that no meeting of the minds is really reached until we talk of specific actions or decisions. We can talk of who is responsible for budgets, or inventory, or quality, but little is settled. It is only when we get down to the action words-measure, compute, prepare, check, endorse, recommend, approve-that we can make clear who is to do what. ~ Joseph M Juran,

128:Ultimately, 'how's it going?' is the most futile and the most profound of questions. To answer it precisely, one would have to make a scrupulous inventory of one's psyche, considering each aspect in detail. No matter: we have to say 'fine' out of politeness and civility and change the subject, or else ruminate the question during our whole lives and reserve our reply for afterward. ~ Pascal Bruckner,

129:And what they find is when they bring their pain or their doubt or their uncomfortable truth to church, someone immediately grabs it out of their hands to try and fix it, to try and make it go away. Bible verses are quoted. Assurances are given. Plans with ten steps and measurable results are made. With good intentions tinged with fear, Christians scour their inventory for a cure. ~ Rachel Held Evans,

130:It may seem unimaginable to you that child soldiers exist and yet the reality for many rebel and gang leaders, and even state governments, is that there is no more complete end-to-end weapon system in the inventory of war machines than the child soldierMan has created the ultimate cheap, expendable, yet sophisticated human weapon at the expense of humanity's own future: its children. ~ Romeo Dallaire,

131:Printing and transporting paper is very expensive, and e-books eliminate the expensive four-color printing, the higher quality paper, the ocean shipping, the customs clearance, the inventory, answering the telephone, writing up the orders, picking, packing and shipping and managing all of these functions. So we eliminate a huge number of costs and the chance that those books won't sell. ~ Dan Poynter,

132:At the Automatica robot and automation fair in Munich this week the organisers devoted a whole section to so-called “service robots”. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for manufacturing, engineering and automation demonstrated a Care-O-bot that sweeps office floors and empties bins. Pal Robotics showed Stockbot, which walks the aisles in a shop or warehouse to check inventory at night. ~ Anonymous,

133:. . . So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me - each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinion, credo's and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth. ~ R Buckminster Fuller,

134:He could make her forget that it was desperation. He could make her forget everything. And this small room couldn't contain what they had when they were together. The temperature would rise. Ice would melt. Eggs would fry in their cartons. After it had happened a few times when they first met, she had insisted he stay away from her at work because she lost inventory when he was around. ~ Sarah Addison Allen,

135:Then, in 1979, VisiCalc became the very first massive software hit. VisiCalc was a relatively simple financial modeling spreadsheet, and its existence suddenly gave nongeeks a concrete reason to own a computer, as they realized how much time they could save handling accounting chores, managing inventory lists, and trying out business scenarios. Suddenly Apple enjoyed an unprecedented, meteoric rise. ~ Brent Schlender,

136:I wonder how Merripen is faring,” Win said, her blue eyes soft with concern. Merripen, the cook-maid, and the footman had gone to the house two days earlier to prepare for the Hathaways’ arrival.
“No doubt he’s been working ceaselessly day and night,” Amelia replied, “taking inventory, rearranging everything in sight, and issuing commands to people who don’t dare disobey him. I’m sure he’s quite happy. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

137:Modern man does not deny spirituality. But he is oriented towards the present and future rather than the past, is open to fresh experiences and new ideas, accepts reason and calculability instead of fate, has a large inventory of knowledge and facts at his disposal, relies on planning and organization, is willing to accept the right of others to their opinions, and believes in individual merit and rights. ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy,

138:There was little science to Amazon’s earliest distribution methods. The company held no inventory itself at first. When a customer bought a book, Amazon ordered it, the book would arrive within a few days, and Amazon would store it in the basement and then ship it off to the customer. It took Amazon a week to deliver most items to customers, and it could take several weeks or more than a month for scarcer titles. ~ Brad Stone,

139:Traders kept careful records of their booty. One surviving inventory from this region lists “68 head” of slaves by name, physical defects, and cash value, starting with the men, who were worth the most money, and ending with: “Child, name unknown as she is dying and cannot speak, male without value, and a small girl Callenbo, no value because she is dying; one small girl Cantunbe, no value because she is dying. ~ Adam Hochschild,

140:The creative force in man recognizes and records these rhythms with the medium most suitable to him, the object, or the moment, feeling the cause, the life within the outer form. Recording unfelt facts, acquired by rule, results in sterile inventory. To see the Thing Itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism - the casual noting of the superficial phase, a transitory mood. ~ Edward Weston,

141:Paying attention to what nourishes and stimulates your heart, soul, and imagination leads to listening to your instincts. In turn, listening to your instincts jump-starts the process of creating the fabric of your destiny. Like a designer sewing a garment, you take the vision within you and bring it to life in a suit to be worn for your next season of life. You are instinctively best at inventing what is in your inventory! ~ T D Jakes,

142:There's a value in that space - rent, overhead, staffing costs, etc. - that has to be paid back by a certain number of inventory turns per month. In other words, the onesies and twosies waste space. However, when that space doesn't cost anything, suddenly you can look at those infrequent sellers again, and they begin to have value. This was the insight that led to Amazon, Netflix, and all the other companies I was talking to. ~ Chris Anderson,

143:But what we did is we studied our town. We did an inventory of all of the things that were present there—farms and marshes and springs and historic sites, Indian trails, buildings, our tobacco farms included. And what happened after we did this very careful and very extensive inventory is, we fell in love with the place. Most of us didn’t know where we lived. We had just moved in and out rather oblivious to the beauty of things. ~ Krista Tippett,

144:The TMS is evolving into a logistics platform that can handle all nodes, all geographies and all transportation nodes. It's already talking to other applications in the supply chain, like warehouse management, order management and ERP systems. By adding underlying algorithms, a TMS can now understand the relationship between the cost of inventory and the cost of transportation and come up with an optimal solution to answer those questions. ~ John Murphy,

145:Tom Goodwin, senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media, observed in a March 3, 2015, essay on TechCrunch.com: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” Something ~ Thomas L Friedman,

146:Before you begin your journey toward integrity, you need to determine your starting point. In other words, what's your integrity quotient? How much integrity do you have? Do a moral inventory of yourself. Hold yourself accountable going forward for what you say and do. Moving toward a more faithful, fair, and honest life begins with confronting truthfully who you are. You can't hold yourself accountable if you won't see yourself clearly. ~ David Jeremiah,

147:Ten glorious years at Pingfang, a sea of bodies brought to you by train. War as immunity from man’s laws. Before, you’d worked in the shadows. During the ten years you worked for Division 4 there were no such hindrances. Dr. Masaki ran the inventory, cataloguing prisoners as non-descript units referred to only as “Materials Used.” You preferred to call the prisoners “logs,” each destined for the incinerator after they’d been of use. ~ Jeremy Robert Johnson,

148:Make an Inventory of Your Creative Imaginings What are the things you really might want to do someday if you have the time, money, and inclination? Write them on your Someday/Maybe list. Typical categories include: Things to get or build for your home Hobbies to take up Skills to learn Creative expressions to explore Clothes and accessories to buy Toys (hi-tech and otherwise!) to acquire Trips to take Organizations to join Service projects to contribute ~ David Allen,

149:Usability, fundamentally, is a matter of bringing a bit of human rights into the world of computer-human interaction. It's a way to let our ideals shine through in our software, no matter how mundane the software is. You may think that you're stuck in a boring, drab IT department making mind-numbing inventory software that only five lonely people will ever use. But you have daily opportunities to show respect for humanity even with the most mundane software. ~ Joel Spolsky,

150:One insurance executive I worked with described the major benefit he derived from implementation of this system: “Previously I would just tell everyone, ‘Sure, I’ll do it,’ because I didn’t know how much I really had to do. Now that I’ve got the inventory clear and complete, just to maintain my integrity, I have had to say, ‘No, I can’t do that, I’m sorry.’ The amazing thing is that instead of being upset with my refusal, everyone was impressed with my discipline! ~ David Allen,

151:We settled onto our knees and began to take inventory of the species near us. After two hours, we were pretty sure that we'd found Brachythecium thanks to its furry, leggy appearance up close ('Upon 20x magnification the fronds resemble Oscar the Grouch's pubic hair,' Bill wrote in our field notes using his careful script). We were only partly convinced of its species (rutabulum was the front-runner), and so we settled upon Brachythecium oscarpubes for the time being. ~ Hope Jahren,

152:Intentional living is the bridge to significance. At the end of every year, I take time out to reflect and evaluate the events of the previous year - what went well and what needed improvement. From that inventory, I lay out my next year - how I intend to live, make the best use of time and maximize adding value to others. Success asks, 'How can I add value to myself?' Significance asks, 'How can I add value to others?' It is your intention that lends itself to significance. ~ John C Maxwell,

153:As currently written, the laws require certain manufacturers and users of such chemicals to report any and all environmental releases-either accidental or routine-to air, water, or soil. The Toxics Release Inventory is the main registry of such events, and it is available to the public through the Environmental Protection Agency. It is hardly comprehensive. Toxic emissions reported to the federal government are thought to account for only 5 percent of all chemical releases. ~ Sandra Steingraber,

154:Although a moral inventory and a daily inventory reveal myriads of flaws in our makeups, still we, as human beings, cannot unravel all our liabilities in the personality. So at night, when I offer thanks to Him for the day’s sobriety, I add a prayer: I ask Him to forgive my failings during the day, to help me to improve, and to grant me the wisdom to discover those faults in myself which I cannot lay my finger on. In short, the need for prayer is infinite! Karachi, Pakistan ~ A A World Services Inc,

155:Psychologists measure personality through what is called the Five Factor Model, or “Big Five” inventory, which assesses who we are across the following dimensions.5 • Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous versus secure/confident) • Extraversion (energetic/gregarious versus solitary/reserved) • Openness (inventive/curious versus consistent/cautious) • Conscientiousness (orderly/industrious versus easygoing/careless) • Agreeableness (cooperative/empathic versus self-interested/antagonistic) ~ Malcolm Gladwell,

156:I sat at the foot of a huge tree, a statue of the night, and tried to make an inventory of all I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt: dizziness, horror, stupor, astonishment, joy, enthusiasm, nausea, inescapable attraction. What had attracted me? It was difficult to say: Human kind cannot bear much reality. Yes, the excess of reality had become an unreality, but that unreality had turned suddenly into a balcony from which I peered into—what? Into that which is beyond and still has no name… ~ Octavio Paz,

157:I am not a difficult man by any stretch, and I'm saying that with a full and honest inventory going on. I'm not. And I'm not angry on stage. There is a heightening. There is an intensification of the feelings on stage in order to let them carry the room. There is a theatricality about it. The whole thing is oratory, so there's persuasion involved. There's the art of rhetoric involved. And so, with hyperbole and with the desire to really punch the thing home, some of it reads a little more angry. ~ George Carlin,

158:Narcissists like watching themselves on videotape, and report gaining self-confidence from gazing at their reflection in a mirror. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory contains items such as “I like to look at myself in the mirror,” “I get upset when people don’t notice how I look when I go out in public,” and “I like to show off my body.” Vanity seems harmless and often is, but vanity often occurs with self-centeredness, which causes so many of the negative behaviors associated with narcissism. ~ Jean M Twenge,

159:I rooted through my pocketbook and did a fast paraphernalia inventory. I was carrying defense spray, which was a big no-no in a crowded mall. And I carried a stun gun, which on close examination turned out to need a new battery. My two pairs of cuffs were in working order, and I had an almost full can of hair spray. Okay, probably I wasn't the world's best-equipped bounty hunter. But then what did I really need to bring in an old guy with a nose that looked like a penis and a loser hot dog vendor? ~ Janet Evanovich,

160:Thall identified the things he loves most about his work—developing products and creating growth strategies—and he finds ways to outsource other tasks. The brand currently has 14 staff members working in San Diego who specialize in things like inventory management and human resources, which are aspects of the business Thall did not feel equipped to handle himself. "It’s easy for a passion project to quickly turn into just another job if you are forced to perform tasks you don’t enjoy every day," Thall says. ~ Anonymous,

161:By the way, I've just learned that Countess Ramsay and her daughter Miss Darvin wish to come for a visit. We received a letter from them earlier today."
"The devil you say!" Leo was outraged. "For what purpose? To gloat? Take inventory? I've still got a year left before they can lay claim to the place."
"Perhaps they wish to make peace and find an acceptable solution for all of us," Win suggested.
Win was always inclined to think the best of people and believe in the essential goodness of human nature. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

162:Isaiah told him what he’d found on the Ruby’s Real Beauty website. Ruby’s stocked the largest, most complete inventory of human hair extensions in the South Bay area. The most highly prized were Virgin Remy. “Virgin because the girl still had her cherry?” Dodson said. “No. Virgin because the hair wasn’t chemically treated,” Isaiah said. “What’s Remy mean?” “It means the hair was carefully cut so the cuticles and roots stayed in the same direction. Otherwise, they mow it down like weeds and throw it in a bin.” Isaiah ~ Joe Ide,

163:What makes a poem a poem, finally, is that it is unparaphrasable. There is no other way to say exactly this; it exists only in its own body of language, only in these words. I may try to explain it or represent it in other terms, but then some element of its life will always be missing.

It's the same with painting. All I can say of still life must finally fall short; I may inventory, weigh, suggest, but I cannot circumscribe; some element of mystery will always be left out. What is missing is, precisely, its poetry. ~ Mark Doty,

164:When we sat down to eat I took inventory of the people in the room, and the remnants of my good mood evaporated when I realized how very little I had in common with them – the career dads, the responsible and diligent moms – and I was soon filled with dread and loneliness. I locked in on the smug feeling of superiority that married couples give off and that permeated the air – the shared assumptions, the sweet and contented apathy, it all lingered everywhere – despite the absence in the room of anyone single at which to aim this. ~ Bret Easton Ellis,

165:God so understood is not something posed over against the universe, in addition to it, nor is he the universe itself. He is not a “being,” at least not in the way that a tree, a shoemaker, or a god is a being; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are, or any sort of discrete object at all. Rather, all things that exist receive their being continuously from him, who is the infinite wellspring of all that is, in whom (to use the language of the Christian scriptures) all things live and move and have their being. ~ David Bentley Hart,

166:This might not sound very exciting (inventory management is not something that tends to rivet readers), but think of it this way: Imagine walking back into the warehouse and instead of seeing boxes of cereal and crates of apples, you see stacks and stacks of dollar bills—hundreds of thousands and millions of freshly minted, crisp and crinkly dollar bills just sitting there on pallets, piled high to the ceiling. That’s exactly how you should think of inventory. Every single case of canned carrots is not just a case of canned carrots, it’s cash. ~ James C Collins,

167:There was a nebula there, an explosion of dust and light, the fiery corpse of an ancient giant. Within the gaseous folds slept clusters of unborn stars, shining softly. She took inventory of her body. She felt her breath, her blood, the ties binding it together. Every piece, down to the last atom, had been made out here, flung through the open in a moment of violence, until they had swirled round and round, churning, and coalescing, becoming heavy, weighing each other down, but not any more. The pieces were floating free now. They had returned home. ~ Becky Chambers,

168:The examen is a form of personal inventory. At day’s end, spend time in prayerful reflection on your day: your comings and goings, routines and disruptions, work and play, discoveries and disappointments. Think about who you met, or missed. Think about your moments of aloneness. In all, ask two questions: when was I most alive, most present, most filled and fulfilled today? And when was I most taxed, stressed, distracted, depleted today? A simpler, and more spiritually focused, version of those questions: when did I feel closest to God, and when farthest? ~ Mark Buchanan,

169:If the weather isn't bad and it's a clear night, I spend fifteen or twenty minutes before bedtime out on the deck looking skyward, or, using a flashlight, I pick my way along the dirt road to the open pasture at the peak of my hill, from where I can see, from above the treeline, the whole heavenly inventory, stars unfurled in every direction, and, just this week, the planets Jupiter in the east and Mars in the west. It is beyond belief and also a fact, a plain and indisputable face: that we are born, that this is here. I can think of worse ways to end my day. ~ Philip Roth,

170:If the weather isn't bad and it's a clear night, I spend fifteen or twenty minutes before bedtime out on the deck looking skyward, or, using a flashlight, I pick my way along the dirt road to the open pasture at the peak of my hill, from where I can see, from above the treeline, the whole heavenly inventory, stars unfurled in every direction, and, just this week, the planets Jupiter in the east and Mars in the west. It is beyond belief and also a fact, a plain and indisputable fact: that we are born, that this is here. I can think of worse ways to end my day. ~ Philip Roth,

171:Kaldar picked up a rock and tossed it into the clearing. It landed between two wards. A green stem shot out of the ground, and a hail of needle-thin thorns peppered the soil, striking sparks off the rock.
"You got any money on you?"
"No."
Kaldar grimaced. "What do you have?"
William made a mental inventory of some twenty-odd items he'd pulled out of the Mirror's bag of tricks and hid in his clothes this morning. Not much he could part with. "A knife," he said.
"Fine. I'll bet my knife against your knife that I can walk through there unharmed. ~ Ilona Andrews,

172:Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course. ~ Alexander McCall Smith,

173:There are at least three moments a month when you are ready to leap across a conter or a front seat to strangle someone: the woman at France Télecom who won't give you the fax ribbons that are there on the counter in front of her because she can't find them on the computer inventory ... the bus driver who won't let an exhausted pregnant woman out the front door of the bus (you're suppose to exit from the rear) from sheer bloody-mindedness. ... My trouble is that I think like a Frenchman: I transform every encounter into a competition in satus and get enraged when I lose it. –100 ~ Adam Gopnik,

174:There are at least three moments a month when you are ready to leap across a conter or a front seat to strangle someone: the woman at France Télecom who won't give you the fax ribbons that are there on the counter in front of her because she can't find them on the computer inventory ... the bus driver who won't let an exhausted pregnant woman out the front door of the bus (you're suppose to exit from the rear) from sheer bloody-mindedness. ... My trouble is that I think like a Frenchman: I transform every encounter into a competition in status and get enraged when I lose it. –100 ~ Adam Gopnik,

175:There are at least three moments a month when you are ready to leap across a counter or a front seat to strangle someone: the woman at France Télecom who won't give you the fax ribbons that are there on the counter in front of her because she can't find them on the computer inventory ... the bus driver who won't let an exhausted pregnant woman out the front door of the bus (you're suppose to exit from the rear) from sheer bloody-mindedness. ... My trouble is that I think like a Frenchman: I transform every encounter into a competition in status and get enraged when I lose it. –100 ~ Adam Gopnik,

176:Automakers typically offer deals in the summer to clear out inventory before cars from the new model year arrive in the fall. But July's discounts were unusually high. Incentives rose 8 percent - $216 per vehicle - over last July, according to Jesse Toprak, chief analyst for Cars.com. Incentives averaged $2,774 per vehicle, the most since August 2010. Toprak said Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai were the most generous. Chrysler saw the biggest gain in July, with sales up 20 percent to 140,102, led by the Ram pickup and the new Jeep Cherokee small SUV. Jeep sales rose 41 percent overall. ~ Anonymous,

177:In summary, both Ford and Ohno followed four concepts (from now on we’ll refer to them as the concepts of flow): Improving flow (or equivalently lead time) is a primary objective of operations. This primary objective should be translated into a practical mechanism that guides the operation when not to produce (preventsoverproduction). Ford used space; Ohno used inventory. Local efficiencies must be abolished. A focusing process to balance flow must be in place. Ford used direct observation. Ohno used the gradual reduction of the number of containers and then gradual reduction of parts per container. The ~ Eliyahu M Goldratt,

178:Take inventory for a second. What do you dislike? Whose name fills you with revulsion and rage? Now ask: Have these strong feelings really helped you accomplish anything? Take an even wider inventory. Where has hatred and rage ever really gotten anyone? Especially because almost universally, the traits or behaviors that have pissed us off in other people—their dishonesty, their selfishness, their laziness—are hardly going to work out well for them in the end. Their ego and shortsightedness contains its own punishment. The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are? ~ Ryan Holiday,

179:The apostle John gave all the tests that he did in order to give the true believer a biblical basis for confidence. Let’s review his spiritual inventory: Do you enjoy fellowship with God and Christ? Are you sensitive to sin in your life? Do you obey the Scriptures? Do you reject this evil world? Do you love Christ and eagerly await His return? Do you see a decreasing pattern of sin in your life? Do you love other Christians? Do you receive answers to your prayers? Do you experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit? Can you discern between spiritual truth and error? Have you suffered on account of your faith in Christ? ~ John F MacArthur Jr,

180:Launching a service booking platform like OpenTable, the restaurant reservation system, poses a classic chicken-or-egg problem. Without a large base of participating restaurants, why would patrons visit the OpenTable site? But without a large base of patrons, why would restaurants choose to participate? OpenTable solved the problem by first distributing booking management software that restaurants could use to manage their seating inventory. Once OpenTable had enough restaurants on board, they built out the consumer side, which allowed them to start booking tables and collecting a lead generation fee from the restaurants. ~ Geoffrey G Parker,

181:Harry huddled up. The cold, raw wind blew right through him as if he were a ghost. These were thoughts he had managed to keep at bay, but now they crowded in on him: if he couldn’t know whether he was capable of cheating on the woman he treasured most in his life, how could he know what else he had done? Aune maintained that drink and drugs merely strengthened or weakened qualities latent within us. But who knew for sure what was inside them? Humans are not robots and the chemistry of the brain changes over time. Who had a full inventory of all the things–given the right circumstances and the wrong medication–we are capable of doing? ~ Jo Nesb,

182:I don’t think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn’t have told how he did it, and we can’t tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms. ~ George Eliot,

183:Many people today think that the Tea Act—which led to the Boston Tea Party—was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by the American colonists. That's where the whole "Taxation Without Representation" meme came from.

Instead, the purpose of the Tea Act was to give the East India Company full and unlimited access to the American tea trade and to exempt the company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea that it was unable to sell and holding in inventory.

In other words, the Tea Act was the largest corporate tax break in the history of the world. ~ Thom Hartmann,

184:The methods I present here are all based on three key objectives: (1) capturing all the things that might need to get done or have usefulness for you—now, later, someday, big, little, or in between—in a logical and trusted system outside your head and off your mind; (2) directing yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the “inputs” you let into your life so that you will always have a workable inventory of “next actions” that you can implement or renegotiate in the moment; and (3) curating and coordinating all of that content, utilizing the recognition of the multiple levels of commitments with yourself and others you will have at play, at any point in time. This ~ David Allen,

185:The grandmothers decided on William’s eighth birthday that the time had come for the boy to learn the value of money. With this in mind, they allocated him one dollar a week as pocket money, but insisted that he keep an inventory accounting for every cent he spent. Grandmother Kane presented him with a green leather-bound ledger, at a cost of 95 cents, which she deducted from his first week’s allowance. From then on the grandmothers divided the dollar up every Saturday morning. William could invest 50 cents, spend 20 cents, give 10 cents to charity and keep 20 cents in reserve. At the end of each quarter they would inspect the ledger and his written report on any unusual transactions. ~ Jeffrey Archer,

186:This is your life. This is yours. You can establish an exact inventory of your meager fortune, the precise balance sheet of your first quarter-century. You are twenty-five years old, you have twenty-nine teeth, three shirts and eight socks, a few books you no longer read, a few records you no longer play. You do not want to remember anything else, be it your family or your studies, your friends and lovers, or your holidays and plans. You traveled and you brought nothing back from your travels. Here you sit, and you want only to wait, just to wait until there is nothing left to wait for: for night to fall and the passing hours to chime, for the days to slip away and the memories to fade. ~ Georges Perec,

187:Driving back to Brady, Mattie said, “A license to practice law is a powerful tool, Samantha, when it’s used to help little people. Crooks like Snowden are accustomed to bullying folks who can’t afford representation. But you get a good lawyer involved and the bullying stops immediately.” “You’re a pretty good bully yourself.” “I’ve had practice.” “When did you prepare the lawsuit?” “We keep them in inventory. The file is actually called ‘Dummy Lawsuits.’ Just plug in a different name, splash the words ‘Federal Court’ all over it, and they scatter like squirrels.” Dummy lawsuits. Scattering like squirrels. Samantha wondered how many of her classmates at Columbia had been exposed to such legal tactics. ~ John Grisham,

188:life can be organized like a business plan. First you take an inventory of your gifts and passions. Then you set goals and come up with some metrics to organize your progress toward those goals. Then you map out a strategy to achieve your purpose, which will help you distinguish those things that move you toward your goals from those things that seem urgent but are really just distractions. If you define a realistic purpose early on and execute your strategy flexibly, you will wind up leading a purposeful life. You will have achieved self-determination, of the sort captured in the oft-quoted lines from William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus”: “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul. ~ David Brooks,

189:Swipers use their scythes a little differently,” Elysia continued. “They open up small windows into the ether—just large enough for them to reach through—and take supplies that generally go unnoticed from places like large warehouses, back rooms of grocery stores, Laundromats—”

“Laundromats?”

“You should see our sock inventory,” Driggs said. “Massive.”

Elysia nodded. “We’re pretty isolated out here, so it’s a really efficient system.”

Lex was dumbfounded. “I had no idea petty theft was such a noble endeavor.”

“Well,” said Zara, “when you think about the gracious services we provide to the citizens of this world, it’s only fair. People should be thankful we don’t charge more ~ Gina Damico,

190:This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous,

191:Everything was there, it is simply that there was no clerk capable of making an inventory of all the constituents; but the realm that existed once—once and once only—had disappeared for ever, ground into infinitesimal pieces by the endless momentum of chaos within which crystals of order survived, the chaos that consisted of an indifferent and unstoppable traffic between things. It ground the empire into carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur, it took its delicate fibres and unstitched them till they were dispersed and had ceased to exist, because they had been consumed by the force of some incomprehensibly distant edict, which must also consume this book, here, now, at the full stop, after the last word. ~ L szl Krasznahorkai,

192:The two nieces of the deceased dowager in Connecticut were delighted with the prices Kate suggested for the items she wanted, and the clothes were delivered to Still Fabulous the following week. Kate was there when they came in, dropped off by a chauffeur with a van. She and Jessica, her assistant, checked them again, entered them in their inventory, and put them upstairs to show their most favored clients. Kate had already contacted several of them, and the editor from Harper’s Bazaar had said she wanted two of the fur coats. They were Revillon and in perfect condition. One was a shaved dark blue mink that had been worn only a few times, and the other was an incredibly chic skunk. She was picking them up in a few days. ~ Danielle Steel,

193:In connection with these reflections he coined the phrase mémoire involontaire. This concept bears the marks of the situation which gave rise to it; it is part of the inventory of the individual who is isolated in many ways. Where there is experience in the strict sense of the word, certain contents of the individual past combine with material of the collective past. The rituals with their ceremonies, their festivals (quite probably nowhere recalled in Proust’s work) kept producing the amalgamation of these two elements of memory over and over again. They triggered recollection at certain times and remained handles of memory for a lifetime. In this way, voluntary and involuntary recollection lose their mutual exclusiveness. ~ Walter Benjamin,

194:I recently sat down with my direct report to go through the BRAVING Inventory and talk about the strengths and areas for growth in our working relationship. When we got to R—reliability—an issue surfaced about how I was often late to our meetings or needed to postpone them due to meetings with our executive team running late or being called at the last minute. It made my teammate think that I didn’t prioritize our time together. We came up with a plan together to address this issue by building in more time between meetings so I can be on time, and by getting clearer in our communication about how we address meeting changes when my schedule shifts. We left feeling committed to a new way of working together that has led to deeper trust. ~ Bren Brown,

195:Cook reduced the number of Apple’s key suppliers from a hundred to twenty-four, forced them to cut better deals to keep the business, convinced many to locate next to Apple’s plants, and closed ten of the company’s nineteen warehouses. By reducing the places where inventory could pile up, he reduced inventory. Jobs had cut inventory from two months’ worth of product down to one by early 1998. By September of that year, Cook had gotten it down to six days. By the following September, it was down to an amazing two days’ worth. In addition, he cut the production process for making an Apple computer from four months to two. All of this not only saved money, it also allowed each new computer to have the very latest components available. ~ Walter Isaacson,

196:Madame de Pompadour never seems to have sold any of the objects which belonged to her. They accumulated in their thousands, and filled all her many houses to overflowing; after her death Marigny was obliged to take two big houses in Paris which, as well as the Elysée and the Réservoirs, contained her goods until the sale of them began. Furniture, china, statues, pictures, books, plants, jewels, linen, silver, carriages, horses, yards and hundreds of yards of stuff, trunks full of dresses, cellars full of wine; the inventory of all this, divided into nearly three thousand lots, very few lots containing less than a dozen objects, took two lawyers more than a year to make. Few human beings since the world began can have owned so many beautiful things. ~ Nancy Mitford,

197:He scooped his arms beneath her and lifted her as though she were made of down, and gently, gently, settled her on the bed.
She'd never felt more precious. And she covered her eyes with her arm at the rush of feelings, too many to sort, all of them bigger than she was, most of them new.
She 'was' abashed.
He stretched out next to her and gently but firmly lifted her arm away from her face. He wanted to see her, apparently. She still didn't want to open her eyes. It felt safer, somehow, to keep them closed. Through the cloud she floated upon she felt his lips, soft, soft, achingly tender, brushing over her eyelids, her cheek, her forehead, her throat, her lips. So soothing. A tender inventory. He murmured things that may have been endearments. ~ Julie Anne Long,

198:When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,

199:Metaphysics... is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically. Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot be hidden, but is brought to light by reason itself as soon as reason's common principle has been discovered. The perfect unity of this kind of cognition, and the fact that it arises solely out of pure concepts without any influence that would extend or increase it from experience or even particular intuition, which would lead to a determinate experience, make this unconditioned completeness not only feasible but also necessary. Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex. Dwell in your own house, and you will know how simple your possessions are. - Persius ~ Immanuel Kant,

200:Defriending in't just unrecognized by some social oversight, it's protected by its own protocol, a code of silence. Demanding an explanation wouldn't just be undignified; it would violate the whole tacit contract on which friendship is founded. The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. [...] Laura Kipnis's book Against Love: A Polemic includes a harrowing eight0page inventory of things people are not allowed to do because they're in romantic relationships, from going out without saying where you're going or when you'll be back to wearing that idiotic hat. But your best friend can move across the country without asking you. ~ Tim Kreider,

201:He got a booklet out of a folder. 'This is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It's a standardized psychometric test we use to assess and analyze an individual's personality dynamic. It's got about six hundred true-or-false questions. You fill this out and then the computer will generate a report.' Well, I thought this was absolutely perfect! I was just delighted with the idea that psychodiagnostic algorithms would generate a posthumanist psychiatric profile for me for the autobiography. And both the Imaginary Intern and I felt this would really streamline the process, that it would save us a tremendous amount of work, and obviate the need for all that cloying introspection and redemptive candor that we both found so nauseating and counterrevolutionary. ~ Mark Leyner,

202:Mind you, doctors are not all bad. If you want a real bastard, hire a lawyer. One of these imps of Satan came up from the Middle Temple offering to write out an inventory of my goods so I could make a will. ‘After all,’ he commented, looking slyly at me, ‘you have so many offspring.’ I asked the bastard what he meant? He replied with a knowing leer how many of the young men and women in the surrounding villages bear more than a passing resemblance to my goodself. My little fart of a chaplain nods, but I am not ashamed. I have, in many ways, been a true father to my people. Anyway, back to the lawyer! I soon wiped the grin off his silly face when I asked him if he was a good runner. ‘Swift as a hare,’ he declared. I hope he was. I gave him five minutes’ start and loosed my dogs on him. ~ Paul Doherty,

203:What in the seven levels of hell did my son see in this place?” Horace asks.

We’re standing on the street on Thursday morning, staring up at the house, after taking inventory of the place. From here, I can see five different spots where the brick needs to be repaired and pick out where shingles are missing on the sloped roof. The porch sags, and the windows are dingy. But if I let my eyes go out of focus and ignore all that, I can kinda picture what the place might look like after a little—never mind—a lot of TLC.

“It has good bones?” I suggest.

“It’s got old bones,” he mutters.

I smirk. “Yeah? So do you. Doesn’t mean they’re all bad.”

He smacks my arm, but he’s grinning. “Just wait till you get to be my age, and then tell me how good old bones are. ~ Erica Cameron,

204:Need More Clarity? If greater clarity is what you need, shift your thinking up the natural planning scale. People are often very busy (action) but nonetheless experience confusion and a lack of clear direction. They need to pull out their plan, or create one (organize). If there’s a lack of clarity at the planning level, there’s probably a need for more brainstorming to generate a sufficient inventory of ideas to create trust in the plan. If the brainstorming session gets bogged down with fuzzy thinking, the focus should shift back to the vision of the outcome, ensuring that the reticular filter in the brain will open up to deliver the best how-to thinking. If the outcome/ vision is unclear, you must return to a clean analysis of why you’re engaged in the situation in the first place (purpose). ~ David Allen,

205:Differentiating Yourself  Pursuing a differentiation strategy has merit over pursuing a low-cost strategy. Focusing and sharpening your strengths is a major step in developing competitive advantage—the thing that you can do better than anyone else.  The first step is to take stock of your resources and capabilities and assess whether they match your intentions. Do you have what is called “strategic fit”? Aligning your resources and capabilities with your intentions puts you in the best position for crafting and executing a successful strategy.  To help you achieve this, develop a personal USP, a one-sentence description of what you offer people that few others can match. Now do the same for a trusted friend and exchange the results. This is sometimes the best way of taking your personal skills inventory. ~ Anonymous,

206:Do you know when you've lost something—like your favorite T-shirt or a set of keys—and while looking for it, you come across something else you once missed but have long since forgotten? Well whatever it was, there was a point where you decided to stop searching, maybe because it was no longer required or a new replacement was found. It is almost as if it never existed in the first place—until that moment of rediscovery, a flash of recognition.

Everyone has one—an inventory of lost things waiting to be found. Yearning to be acknowledged for the worth they once held in your life.

I think this is where I belong—among all your other lost things. A crumpled note at the bottom of a drawer or an old photograph pressed between the pages of a book. I hope someday you will find me and remember what I once meant to you. ~ Lang Leav,

207:Extract ten thousand cubic feet of water from just about anywhere in the Indian Ocean and do a full inventory on the life you find there: the list would be about as “poor” as Darwin’s account of the land animals of the Keelings. You might find a dozen fish if you were lucky. On the reef, you would be guaranteed a thousand. In Darwin’s own words, stumbling across the ecosystem of a coral reef in the middle of an ocean was like encountering a swarming oasis in the middle of a desert. We now call this phenomenon Darwin’s Paradox: so many different life forms, occupying such a vast array of ecological niches, inhabiting waters that are otherwise remarkably nutrient-poor. Coral reefs make up about one-tenth of one percent of the earth’s surface, and yet roughly a quarter of the known species of marine life make their homes there. ~ Steven Johnson,

208:Lost Things
Do you know when you've lost something—like your favorite T-shirt or a set of keys—and while looking for it, you come across something else you once missed but have long since forgotten? Well whatever it was, there was a point where you decided to stop searching, maybe because it was no longer required or a new replacement was found. It is almost as if it never existed in the first place—until that moment of rediscovery, a flash of recognition.

Everyone has one—an inventory of lost things waiting to be found. Yearning to be acknowledged for the worth they once held in your life.

I think this is where I belong—among all your other lost things. A crumpled note at the bottom of a drawer or an old photograph pressed between the pages of a book. I hope someday you will find me and remember what I once meant to you. ~ Lang Leav,

209:To want to own a restaurant can be a strange and terrible affliction. What causes such a destructive urge in so many otherwise sensible people? Why would anyone who has worked hard, saved money, often been successful in other fields, want to pump their hard-earned cash down a hole that statistically, at least, will almost surely prove dry? Why venture into an industry with enormous fixed expenses (...), with a notoriously transient and unstable workforce, and highly perishable inventory of assets? The chances of ever seeing a return on your investment are about one in five. What insidious spongi-form bacteria so riddles the brains of men and women that they stand there on the tracks, watching the lights of the oncoming locomotive, knowing full well it will eventually run over them? After all these years in the business, I still don't know. ~ Anthony Bourdain,

210:In other languages,
you are beautiful- mort, muerto- I wish
I spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the ocean
were sitting in that chair playing cards
and noticing how famous you are
on my cell phone- picture of your eyes
guarding your nose and the fire
you set by walking, picture of dawn
getting up early to enthrall your skin- what I hate
about stars is they’re not those candles
that make a joke of cake, that you blow on
and they die and come back, and you
you’re not those candles either, how often I realize
I’m not breathing, to be like you
or just afraid to move at all, a lung
or finger, is it time already
for inventory, a mountain, I have three
of those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if you
were a cigarette I’d be cancer, if you
were a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as far
as this tree can say. ~ Bob Hicok,

211:You are young and energetic,” she said. “It is a healthy thing for you to do. Why would I be offended? Do I suddenly own your sex, that I should be worried about you giving it away?” Vashet stopped as if something had just occurred to her. She turned to look at me. “Are you offended that I have been having sex with others all this while?” She watched my face intently. “I see you are startled by it.” “I am startled,” I admitted. Then I did a mental inventory and was surprised to discover I wasn’t sure how I felt. “I feel I ought to be offended,” I said at last. “But I don’t think I am.” Vashet nodded approvingly. “That is a good sign. It shows you are becoming civilized. The other feeling is what you were brought up to think. It is like an old shirt that no longer fits you. And now, when you look at it closely, you can see it was ugly to begin with. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,

212:Threadless is a T-shirt company founded by people with expertise in information technology services, web design, and consulting. Their business model involves holding weekly design contests open to outside participants, printing only T-shirts with the most popular designs, and selling them to their large and growing customer base. Threadless doesn’t need to hire artistic talent, since skilled designers compete for prizes and prestige. It doesn’t need to do marketing, since eager designers contact their friends to solicit votes and sales. It doesn’t need to forecast sales, since voting customers have already announced what numbers they will buy. By outsourcing production, Threadless can also minimize its handling and inventory costs. Thanks to this almost frictionless model, Threadless can scale rapidly and easily, with minimal structural restrictions. ~ Geoffrey G Parker,

213:The crucial role of the value unit. As this description of the core interaction shows, value units play a crucial role in the workings of any platform. Yet, in most cases, platforms don’t create value units; instead, they are created by the producers who participate in the platform. Thus, platforms are “information factories” that have no control over inventory. They create the “factory floor” (that is, they build the platform infrastructure within which value units are produced). They can foster a culture of quality control (by taking steps to encourage producers to create value units that are accurate, useful, relevant, and interesting to consumers). They develop filters that are designed to deliver valuable units while blocking others. But they have no direct control over the production process itself—a striking difference from the traditional pipeline business. ~ Geoffrey G Parker,

214:The fragmentation of the neoliberal self begins when the agent is brought face to face with the realization that she is not just an employee or student, but also simultaneously a product to be sold, a walking advertisement, a manager of her résumé, a biographer of her rationales, and an entrepreneur of her possibilities. She has to somehow manage to be simultaneously subject, object, and spectator. She is perforce not learning about who she really is, but rather, provisionally buying the person she must soon become. She is all at once the business, the raw material, the product, the clientele, and the customer of her own life. She is a jumble of assets to be invested, nurtured, managed, and developed; but equally an offsetting inventory of liabilities to be pruned, outsourced, shorted, hedged against, and minimized. She is both headline star and enraptured audience of her own performance. ~ Philip Mirowski,

215:Richard Price: One of my favorite things that David (Simon) did - one of the sentimental tropes - is that if you take a kid on the street corner, and this kid is dealing and he's holding together the business, he's got the inventory, he's got sales, he's got police pressure, he's got higher-ups pressure. If this kid can keep numbers in his head and make money, they say, "Well, if this was a white kid and you put him in Wharton and he came out, he'd be running the world." What David did, and it's very sentimental to say that, but what David did, he took Stringer Bell - and of course you'd see Stringer Bell in a corporate setting - he took him to the cleaners, everything but his underwear robbed. I loved that, because everybody wants to feel good and say, "If you took this young kid," but no. It might be true if the kid was born in another body, in another world, but he wasn't. There's a ceiling. There's a very low ceiling. (207) ~ Jonathan Abrams,

216:IKEA’s adroit coordination of policies is a more integrated design than anyone else’s in the furniture business. Traditional furniture retailers do not carry large inventory, traditional manufacturers do not have their own stores, normal retailers do not specify their own designs or use catalogs rather than salespeople, and so on. Because IKEA’s many policies are different from the norm and because they fit together in a coherent design, IKEA’s system has a chain-link logic. That means that adopting only one of these policies does no good—it adds expense to the competitor’s business without providing any real competition to IKEA. Minor adjustments just won’t do—to compete effectively with IKEA, an existing rival would have to virtually start fresh and, in effect, compete with its own existing business. No one did. Today, more than fifty years after IKEA pioneered its new strategy in the furniture industry, no one has really replicated it. ~ Richard P Rumelt,

217:Present the sacraments so as to make the gospel clear. Baptism, and especially adult baptism, should be given great significance in evangelistic worship. Consider providing an opportunity for the baptized to offer their personal testimony as well as to respond to certain questions. Make the meaning of baptism clear through a moving, joyous, personal charge to the baptized (and to all baptized Christians present). In addition, the Lord’s Supper can also become a converting ordinance. If it is explained properly, the nonbeliever will have a specific and visible way to see the difference between walking with Christ and living for oneself. The Lord’s Supper confronts every individual with the question, “Are you right with God today? Right now?” There is perhaps no more effective way to help a person take a spiritual inventory. Many seekers in churches in the United States will only realize they are not truly Christians during the “fencing of the table.”12 ~ Timothy J Keller,

218:Unlike traditional retailers, Amazon boasted what was called a negative operating cycle. Customers paid with their credit cards when their books shipped but Amazon settled its accounts with the book distributors only every few months. With every sale, Amazon put more cash in the bank, giving it a steady stream of capital to fund its operations and expansion.14 The company could also lay claim to a uniquely high return on invested capital. Unlike brick-and-mortar retailers, whose inventories were spread out across hundreds or thousands of stores around the country, Amazon had one website and, at that time, a single warehouse and inventory. Amazon’s ratio of fixed costs to revenue was considerably more favorable than that of its offline competitors. In other words, Bezos and Covey argued, a dollar that was plugged into Amazon’s infrastructure could lead to exponentially greater returns than a dollar that went into the infrastructure of any other retailer in the world. ~ Brad Stone,

219:What Vann-Adibe had discobered was that the aggregate market for niche music was huge, and effectively unbounded. He called this the '98 Percent Rule.' As he later put it to me, "In a wordl of almost zero packaging costs and instant access to almost all ocntent in this format, consumers exhibit consistent behavior: They look at almost everything. I believe that this requires major changes by the content producers - I'm just not sure what changes!"... Everywhere I went the story was the same: Hits are great, but niches are emerging as the big new market. The 98 Percent Rule turned out to be nearly universal. Apple said that every one of the then 1 million tracks on iTues had sold at least once (now its inventory is twice that). Netflix reckoned that 95% of its 25,000 DVDs (that's now 90,000) rented at least once a quarter. Amazon didn't give out an exact number, but independent academic research on its book sales suggested that 98 percent of its top 100,00 books sold at least once a quarter, too. ~ Chris Anderson,

220:Jonathan stood next to David as his shoshbin, his esteemed groomsman, to be witness. Earlier, David had signed a ketubbah with King Saul. It was a marriage contract with the father that established their legal union and responsibilities. The father released his daughter from under his authority and the groom promised to take care of her with honor and respect. It included an accounting of the bride’s inventory of assets, which in this case was quite extravagant because of her royalty. And it included a listing of the dowry owed by the father to the groom and the bride price owed by the groom to the father. Saul winced at the disgusting memory of his foolish bride price of one hundred Philistine foreskins. It had been an attempt to endanger the young suitor. But it had come back to kick him in the goads. By Asherah, he would never make that mistake again. All that was left was for their chuppah, or sexual consummation of the bride and groom. The bridal parties left the couple to enter the palace alone and find their way to their bed chamber. ~ Brian Godawa,

221:Her uneasy gaze skittered along the length of his arms, which were exposed by his rolled-up shirtsleeves... and stopped at the astonishing sight of a design that had been inked onto his right forearm. It was a small black horse with wings.
Noticing her mesmerized stare, Rohan lowered his arm to give her a better view. "An Irish symbol," he murmured. "A nightmare horse, called a pooka."
The absurd-sounding word brought a faint smile to Daisy's lips. "Does it wash off?" she asked hesitantly.
He shook his head, his lashes half lowering over his remarkable eyes.
"Is a pooka like the Pegasus of the Greek myths?" Daisy asked, flattening herself as close to the wall as possible.
Rohan glanced down her body, taking a kind of leisurely inventory that no man ever had before. "No. He's far more dangerous. He has eyes of yellow fire, a stride that clears mountains, and he speaks in a human voice as deep as a cave. At midnight, he may stop in front of your house and call out your name if he wants to take you for a ride. If you go with him, he'll fly you across earth and oceans... and if you ever return, your life will never be the same. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

222:He grinned. "You're jealous."
I considered it. "No. But when you stared at that woman like she was made of diamonds, it didn't feel very good."
"I stared at her because she smelled strange."
"Strange how?"
"She smelled like rock dust. Very strong dry smell." Curran put his arms around me. "I love it when you get all fussy and possessive."
"I never get fussy and possessive."
He grinned, showing his teeth. His face was practically glowing. "So you're cool if I go over and chat her up?"
"Sure. Are you cool if I go and chat up that sexy werewolf on the third floor?"
He went from casual and funny to deadly serious in half a blink. "What sexy werewolf?"
I laughed.
Curran's eyes focused. He was concentrating on something.
"You're taking a mental inventory of all people working on the third floor, aren't you?"
His expression went blank. I'd hit the nail on the head.
I slid off him and put my head on his biceps. The shaggy carpet was nice and comfortable under my back.
"Is it Jordan?"
"I just picked a random floor," I told him. "You're nuts, you know that?"
He put his arm around me. "Look who is talking. ~ Ilona Andrews,

223:Robin’s voice on the executive chef’s line came to signify tongue. She didn’t say more than a word or two before Denise tuned out. Robin’s tongue and lips continued to form the instructions demanded by the day’s exigencies, but in Denise’s ear they were already speaking that other language of up and down and round and round that her body intuitively understood and autonomously obeyed; sometimes she melted so hard at the sound of this voice that her abdomen caved in and she doubled over; for the next hour-plus there was nothing in the world but tongue, no inventory or buttered pheasants or unpaid purveyors; she left the Generator in a buzzing hypnotized state of poor reflexes, the volume of the world’s noise lowered to near zero, other drivers luckily obeying basic traffic laws. Her car was like a tongue gliding down the melty asphalt streets, her feet like twin tongues licking pavement, the front door of the house on Panama Street like a mouth that swallowed her, the Persian runner in the hall outside the master bedroom like a tongue beckoning, the bed in its cloak of comforter and pillows a big soft tongue begging to be depressed, and then. ~ Jonathan Franzen,

224:mesmerizing -- gold, red, orange, black -- the colors of the dragons that had promised so much: prosperity, love, good health, a second chance, a new start. The fire began to pop, the small sounds lost in the constant boom of firecrackers going off in the streets of San Francisco in celebration of the Chinese New Year. No one would notice another noise, another spark of light, until it was too late. In the confusion of the smoke and the crowds, the dragons and the box they guarded would disappear. No one would ever know what had really happened. The flame reached the end of the gasoline-soaked rope and suddenly burst forth in a flash of intense, deadly heat. More explosions followed as the fire caught the cardboard boxes holding precious inventory and jumped toward the basement ceiling. A questioning cry came from somewhere, followed by the sound of footsteps running down the halls of the building that had once been their sanctuary, their dream for the future, where the treasures of the past were turned into cold, hard cash. The cost of betrayal would be high. They would be brothers no more. But then, their ties had never been of blood, only of friendship -- ~ Barbara Freethy,

225:David Hockney, among other historians and advocates of the Hockney–Falco thesis, has speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura to achieve precise positioning in his compositions, and this view seems to be supported by certain light and perspective effects. The often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer’s paintings have been linked to this possible use of a camera obscura, the primitive lens of which would produce halation. Exaggerated perspective can be seen in Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (London, Royal Collection). Vermeer’s interest in optics is also attested in this work by the accurately observed mirror reflection above the lady at the virginals. However, the extent of Vermeer’s dependence upon the camera obscura is disputed by historians. There is no historical evidence. The detailed inventory of the artist’s belongings drawn up after his death does not include a camera obscura or any similar device. Scientific evidence is limited to inference. Philip Steadman has found six Vermeer paintings that are precisely the right size if they were inside a camera obscura where the back wall of his studio was where the images were projected. ~ Johannes Vermeer,

226:Take an honest inventory of the education you already have—the years you have lived, the trials you have endured, the skills you have learned along the way. If you are a young person, open your eyes wide and let the world educate you to the fullest extent. And feel free to start sharing your perspective through creativity, even if you’re just a kid. If you are young, you see things differently than I do, and I want to know how you see things. We all want to know. When we look at your work (whatever your work may be), we will want to feel your youth—that fresh sense of your recent arrival here. Be generous with us and let us feel it. After all, for many of us it has been so long since we stood where you now stand. If you are older, trust that the world has been educating you all along. You already know so much more than you think you know. You are not finished; you are merely ready. After a certain age, no matter how you’ve been spending your time, you have very likely earned a doctorate in living. If you’re still here—if you have survived this long—it is because you know things. We need you to reveal to us what you know, what you have learned, what you have seen and felt. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,

227:MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Following the company’s announcement that it would discontinue public sales of the wearable technology, Google officials confirmed Monday that all unsold units of Google Glass would be donated to underprivileged assholes in Africa. “We are committed to positively impacting the lives of poverty-stricken smug pricks by distributing the surplus inventory of Google Glass to self-important fucks throughout sub-Saharan Africa,” a statement released by the company read in part, adding that the program will provide the optical head-mounted technology, as well as professional training sessions, to destitute communities of conceited dicks from Sierra Leone, to Somalia, to Botswana. “This gesture will help tens of thousands of poor and needy men, women, and children across the continent who have never had the opportunity to walk around looking like a pompous jackass all day long. From the moment they turn on their new Google Glass in clear view of others, they’ll immediately start experiencing the undeserved sense of superiority currently lacking in their lives.” At press time, Google confirmed that the first devices had been presented to an indigent family of complete fucking jerkoffs from the Republic of Guinea. ~ Anonymous,

228:Low-end disruption has occurred several times in retailing.16 For example, full-service department stores had a business model that enabled them to turn inventories three times per year. They needed to earn 40 percent gross margins to make money within their cost structure. They therefore earned 40 percent three times each year, for a 120 percent annual return on capital invested in inventory (ROCII). In the 1960s, discount retailers such as Wal-Mart and Kmart attacked the low end of the department stores’ market—nationally branded hard goods such as paint, hardware, kitchen utensils, toys, and sporting goods—that were so familiar in use that they could sell themselves. Customers in this tier of the market were overserved by department stores, in that they did not need well-trained floor sales-people to help them get what they needed. The discounters’ business model enabled them to make money at gross margins of about 23 percent, on average. Their stocking policies and operating processes enabled them to turn inventories more than five times annually, so that they also earned about 120 percent annual ROCII. The discounters did not accept lower levels of profitability—their business model simply earned acceptable profit through a different formula.17 ~ Clayton M Christensen,

229:Because the other way wasn’t working. The waking up just to get the day over with until it was time for bed. The grinding it out was a disgrace, an affront to the honor and long shot of being alive at all. The ghost-walking, the short-tempered distraction, the hurried fog. (All of this I’m just assuming, because I have no idea how I come across, my consciousness is that underground, like a toad in winter.) The leaving the world a worse place just by being in it. The blindness to the destruction in my wake. The Mr. Magoo. If I’m forced to be honest, here’s an account of how I left the world last week: worse, worse, better, worse, same, worse, same. Not an inventory to make one swell with pride. I don’t necessarily need to make the world a better place, mind you. Today, I will live by the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm. How hard can it be? Dropping off Timby, having my poetry lesson (my favorite part of life!), taking a yoga class, eating lunch with Sydney Madsen, whom I can’t stand but at least I can check her off the list (more on that later), picking up Timby, and giving back to Joe, the underwriter of all this mad abundance. You’re trying to figure out, why the agita surrounding one normal day of white-people problems? Because there’s me and there’s the beast in me. ~ Maria Semple,

230:What did you just say? Not about the pomade, the thing you said about Helen.”
The girl brushed out a lock of Pandora’s hair as she answered. “I don’t think she needs rest because of too much excitement. I think…” She paused. “Kathleen, is it tattling if I say something about someone else that’s private and I know they wouldn’t want it to be repeated?”
“Yes. Unless it’s about Helen and you’re telling it to me. Go on.”
“Yesterday, when Mr. Winterborne came to visit, he and Helen were in the downstairs parlor with the door closed. I was going to fetch a book I’d left on the window ledge, but I heard their voices.” Cassandra paused. “You were with the housekeeper, going over the inventory list, so I didn’t think it was worth bothering you.”
“Yes, yes…and?”
“From what little I could hear, they were quarreling about something. Perhaps I shouldn’t call it quarreling, since Helen didn’t raise her voice, but…she sounded distressed.”
“They were probably discussing the wedding,” Kathleen said, “since that was when Mr. Winterborne told her he wanted to plan it.”
“No, I don’t think that was why they were at odds. I wish I could have heard more.”
“You should have used my drinking glass trick,” Pandora said impatiently. “If I’d been there, I would be able to tell you every word that was said. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

231:Back in 1990, the futurist George Gilder demonstrated his prescience when he wrote in his book Microcosm, “The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.” Just over twenty years later, in 2011, the venture capitalist (and Netscape cofounder) Marc Andreessen validated Gilder’s thesis in his Wall Street Journal op-ed “Why Software Is Eating the World.” Andreessen pointed out that the world’s largest bookstore (Amazon), video provider (Netflix), recruiter (LinkedIn), and music companies (Apple/ Spotify/ Pandora) were software companies, and that even “old economy” stalwarts like Walmart and FedEx used software (rather than “things”) to drive their businesses. Despite—or perhaps because of—the growing dominance of bits, the power of software has also made it easier to scale up atom-based businesses as well. Amazon’s retail business is heavily based in atoms—just think of all those Amazon shipping boxes piled up in your recycling bin! Amazon originally outsourced its logistics to Ingram Book Company, but its heavy investment in inventory management systems and warehouses as it grew turned infrastructure ~ Reid Hoffman,

232:Liturgy gathers the holy community as it reads the Holy Scriptures into the sweeping tidal rhythms of the church year in which the story of Jesus and the Christian makes its rounds century after century, the large and easy interior rhythms of a year that moves from birth, life, death, resurrection, on to spirit, obedience, faith, and blessing. Without liturgy we lose the rhythms and end up tangled in the jerky, ill-timed, and insensitive interruptions of public-relations campaigns, school openings and closings, sales days, tax deadlines, inventory and elections. Advent is buried under 'shopping days before Christmas.' The joyful disciplines of Lent are exchanged for the anxious penitentials of filling out income tax forms. Liturgy keeps us in touch with the story as it defines and shapes our beginnings and ends our living and dying, our rebirths and blessing in this Holy Spirit, text-formed community visible and invisible.

When Holy Scripture is embraced liturgically, we become aware that a lot is going on all at once, a lot of different people are doing a lot of different things. The community is on its feet, at work for God, listening and responding to the Holy Scriptures. The holy community, in the process of being formed by the Holy Scriptures, is watching, listening to God's revelation taking shape before an din them as they follow Jesus, each person playing his or her part in the Spirit. ~ Eugene H Peterson,

233:One never knows what fate has in store.”
Turning toward Rohan, Amelia discovered he was glancing over her in a slow inventory that spurred her heart into a faster beat. “I don’t believe in fate,” she said. “People are in control of their own destinies.”
Rohan smiled. “Everyone, even the gods, are helpless in the hands of fate.”
Amelia regarded him skeptically. “Surely you, being employed at a gaming club, know all about probability and odds. Which means you can’t rationally give credence to luck or fate or anything of the sort.”
“I know all about probability and odds,” Rohan agreed. “Nevertheless, I believe in luck.” He smiled with a quiet smolder in his eyes that caused her breath to catch. “I believe in magic and mystery, and dreams that reveal the future. And I believe some things are written in the stars … or even in the palm of your hand.”
Mesmerized, Amelia was unable to look away from him. He was an extraordinarily beautiful man, his skin as dark as clover honey, his black hair falling over his forehead in a way that made her fingers twitch with the urge to push it back.
“Do you believe in fate too?” she asked Merripen.
A long hesitation. “I’m a Roma,” he said.
Which meant yes. “Good Lord, Merripen. I’ve always thought of you as a sensible man.”
Rohan laughed. “It’s only sensible to allow for the possibility, Miss Hathaway. Just because you can’t see or feel something doesn’t mean it can’t exist. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

234:The Inventory Of Goodbye
I have a pack of letters,
I have a pack of memories.
I could cut out the eyes of both.
I could wear them like a patchwork apron.
I could stick them in the washer, the drier,
and maybe some of the pain would float off like dirt?
Perhaps down the disposal I could grind up the loss.
Besides - what a bargain - no expensive phone calls.
No lengthy trips on planes in the fog.
No manicky laughter or blessing from an odd-lot priest.
That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow.
Blessing us. Blessing us.
Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul?
Propaganda time is over.
I sit here on the spike of truth.
No one to hate except the slim fish of memory
that slides in and out of my brain.
No one to hate except the acute feel of my nightgown
brushing my body like a light that has gone out.
It recalls the kiss we invented, tongues like poems,
meeting, returning, inviting, causing a fever of need.
Laughter, maps, cassettes, touch singing its path all to be broken and laid away in a tight strongbox.
The monotonous dead clog me up and there is only
black done in black that oozes from the strongbox.
I must disembowel it and then set the heart, the legs,
of two who were one upon a large woodpile
and ignite, as I was once ignited, and let it whirl
into flame, reaching the sky
making it dangerous with its red.
~ Anne Sexton,

235:Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous,

236:That summer, Harrison Miller and Bezos butted heads in front of the board of directors over the size of the bet on toys. Bezos wanted Miller to plow $120 million into stocking every possible toy, from Barbie dolls to rare German-made wooden trains to cheap plastic beach pails, so that kids and parents would never be disappointed when they searched for an item on Amazon. But a prescient Miller, sensing disaster ahead, pushed to lower his own buy. “No! No! A hundred and twenty million!” Bezos yelled. “I want it all. If I have to, I will drive it to the landfill myself!” “Jeff, you drive a Honda Accord,” Joy Covey pointed out. “That’s going to be a lot of trips.” Bezos prevailed. And the company would make a sizable contribution to Toys for Tots after the holidays that year. “That first holiday season was the best of times and the worst of times,” Miller says. “The store was great for customers and we made our revenue goals, which were big, but other than that everything that could go wrong did. In the aftermath we were sitting on fifty million dollars of toy inventory. I had guys going down the back stairs with ‘Vinnie’ in New York, selling Digimons off to Mexico at twenty cents on the dollar. You just had to get rid of them, fast.” The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics ~ Brad Stone,

237:I'm sorry, sir, but we have a dress code," said the official.
I knew about this. It was in bold type on the website: Gentlemen are required to wear a jacket.
"No jacket, no food, correct?"
"More or less, sir."
What can I say about this sort of rule? I was prepared to keep my jacket on throughout the meal. The restaurant would presumably be air-conditioned to a temperature compatible with the requirement.
I continued toward the restaurant entrance, but the official blocked my path. "I'm sorry. Perhaps I wasn't clear. You need to wear a jacket."
"I'm wearing a jacket."
"I'm afraid we require something a little more formal, sir."
The hotel employee indicated his own jacket as an example. In defense of what followed, I submit the Oxford English Dictionary (Compact, 2nd Edition) definition of jacket:1(a) An outer garment for the upper part of the body.
I also note that the word jacket appears on the care instructions for my relatively new and perfectly clean Gore-Tex jacket. But it seemed his definition of jacket was limited to "conventional suit jacket."
" We would be happy to lend you one, sir. In this style."
"You have a supply of jacket? In every possible size?" I did not add that the need to maintain such an inventory was surely evidence of their failure to communicate the rule clearly, and that it would be more efficient to improve their wording or abandon the rule altogether. Nor did I mention that the cost of jacket purchase and cleaning must add to the price of their meals. Did their customers know that they were subsidizing a jacket warehouse? ~ Graeme Simsion,

238:The second project is in the field of metaphysics: with the aim of showing that, in the words of Professor H. M. Tooten, “evolution is a hoax”, Olivier Gratiolet has undertaken an exhaustive inventory of all the imperfections and inadequacies to which the human organism is heir: vertical posture, for example, gives man only a precarious balance: muscular tension alone keeps him upright, thus causing constant fatigue and discomfort in the spinal column, which, although sixteen times stronger than it would have been were it straight, does not allow man to carry a meaningful weight on his back; feet ought to be broader, more spread out, more specifically suited to locomotion, whereas what he has are only atrophied hands deprived of prehensile ability; legs are not sturdy enough to bear the body’s weight, which makes them bend, and moreover they are a strain on the heart, which has to pump blood about three feet up, whence come swollen feet, varicose veins, etc.; hip joints are fragile and constantly prone to arthrosis or serious fractures; arms are atrophied and too slender; hands are frail, especially the little finger, which has no use, the stomach has no protection whatsoever, no more than the genitals do; the neck is rigid and limits rotation of the head, the teeth do not allow food to be grasped from the sides, the sense of smell is virtually nil, night vision is less than mediocre, hearing is very inadequate; man’s hairless and unfurred body affords no protection against cold, and, in sum, of all the animals of creation, man, who is generally considered the ultimate fruit of evolution, is the most naked of all. ~ Georges Perec,

239:They kept the prophecy hidden. They emphasized the levirate nature of the marriage in order to stress its legal side. It would be hard for the scribes to argue with the Torah, the revealed law of Yahweh. The first order of business was business. Caleb signed a contract, called a ketubbah, with Rahab’s father. This was the transfer of authority from father to husband and was the legal foundation of the marriage. Caleb then paid a dowry to her father of fifty shekels, according to their law. This was the customary money held in faith by the father should a wife’s husband forsake her through divorce or death. The next order of business was for the wife to give an inventory accounting of her assets that would be transferred to her husband’s estate. Since Rahab had left everything behind but her family when Jericho was destroyed, she had nothing. To Caleb that sacrifice was more than he could ever offer her. The next stage in a normal wedding with a virgin was not the celebration, but consummation. The husband and wife would go to the father’s home and consummate their union in the marriage bed. A white cloth would be placed beneath the virgin so that there would be a discharge of blood with her first carnal knowledge of a man. The cloth would then be taken to the celebration feast to prove her virginity and a priest would pronounce a benediction over them. But this was not a normal wedding with a virgin. Because of the shame of this lack of virginity, Rahab requested that they perform the ceremony and celebration before they would leave to consummate. This way, attention would not be drawn to her shame. Caleb graciously agreed. ~ Brian Godawa,

240:Once a competitor’s move has occurred, the denial of an adequate base for the competitor to meet its goals, coupled with the expectation that this state of affairs will continue, can cause the competitor to withdraw. New entrants, for example, usually have some targets for growth, market share, and ROI, and some time horizon for achieving them. If a new entrant is denied its targets and becomes convinced that it will be a long time before they are met, then it may withdraw or deescalate. Tactics for denying a base include strong price competition, heavy expenditures on research, and so on. Attacking new products in the test-market phase can be an effective way to foretell a firm’s future willingness to fight and can be less expensive than waiting for the introduction to actually occur. Another tactic is using special deals to load customers up with inventory, thereby removing the market for the product and raising the short-run cost of entry. It can be worth paying a substantial short-run price to deny a base if a firm’s market position is threatened. Essential to such a strategy, however, is a good hypothesis about what a competitor’s performance targets and time horizon are. An example of such a situation may be Gillette’s withdrawal from digital watches. Although claiming it had won significant market shares in test markets, Gillette bowed out, citing the substantial investments required to develop technology and margins lower than those available in other areas of its business. Texas Instruments’ strategy of aggressive pricing and rapid technological development in digital watches probably had a substantial impact on this decision. ~ Michael E Porter,

241:In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was more significant than on suicide. To the economist embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months, or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in — or more precisely not in — the country’s businesses and banks. This inventory — it should perhaps be called the bezzle — amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle. In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.

…

Just as the boom accelerated the rate of growth, so the crash enormously advanced the rate of discovery. Within a few days, something close to a universal trust turned into something akin to universal suspicion. Audits were ordered. Strained or preoccupied behavior was noticed. Most important, the collapse in stock values made irredeemable the position of the employee who had embezzled to play the market. He now confessed. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith,

242:Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love – from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter – to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. It is a pernicious habit, but I can do nothing about it. It can be compared to the uncontrollable flick of an insomniac’s tongue checking a jagged tooth in the night of his mouth and bruising itself in doing so but still persevering. I have known people who, upon accidentally touching something – a doorpost, a wall – had to go through a certain very rapid and systematic sequence of manual contacts with various surfaces in the room before returning to a balanced existence. It cannot be helped; I must know where I stand, where you and my son stand. When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,

243:Everett and his mom broke up with me,thank you very much."
"You shouldn't have made out with him in his mother's scrapbooking room," Liz said sagely.
"We're seventeen,"I snapped, "and Everett and I had been dating for two months when that happened.What were we supposed to do,eat dinner with his family and keep our hands on the table where everyone could see them?I mean, you and Davis are Mr. and Mrs. Polite Reserve, and even you were macking in the hot tub an hour ago." I picked up a pink fuzzy pillow that had fallen from he bed and threw it at Liz.
"You were?" Chloe gushed. "You what? Hello,I need the details of Liz and Davis."
"Hayden!" Liz squealed, ducking behind Chloe. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have made out with Everett.I'm saying you shouldn't have done it in his mother's scrapbooking room.Location, location,location.You might have disorganized her supplies.Some people are very particular about their chipboard getting mixed up with their cardstock."
I closed my eyes,inhaled through my nose,and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body.
"Watch out,"Chloe whispered to Liz. "She's doing yoga."
My eyes snapped open.So much for controlling my temper. "Why the hell didn't you tell me Nick's mother left before I went into the sauna with him?" I hollered at Chloe.
"We didn't know he was here!" Liz came to Chloe's defense. "And if we'd warned you about him before he got here," Chloe explained, "You would have known he was coming.We didn't want you to leave.The two of you are surprisingly hard to throw together,let me tell you."
"I'm not buying it," I informed Chloe. "You were distracted.You had your mind on taking inventory."
Liz giggled,turned red, and fell back to the pillows.
"Taking inventory requires enormous concentration!" Chloe said with a straight face,but she was blushing,too. ~ Jennifer Echols,

244:For fifteen years, John and Barbara Varian were furniture builders, living on a ranch in Parkfield, California, a tiny town where the welcome sign reads “Population 18.” The idea for a side business came about by accident after a group of horseback riding enthusiasts asked if they could pay a fee to ride on the ranch. They would need to eat, too—could John and Barbara do something about that? Yes, they could. In the fall of 2006, a devastating fire burned down most of their inventory, causing them to reevaluate the whole operation. Instead of rebuilding the furniture business (no pun intended), they decided to change course. “We had always loved horses,” Barbara said, “so we decided to see about having more groups pay to come to the ranch.” They built a bunkhouse and upgraded other buildings, putting together specific packages for riding groups that included all meals and activities. John and Barbara reopened as the V6 Ranch, situated on 20,000 acres exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Barbara’s story stood out to me because of something she said. I always ask business owners what they sell and why their customers buy from them, and the answers are often insightful in more ways than one. Many people answer the question directly—“We sell widgets, and people buy them because they need a widget”—but once in a while, I hear a more astute response. “We’re not selling horse rides,” Barbara said emphatically. “We’re offering freedom. Our work helps our guests escape, even if just for a moment in time, and be someone they may have never even considered before.” The difference is crucial. Most people who visit the V6 Ranch have day jobs and a limited number of vacation days. Why do they choose to visit a working ranch in a tiny town instead of jetting off to lie on a beach in Hawaii? The answer lies in the story and messaging behind John and Barbara’s offer. Helping their clients “escape and be someone else” is far more valuable than offering horse rides. Above all else, the V6 Ranch is selling happiness. ~ Chris Guillebeau,

245:What’s up, Albert?”
“Well, I’ve done inventory at Ralph’s, and I think if I had a lot of help, I could put together an okay Thanksgiving dinner.”
Sam stared at him. He blinked. “What?”
“Thanksgiving. It’s next week.”
“Uh-huh.”
“There are ovens at Ralph’s, big ones. And no one has taken the frozen turkeys. Figure two hundred and fifty kids if pretty much everyone from Perdido Beach shows up, right? One turkey will feed maybe eight people, so we need thirty-one, thirty-two turkeys. No problem there, because there are forty-six turkeys at Ralph’s.”
“Thirty-one turkeys?”
“Cranberry sauce will be no problem, stuffing is no problem, no one has taken much stuffing yet, although I’ll have to figure out how to mix, like, seven different brands and styles together, see how it tastes.”
“Stuffing,” Sam echoed solemnly.
“We don’t have enough canned yams, we’ll have to do fresh along with some baked potatoes. The big problem is going to be whipped cream and ice cream for the pies.”
Sam wanted to burst out laughing, but at the same time he found it touching and reassuring that Albert had put so much thought into the question.
“I imagine the ice cream is pretty much gone,” Sam said.
“Yeah. We’re very low on ice cream. And kids have been taking the canned whipped cream, too.”
“But we can have pie?”
“We have some frozen. And we have some pie shells we can bake up ourselves.”
“That would be nice,” Sam said.
“I’ll need to start three days before. I’ll need, like, at least ten people to help. I can haul the tables out of the church basement and set up in the plaza. I think I can do it.”
“I’ll bet you can, Albert,” Sam said with feeling.
“Mother Mary’s going to have the prees make centerpieces.”
“Listen, Albert…”
Albert raised a hand, cutting Sam off. “I know. I mean, I know we may have some great big fight before that. And I heard you have your fifteenth coming up. All kinds of bad stuff may happen. But, Sam—”
This time, Sam cut him off. “Albert? Get moving on planning the big meal.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It will give people something to look forward to. ~ Michael Grant,

246:Then I remembered something else from the 2112 liner notes. I pulled them up and scanned over them again. There was my answer, in the text that preceded Part III—“Discovery”: Behind my beloved waterfall, in the little room that was hidden beneath the cave, I found it. I brushed away the dust of the years, and picked it up, holding it reverently in my hands. I had no idea what it might be, but it was beautiful. I learned to lay my fingers across the wires, and to turn the keys to make them sound differently. As I struck the wires with my other hand, I produced my first harmonious sounds, and soon my own music! I found the waterfall near the southern edge of the city, just inside the curved wall of the atmospheric dome. As soon as I found it, I activated my jet boots and flew over the foaming river below the falls, then passed through the waterfall itself. My haptic suit did its best to simulate the sensation of torrents of falling water striking my body, but it felt more like someone pounding on my head, shoulders, and back with a bundle of sticks. Once I’d passed through the falls to the other side, I found the opening of a cave and went inside. The cave narrowed into a long tunnel, which terminated in a small, cavernous room. I searched the room and discovered that one of the stalagmites protruding from the floor was slightly worn around the tip. I grabbed the stalagmite and pulled it toward me, but it didn’t budge. I tried pushing, and it gave, bending as if on some hidden hinge, like a lever. I heard a rumble of grinding stone behind me, and I turned to see a trapdoor opening in the floor. A hole had also opened in the roof of the cave, casting a brilliant shaft of light down through the open trapdoor, into a tiny hidden chamber below. I took an item out of my inventory, a wand that could detect hidden traps, magical or otherwise. I used it to make sure the area was clear, then jumped down through the trapdoor and landed on the dusty floor of the hidden chamber. It was a tiny cube-shaped room with a large rough-hewn stone standing against the north wall. Embedded in the stone, neck first, was an electric guitar. I recognized its design from the 2112 concert footage I’d watched during the trip here. It was a 1974 Gibson Les Paul, the exact guitar used by Alex Lifeson during the 2112 tour. ~ Ernest Cline,

247:An Inventory Of The Furniture In Dr. Priestley's Study
A map of every country known,
With not a foot to call his own.
A list of folks that kicked a dust
On this poor globe, from Ptol. the First;
He hopes,- indeed it is but fair,Some day to get a corner there.
A group of all the British kings,
Fair emblem! on a packthread swings.
The Fathers, ranged in goodly row,
A decent, venerable show,
Writ a great while ago, they tell us,
And many an inch o'ertop their fellows.
A Juvenal to hunt for mottos;
And Ovid's tales of nymphs and grottos.
The meek-robed lawyers all in white;
Pure as the lamb,- at least, to sight.
A shelf of bottles, jar and phial,
By which the rogues he can defy all,All filled with lightning keen and genuine,
And many a little imp he'll pen you in;
Which, like Le Sage's sprite, let out,
Among the neighbours makes a rout;
Brings down the lightning on their houses,
And kills their geese, and frights their spouses.
A rare thermometer, by which
He settles, to the nicest pitch,
The just degrees of heat, to raise
Sermons, or politics, or plays.
Papers and books, a strange mixed olio,
From shilling touch to pompous folio;
Answer, remark, reply, rejoinder,
Fresh from the mint, all stamped and coined here;
Like new-made glass, set by to cool,
Before it bears the workman's tool.
A blotted proof-sheet, wet from Bowling.
-'How can a man his anger hold in?'Forgotten rimes, and college themes,
Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes;-
27
A mass of heterogeneous matter,
A chaos dark, no land nor water;New books, like new-born infants, stand,
Waiting the printer's clothing hand;Others, a mottly ragged brood,
Their limbs unfashioned all, and rude,
Like Cadmus' half-formed men appear;
One rears a helm, one lifts a spear,
And feet were lopped and fingers torn
Before their fellow limbs were born;
A leg began to kick and sprawl
Before the head was seen at all,
Which quiet as a mushroom lay
Till crumbling hillocks gave it way;
And all, like controversial writing,
Were born with teeth, and sprung up fighting.
'But what is this,' I hear you cry,
'Which saucily provokes my eye?'A thing unknown, without a name,
Born of the air and doomed to flame.
~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,

248:keeping the first station busy, and it’s similar to first-in, first-out scheduling. But of course, now everyone knows that you don’t release work based on the availability of the first station. Instead, it should be based on the tempo of how quickly the bottleneck resource can consume the work.” I just stare at him blankly. He continues, “Because of how Mark was releasing work, inventory kept piling up in front of our bottleneck, and jobs were never finished on time. Every day was an emergency. For years, we were awarded Best Customer of the Year from our air freight shipment company, because we were overnighting thousands of pounds of finished goods to angry customers almost every week.” He pauses and then says emphatically, “Eliyahu M. Goldratt, who created the Theory of Constraints, showed us how any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion. Astonishing, but true! Any improvement made after the bottleneck is useless, because it will always remain starved, waiting for work from the bottleneck. And any improvements made before the bottleneck merely results in more inventory piling up at the bottleneck.” He continues, “In our case, our bottleneck was a heat treat oven, just like in Goldratt’s novel, The Goal. We also had paint-curing booths that later became constraints, too. By the time we froze the release of all new jobs, you couldn’t even see the bottleneck work centers because they were surrounded by huge piles of inventory. Even from up here!” Despite myself, I laugh with him. It’s obvious in hindsight, but I can imagine that to Mark, it was anything but obvious. “Look, thanks for the history lesson. But I learned most of this already in business school. I don’t see how this could possibly be relevant to managing IT Operations. IT is not like running a factory.” “Oh, really?” he turns to me, frowning intensely. “Let me guess. You’re going to say that IT is pure knowledge work, and so therefore, all your work is like that of an artisan. Therefore, there’s no place for standardization, documented work procedures, and all that high-falutin’ ‘rigor and discipline’ that you claimed to hold so near and dear.” I frown. I can’t figure out if he’s trying to convince me of something I already believe or trying to get me to accept an absurd conclusion. “If you think IT Operations has nothing to learn from Plant Operations, you’re wrong. ~ Gene Kim,

249:Where is Albert?"
"He'll be here momentarily. I asked our housekeeper to fetch him."
Christopher blinked. "She's not afraid of him?"
"Of Albert? Heavens, no, everyone adores him."
The concept of someone, anyone, adoring his belligerent pet was difficult to grasp. Having expected to receive an inventory of all the damage Albert had caused, Christopher gave her a blank look.
And then the housekeeper returned with an obedient and well-groomed dog trotting by her side.
"Albert?" Christopher said.
The dog looked at him, ears twitching. His whiskered face changed, eyes brightening with excitement. Without hesitating, Albert launched forward with a happy yelp. Christopher knelt on the floor, gathering up an armful of joyfully wriggling canine. Albert strained to lick him, and whimpered and dove against him repeatedly.
Christopher was overwhelmed by feelings of kinship and relief. Grabbing the warm, compact body close, Christopher murmured his name and petted him roughly, and Albert whined and trembled.
"I missed you, Albert. Good boy. There's my boy." Unable to help himself, Christopher pressed his face against the rough fur. He was undone by guilt, humbled by the fact that even though he had abandoned Albert for the summer, the dog showed nothing but eager welcome. "I was away too long," Christopher murmured, looking into the soulful brown eyes. "I won't leave you again." He dragged his gaze up to Beatrix's. "It was a mistake to leave him," he said gruffly.
She was smiling at him. "Albert won't hold it against you. To err is human, to forgive, canine."
To his disbelief, Christopher felt an answering smile tug at the corners of his lips. He continued to pet the dog, who was fit and sleek. "You've taken good care of him."
"He's much better behaved than before," she said. "You can take him anywhere now."
Rising to his feet, Christopher looked down at her. "Why did you do it?" he asked softly.
"He's very much worth saving. Anyone could see that."
The awareness between them became unbearably aware. Christopher's heart worked in hard, uneven beats. How pretty she was in the white dress. She radiated a healthy female physicality that was very different from the fashionable frailty of London women. He wondered what it would be like to bed her, if she would be as direct in her passions as she was in everything else. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

250:Outsourcing requires a tight integration of suppliers, making sure that all pieces arrive just in time. Therefore, when some suppliers were unable to deliver certain basic components like capacitors and flash memory, Compaq's network was paralyzed. The company was looking at 600,000 to 700,000 unfilled orders in handheld devices. The $499 Pocket PCs were selling for $700 to $800 at auctions on eBay and Amazon.com. Cisco experienced a different but equally damaging problem: When orders dried up, Cisco neglected to turn off its supply chain, resulting in a 300 percent ballooning of its raw materials inventory.

The final numbers are frightening: The aggregate market value loss between March 2000 and March 2001 of the twelve major companies that adopted outsourcing-Cisco, Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Apple, IBM, Lucent, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, and Nortel-exceeded $1.2 trillion. The painful experience of these companies and their investors is a vivid demonstration of the consequences of ignoring network effects. A me attitude, where the company's immediate financial balance is the only factor, limits network thinking. Not understanding how the actions of one node affect other nodes easily cripples whole segments of the network.

Experts agree that such rippling losses are not an inevitable downside of the network economy. Rather, these companies failed because they outsourced their manufacturing without fully understanding the changes required in their business models. Hierarchical thinking does not fit a network economy. In traditional organizations, rapid shifts can be made within the organization, with any resulting losses being offset by gains in other parts of the hierarchy. In a network economy each node must be profitable. Failing to understand this, the big players of the network game exposed themselves to the risks of connectedness without benefiting from its advantages. When problems arose, they failed to make the right, tough decisions, such as shutting down the supply line in Cisco's case, and got into even bigger trouble.

At both the macro- and the microeconomic level, the network economy is here to stay. Despite some high-profile losses, outsourcing will be increasingly common. Financial interdependencies, ignoring national and continental boundaries, will only be strengthened with globalization. A revolution in management is in the making. It will take a new, network-oriented view of the economy and an understanding of the consequences of interconnectedness to smooth the way. ~ Albert L szl Barab si,

251:The same thing, notes Brynjolfsson, happened 120 years ago, in the Second Industrial Revolution, when electrification—the supernova of its day—was introduced. Old factories did not just have to be electrified to achieve the productivity boosts; they had to be redesigned, along with all business processes. It took thirty years for one generation of managers and workers to retire and for a new generation to emerge to get the full productivity benefits of that new power source. A December 2015 study by the McKinsey Global Institute on American industry found a “considerable gap between the most digitized sectors and the rest of the economy over time and [found] that despite a massive rush of adoption, most sectors have barely closed that gap over the past decade … Because the less digitized sectors are some of the largest in terms of GDP contribution and employment, we [found] that the US economy as a whole is only reaching 18 percent of its digital potential … The United States will need to adapt its institutions and training pathways to help workers acquire relevant skills and navigate this period of transition and churn.” The supernova is a new power source, and it will take some time for society to reconfigure itself to absorb its full potential. As that happens, I believe that Brynjolfsson will be proved right and we will start to see the benefits—a broad range of new discoveries around health, learning, urban planning, transportation, innovation, and commerce—that will drive growth. That debate is for economists, though, and beyond the scope of this book, but I will be eager to see how it plays out. What is absolutely clear right now is that while the supernova may not have made our economies measurably more productive yet, it is clearly making all forms of technology, and therefore individuals, companies, ideas, machines, and groups, more powerful—more able to shape the world around them in unprecedented ways with less effort than ever before. If you want to be a maker, a starter-upper, an inventor, or an innovator, this is your time. By leveraging the supernova you can do so much more now with so little. As Tom Goodwin, senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media, observed in a March 3, 2015, essay on TechCrunch.com: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening. ~ Thomas L Friedman,

252:Full Flight
I'm in a plane that will not be flown into a building.
It's a SAAB 340, seats 40, has two engines with propellers
is why I think of beanies, those hats that would spin
a young head into the clouds. The plane is red and loud
inside like it must be loud in the heart, red like fire
and fire engines and the woman two seats up and to the right
resembles one of the widows I saw on TV after the Towers
came down. It's her hair that I recognize, the fecundity of it
and the color and its obedience to an ideal, the shape
it was asked several hours ago to hold and has held, a kind
of wave that begins at the forehead and repeats with slight
variations all the way to the tips, as if she were water
and a pebble had been continuously dropped into the mouth
of her existence. We are eighteen thousand feet over America.
People are typing at their laps, blowing across the fog of coffee,
sleeping with their heads on the windows, on the pattern
of green fields and brown fields, streams and gas stations
and swimming pools, blue dots of aquamarine that suggest
we've domesticated the mirage. We had to kill someone,
I believe, when the metal bones burned and the top
fell through the bottom and a cloud made of dust and memos
and skin muscled across Manhattan. I remember feeling
I could finally touch a rifle, that some murders
are an illumination of ethics, that they act as a word,
a motion the brain requires for which there is
no syllable, no breath. The moment the planes had stopped,
when we were afraid of the sky, there was a pause
when we could have been perfectly American,
could have spent infinity dollars and thrown a million
bodies at finding the few, lasering our revenge
into a kind of love, the blood-hunger kept exact
and more convincing for its precision, an expression
of our belief that proximity is never the measure of guilt.
We've lived in the sky again for some years and today
on my lap these pictures from Iraq, naked bodies
stacked into a pyramid of ha-ha and the articles
about broomsticks up the ass and the limbs of children
turned into stubble, we are punch-drunk and getting even
with the sand, with the map, with oil, with ourselves
20
I think listening to the guys behind me. There's a problem
in Alpena with an inventory control system, some switches
are being counted twice, switches for what I don't know—
switches of humor, of faith—but the men are musical
in their jargon, both likely born in New Delhi
and probably Americans now, which is what the flesh
of this country has been, a grafted pulse, an inventory
of the world, and just as the idea of embrace
moves chemically into my blood, and I'm warmed
as if I've just taken a drink, a voice announces
we've begun our descent, and then I sense the falling.
~ Bob Hicok,

253:The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics giants viewed Internet sellers like Amazon as sketchy discounters. They also had big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City whispering in their ears and asking them to take a pass on Amazon. There were middlemen distributors, like Ingram Electronics, but they offered a limited selection. Bezos deployed Doerr to talk to Howard Stringer at Sony America, but he got nowhere. So Payne had to turn to the secondary distributors—jobbers that exist in an unsanctioned, though not illegal, gray market. Randy Miller, a retail finance director who came to Amazon from Eddie Bauer, equates it to buying from the trunk of someone’s car in a dark alley. “It was not a sustainable inventory model, but if you are desperate to have particular products on your site or in your store, you do what you need to do,” he says. Buying through these murky middlemen got Payne and his fledgling electronics team part of the way toward stocking Amazon’s virtual shelves. But Bezos was unimpressed with the selection and grumpily compared it to shopping in a Russian supermarket during the years of Communist rule. It would take Amazon years to generate enough sales to sway the big Asian brands. For now, the electronics store was sparely furnished. Bezos had asked to see $100 million in electronics sales for the 1999 holiday season; Payne and his crew got about two-thirds of the way there. Amazon officially announced the new toy and electronics stores that summer, and in September, the company held a press event at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan to promote the new categories. Someone had the idea that the tables in the conference room at the Sheraton should have piles of merchandise representing all the new categories, to reinforce the idea of broad selection. Bezos loved it, but when he walked into the room the night before the event, he threw a tantrum: he didn’t think the piles were large enough. “Do you want to hand this business to our competitors?” he barked into his cell phone at his underlings. “This is pathetic!” Harrison Miller, Chris Payne, and their colleagues fanned out that night across Manhattan to various stores, splurging on random products and stuffing them in the trunks of taxicabs. Miller spent a thousand dollars alone at a Toys “R” Us in Herald Square. Payne maxed out his personal credit card and had to call his wife in Seattle to tell her not to use the card for a few days. The piles of products were eventually large enough to satisfy Bezos, but the episode was an early warning. To satisfy customers and their own demanding boss during the upcoming holiday, Amazon executives were going to have to substitute artifice and improvisation for truly comprehensive selection. ~ Brad Stone,

254:Remarks On The Bright And Dark Side
But may a Rural Pen try to set forth
Such a Great Fathers Ancient Grace and worth
I undertake a no less Arduous Theme
Then the Old Sages found the Chaldae Dream
'Tis more then Tythes of a profound respect
That must be paid such a Melchizedeck
Oxford this light with tongues and Arts doth trim
And then his Northern Town doth Challeng him
His Time and Strength he Center'd there in this
To do good works, and be what now he is.
His fulgent Virtues there and learned Strains
Tall comely Presence, Life unsoil'd with Stains
Things most on WORTHIES in their Stories writ
Did him to move in Orbs of Service fitt
Things more peculiar yet, my muse intend
Say stranger things then these, so weep and End
When he forsook first his Oxonian Cell
Some Scores at once from Popish darkness fell
So this Reformer studied! rare first fruits!
Shakeing a Crab-tree thus by hot disputes
The acid juice by miracle turn'd wine
And rais'd the Spirits of our young Divine
Hearers like Doves flock'd with contentios wing
Who should be first, feed most: most homeward bring
Laden with honey like Hyblaean Bees
They knead it into combs upon their knees.
Why he from Europes pleasant Garden fled
In the Next Age will be with horrour said
Braintree was of this Jewel then possest
Untill himself he labour'd into Rest
His Inventory then with Johns was took
His rough Coat, Girdle with the Sacred Book
When Reverend Knowles and he sail'd hand in hand
To Christ, Espousing the Virginian Land
Upon a ledge of Craggy Rocks near stav'd
His Bible in his bosome thrusting sav'd
The Bible, the best cordial of his Heart
Come floods, come flames (cry'd he) we'l never part
A constellation of great converts there
15
Shone round him and his Heav'nly Glory where
With a Rare Skill in hearts, this Doctor cou'd
Steal into them words that should do them good
His Balsom's from the Tree of Life distill'd
Hearts cleans'd and heal'd, and with rich comforts fill'd
But here's the wo! Balsoms which others cur'd
Would in his Own Turn hardly be endur'd
Apollyon Owing him a cursed Spleen
Who an Apollos in the Church had been
Dreading his Traffick here would be undone
By Numerous proselites he daily won
Accus'd him of Imaginary faults
And push'd him down so into dismal Vaults
Vaults where he kept long Ember weeks of grief
'Till Heav'n alarm'd sent him in relief
Then was a Daniel in the lyons Den
A man, oh how belov'd of God and men
By his beds-side an Hebrew sword there lay
With which at last he drove the Devil away.
Quaker's too durst not bear his keen replies
But fearing it half drawn the trembler flyes
Like Lazarus new rais'd from Death appears
The Saint that had been dead for many years
Our Nehemiah said, shall such as I
Desert my flock, and like a Coward fly
Long had the Churches begg'd the Saints release
Releas'd at last, he dies in Glorious peace
The Night is not so long, but phosphors ray
Approaching Glories doth on high display
Faith's Eye in him discern'd the Morning Star
His heart leap'd; Sure the Sun cannot be far
In Extasies of Joy, he Ravish'd Cryes
Love, Love the Lamb, the Lamb, in whome he dies.
~ Benjamin Tompson,

255:I wanted to be a spy,” Olga said, shrugging. “I applied to the CIA. I was turned down. I did not meet the psychological profile. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Basically, I have a hard time taking orders from idiots.”

“Don’t think of me as an idiot and I won’t give you an idiotic order,” Sophia said. “But if I give you one, you’d better do it. Because it’s probably going to mean surviving or dying.”

“You I don’t mind,” Olga said. “Or I wouldn’t have joined your crew. Don’t ask me about Nazar. So I was in Spain with the troupe. When the Plague hit, they shut down travel. And all my guns were in America. In a zombie apocalypse. I was quite upset.”

“You should have seen Faith when they told her she had to be disarmed in New York,” Sophia said. “Then they gave her a taser and that was mistake. What kind of guns?”

“I like that your family prefers the AK series,” Olga said. “I really do think it’s superior to the M16 series in many ways. Much more reliable. They say it is less accurate but that is at longer ranges. The round is not designed for long range.”

“I can hit at a thousand meters with my accurized AK,” Sophia said. “It’s a matter of knowing the ballistics. It’s not real powerful at that range, but try doing the same thing with an M4. I’ll wait.”

“Oh, jeeze, you two,” Paula said. “Get a room.”

“So continue with how you got on the yacht,” Sophia said. “We don’t want our cook getting all woozy with gun geeking.”

“We were called by the agency and asked if anyone wanted to ‘catch a ride’ on a yacht,” Olga said. “When they said who owned the boat… I nearly said no. We all knew Nazar. Or at least of him. Not a nice man, as you might have noticed. We knew what we were getting into. But then we were told he had vaccine… ” she shrugged again.

“Accepting Nazar’s offer was perhaps not the worst decision I have made in my life. I survived. Not how I would have preferred to survive, but I was vaccinated and I survived. But I did not even hint that I knew more about his men’s weapons than they did. They were pigs. Tough guys. But none of them were military and none of them really knew what they were doing with them. When they brought out the RPG, I nearly peed myself. Irinei had no idea what he was doing with it. I don’t think he even knew the safety was off.”

“You know how to use an RPG?” Sophia said.

“My family liked the United States very much,” Olga said, sadly. “We all like guns and anything that goes boom. And in the US, you could find people who had licenses for anything. I’ve fired an RPG, yes.”

“Well, if we find an RPG you can have it,” Sophia said.

“Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly.

“But we’ll be keeping the rounds and the launcher separate,” Sophia said.

“Oh, my, yes,” Olga said. “And both will have to be in a well sealed container. This salt air would cause corrosion quickly.”

“I guess you miss your guns?” Paula said. “That’s not a request for an inventory and loving description of each, by the way. Got that enough from Faith.”

“I do,” Olga said. “But I miss my books more.”

“Books,” Paula said. “Now you’re talking my language.”

“I have more books than shelves,” Olga said. “And I had many shelves. I collect old manuscripts when I can afford them.”

“If we do any land clearance, look in the libraries and big houses,” Sophia said. “I bet around here you can probably pick up some great stuff.”

“This is okay?” Olga said. “We can, salvage?”

“If there’s time and if we clear the town,” Sophia said. “Sure.”

“Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, kissing her on the cheek.

“Okay, now you definitely need to get a room. ~ John Ringo,

256:Tecumseh
There was a time on this fair continent
When all things throve in spacious peacefulness.
The prosperous forests unmolested stood,
For where the stalwart oak grew there it lived
Long ages, and then died among its kind.
The hoary pines—those ancients of the earth—
Brimful of legends of the early world,
Stood thick on their own mountains unsubdued.
And all things else illumined by the sun,
Inland or by the lifted wave, had rest.
The passionate or calm pageants of the skies
No artist drew; but in the auburn west
Innumerable faces of fair cloud
Vanished in silent darkness with the day.
The prairie realm—vast ocean's paraphraseRich in wild grasses numberless, and flowers
Unnamed save in mute Nature's inventory,
No civilized barbarian trenched for gain.
And all that flowed was sweet and uncorrupt
The rivers and their tributary streams,
Undammed, wound on forever, and gave up
Their lonely torrents to weird gulfs of sea,
And ocean wastes unshadowed by a sail.
And all the wild life of this western world
Knew not the fear of man; yet in those woods,
And by those plenteous streams and mighty lakes,
And on stupendous steppes of peerless plain,
And in the rocky gloom of canyons deep,
Screened by the stony ribs of mountains hoar
Which steeped their snowy peaks in purging cloud,
And down the continent where tropic suns
Warmed to her very heart the mother earth,
And in the congcal'd north where silence self
Ached with intensity of stubborn frost,
There lived a soul more wild than barbarous;
A tameless soul—the sunburnt savage free—
Free, and untainted by the greed of gain:
Great Nature's man content with Nature's food.
LEFROY. I love you better than I love my race;
And could I mass my fondness for my friends,
Augment it with my love of noble brutes,
Tap every spring of reverence and respect,
And all affections bright and beautiful—
Still would my love for you outweigh them all.
IENA. Speak not of love! Speak of the Long-Knife's hate!
Oh, it is pitiful to creep in fear
O'er lands where once our fathers stept in pride!
The Long-Knife strengthens, whilst our race decays,
And falls before him as our forests fall.
First comes his pioneer, the bee, and soon
The mast which plumped the wild deer fats his swine.
His cattle pasture where the bison fed;
His flowers, his very weeds, displace our own—
Aggressive as himself. All, all thrust back!
Destruction follows us, and swift decay.
Oh, I have lain for hours upon the grass,
And gazed into the tenderest blue of heaven—
Cleansed as with dew, so limpid, pure and sweet—
All flecked with silver packs of standing cloud
Most beautiful! But watch them narrowly!
Those clouds will sheer small fleeces from their sides,
Which, melting in our sight as in a dream,
Will vanish all like phantoms in the sky.
So melts our heedless race! Some weaned away,
And wedded to rough-handed pioneers,
Who, fierce as wolves in hatred of our kind,
Yet from their shrill and acid women turn,
Prizing our maidens for their gentleness.
Some by outlandish fevers die, and some—
Caught in the white man's toils and vices mean—
Court death, and find it in the trader's cup.
And all are driven from their heritage,
Far from our fathers' seats and sepulchres,
And girdled with the growing glooms of war;
Resting a moment here, a moment there,
Whilst ever through our plains and forest realms
Bursts the pale spoiler, armed, with eager quest,
And ruinous lust of land. I think of all—
And own Tecumseh right. 'Tis he alone
Can stem this tide of sorrows dark and deep;
So must I bend my feeble will to his,
And, for my people's welfare, banish love
~ Charles Mair,

257:Resignation Pt 1
The days how few, how short the years
Of man's too rapid race!
Each leaving, as it swiftly flies,
A shorter in its place.
They who the longest lease enjoy,
Have told us with a sigh,
That to be born seems little more
Than to begin to die.
Numbers there are who feel this truth
With fears alarm'd; and yet,
In life's delusions lull'd asleep,
This weighty truth forget:
And am not I to these akin?
Age slumbers o'er the quill;
Its honour blots, whate'er it writes,
And am I writing still?
Conscious of nature in decline,
And languor in my thoughts;
To soften censure, and abate
Its rigour on my faults
Permit me, madam! ere to you
The promis'd verse I pay,
To touch on felt infirmity,
Sad sister of decay.
One world deceas'd, another born,
Like Noah they behold,
O'er whose white hairs, and furrow'd brows,
Too many suns have roll'd:
Happy the patriarch! he rejoic'd
His second world to see:
My second world, though gay the scene,
Can boast no charms for me.
48
To me this brilliant age appears
With desolation spread;
Near all with whom I liv'd, and smil'd,
Whilst life was life, are dead;
And with them died my joys; the grave
Has broken nature's laws;
And clos'd, against this feeble frame,
Its partial cruel jaws;
Cruel to spare! condemn'd to life!
A cloud impairs my sight;
My weak hand disobeys my will,
And trembles as I write.
What shall I write? Thalia, tell;
Say, long abandon'd muse!
What field of fancy shall I range?
What subject shall I choose?
A choice of moment high inspire,
And rescue me from shame,
For doting on thy charms so late,
By grandeur in my theme.
Beyond
Which
Beyond
Bright
the themes, which most admire,
dazzle, or amaze,
renown'd exploits of war,
charms, or empire's blaze,
Are themes, which, in a world of woe
Can best appease our pain;
And, in an age of gaudy guilt,
Gay folly's flood restrain;
Amidst the storms of life support
A calm, unshaken mind;
And with unfading laurels crown
The brow of the resign'd.
O resignation! yet unsung,
49
Untouch'd by former strains;
Though claiming every muse's smile,
And every poet's pains,
Beneath life's evening, solemn shade,
I dedicate my page
To thee, thou safest guard of youth!
Thou sole support of age!
All other duties crescents are
Of virtue faintly bright,
The glorious consummation, thou!
Which fills her orb with light:
How rarely fill'd! the love divine
In evils to discern,
This the first lesson which we want,
The latest, which we learn;
A melancholy truth! for know,
Could our proud hearts resign,
The distance greatly would decrease
'Twixt human and divine.
But though full noble is my theme,
Full urgent is my call
To soften sorrow, and forbid
The bursting tear to fall:
The task I dread; dare I to leave
Of humble prose the shore,
And put to sea? a dangerous sea?
What throngs have sunk before!
How proud the poet's billow swells!
The God! the God! his boast:
A boast how vain! What wrecks abound!
Dead bards stench every coast.
What then am I? Shall I presume,
On such a moulten wing,
Above the general wreck to rise,
50
And in my winter, sing;
When nightingales, when sweetest bards
Confine their charming song
To summer's animating heats,
Content to warble young?
Yet write I must; a lady(49) sues;
How shameful her request!
My brain in labour for dull rhyme!
Hers teeming with the best!
But you a stranger will excuse,
Nor scorn his feeble strain;
To you a stranger, but, through fate,
No stranger to your pain.
The ghost of grief deceas'd ascends,
His old wound bleeds anew;
His sorrows are recall'd to life
By those he sees in you;
Too well he knows the twisting strings
Of ardent hearts combin'd
When rent asunder, how they bleed,
How hard to be resign'd:
Those tears you pour, his eyes have shed;
The pang you feel, he felt;
Thus nature, loud as virtue, bids
His heart at yours to melt.
But what can heart, or head, suggest?
What sad experience say?
Through truths austere, to peace we work
Our rugged, gloomy way:
What are we? whence? for what? and whither?
Who know not, needs must mourn;
But thought, bright daughter of the skies!
Can tears to triumph turn.
51
Thought is our armour, 'tis the mind's
Impenetrable shield,
When, sent by fate, we meet our foes,
In sore affliction's field;
It plucks the frightful mask from ills,
Forbids pale fear to hide,
Beneath that dark disguise, a friend,
Which turns affection's tide.
Affection frail! train'd up by sense,
From reason's channel strays:
And whilst it blindly points at peace,
Our peace to pain betrays.
Thought winds its fond, erroneous stream
From daily dying flowers,
To nourish rich immortal blooms,
In amaranthine bowers;
Whence throngs, in ecstasy, look down
On what once shock'd their sight;
And thank the terrors of the past
For ages of delight.
All withers here; who most possess
Are losers by their gain,
Stung by full proof, that, bad at best,
Life's idle all is vain:
Vain, in its course, life's murmuring stream;
Did not its course offend,
But murmur cease; life, then, would seem
Still vainer, from its end.
How wretched! who, through cruel fate,
Have nothing to lament!
With the poor alms this world affords
Deplorably content!
Had not the Greek his world mistook,
His wish had been most wise;
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To be content with but one world,
Like him, we should despise.
Of earth's revenue would you state
A full account and fair?
We hope; and hope; and hope; then cast
The total up--_Despair._
Since vain all here, all future, vast,
Embrace the lot assign'd;
Heaven wounds to heal; its frowns are friends;
Its stroke severe, most kind.
But in laps'd nature rooted deep,
Blind error domineers;
And on fools' errands, in the dark,
Sends out our hopes and fears;
Bids us for ever pains deplore,
Our pleasures overprize;
These oft persuade us to be weak;
Those urge us to be wise.
From virtue's rugged path to right
By pleasure are we brought,
To flowery fields of wrong, and there
Pain chides us for our fault:
Yet whilst it chides, it speaks of peace
If folly is withstood;
And says, time pays an easy price,
For our eternal good.
In earth's dark cot, and in an hour,
And in delusion great,
What an economist is man
To spend his whole estate,
And beggar an eternity!
For which as he was born,
More worlds than one against it weigh'd,
53
As feathers he should scorn.
Say not, your loss in triumph leads
Religion's feeble strife;
Joys future amply reimburse
Joys bankrupts of this life.
But not deferr'd your joy so long,
It bears an early date;
Affliction's ready pay in hand,
Befriends our present state;
What are the tears, which trickle down
Her melancholy face,
Like liquid pearl? Like pearls of price,
They purchase lasting peace.
Grief softens hearts, and curbs the will,
Impetuous passion tames,
And keeps insatiate, keen desire
From launching in extremes.
Through time's dark womb, our judgment right,
If our dim eye was thrown,
Clear should we see, the will divine
Has but forestall'd our own;
At variance with our future wish,
Self-sever'd we complain;
If so, the wounded, not the wound,
Must answer for the pain:
The day shall come, and swift of wing,
Though you may think it slow,
When, in the list of fortune's smiles,
You'll enter frowns of woe.
For mark the path of Providence;
This course it has pursued'Pain is the parent, woe the womb,
Of sound, important good:'
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Our hearts are fasten'd to this world
By strong and endless ties:
And every sorrow cuts a string,
And urges us to rise:
'Twill sound severe-Yet rest assur'd
I'm studious of your peace;
Though I should dare to give you joyYes, joy of his decease:
An hour shall come, (you question this,)
An hour, when you shall bless,
Beyond the brightest beams of life,
Dark days of your distress.
Hear then without surprise a truth,
A daughter truth to this,
Swift turns of fortune often tie
A bleeding heart to bliss:
Esteem you this a paradox?
My sacred motto read;
A glorious truth! divinely sung
By one, whose heart had bled;
To resignation swift he flew,
In her a friend he found,
A friend, which bless'd him with a smile
When gasping with his wound.
On earth nought precious is obtain'd
But what is painful too;
By travel, and to travel born,
Our sabbaths are but few:
To real joy we work our way,
Encountering many a shock,
Ere found what truly charms; as found
A Venus in the block.
In some disaster, some severe
Appointment for our sins,
55
That mother blessing, (not so call'd,)
True happiness, begins.
No martyr e'er defied the flames,
By stings of life unvext;
First rose some quarrel with this world,
Then passion for the next.
You see, then, pangs are parent pangs,
The pangs of happy birth;
Pangs, by which only can be born
True happiness on earth.
The peopled earth look all around,
Or through time's records run!
And say, what is a man unstruck?
It is a man undone.
This moment, am I deeply stungMy bold pretence is tried;
When vain man boasts, heaven puts to proof
The vauntings of his pride;
Now need I, madam! your support.How exquisite the smart;
How critically tim'd the news(50)
Which strikes me to the heart!
The pangs of which I spoke, I feel:
If worth like thine is born,
O long-belov'd! I bless the blow,
And triumph, whilst I mourn.
Nor mourn I long; by grief subdued,
By reason's empire shown;
Deep anguish comes by heaven's decree,
Continues by our own;
And when continued past its point,
Indulg'd in length of time,
Grief is disgrac'd, and, what was fate,
Corrupts into a crime:
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And shall I, criminally mean,
Myself and subject wrong?
No; my example shall support
The subject of my song.
Madam! I grant your loss is great;
Nor little is your gain?
Let that be weigh'd; when weigh'd aright,
It richly pays your pain:
When heaven would kindly set us free,
And earth's enchantment end;
It takes the most effectual means,
And robs us of a friend.
But such a friend! and sigh no more?
'Tis prudent; but severe:
Heaven aid my weakness, and I drop
All sorrow-with this tear.
Perhaps your settled grief to soothe,
I should not vainly strive,
But with soft balm your pain assuage,
Had he been still alive;
Whose frequent aid brought kind relief,
In my distress of thought,
Ting'd with his beams my cloudy page,
And beautified a fault:
To touch our passions' secret springs
Was his peculiar care;
And deep his happy genius div'd
In bosoms of the fair;
Nature, which favours to the few,
All art beyond, imparts,
To him presented, at his birth,
The key of human hearts.
But not to me by him bequeath'd
57
His gentle, smooth address;
His tender hand to touch the wound
In throbbing of distress;
Howe'er, proceed I must, unbless'd
With Esculapian art:
Know, love sometimes, mistaken love!
Plays disaffection's part:
Nor lands, nor seas, nor suns, nor stars,
Can soul from soul divide;
They correspond from distant worlds,
Though transports are denied:
Are you not, then, unkindly kind?
Is not your love severe?
O! stop that crystal source of woe;
Nor wound him with a tear.
As those above from human bliss
Receive increase of joy;
May not a stroke from human woe,
In part, their peace destroy?
He lives in those he left;-to what?
Your, now, paternal care,
Clear from its cloud your brighten'd eye,
It will discern him there;
In features, not of form alone,
But those, I trust, of mind;
Auspicious to the public weal,
And to their fate resign'd.
Think on the tempests he sustain'd;
Revolve his battles won;
And let those prophesy your joy
From such a father's son:
Is consolation what you seek?
Fan, then, his martial fire:
And animate to flame the sparks
58
Bequeath'd him by his sire:
As nothing great is born in haste,
Wise nature's time allow;
His father's laurels may descend,
And flourish on his brow.
Nor, madam! be surpris'd to hear
That laurels may be due
Not more to heroes of the field,
(Proud boasters!) than to you:
Tender as is the female frame,
Like that brave man you mourn,
You are a soldier, and to fight
Superior battles born;
Beneath a banner nobler far
Than ever was unfurl'd
In fields of blood; a banner bright!
High wav'd o'er all the world.
It, like a streaming meteor, casts
A universal light;
Sheds day, sheds more, eternal day
On nations whelm'd in night.
Beneath that banner, what exploit
Can mount our glory higher,
Than to sustain the dreadful blow,
When those we love expire?
Go forth a moral Amazon;
Arm'd with undaunted thought;
The battle won, though costing dear,
You'll think it cheaply bought:
The passive hero, who sits down
Unactive, and can smile
Beneath affliction's galling load,
Out-acts a Caesar's toil:
59
The billows stain'd by slaughter'd foes
Inferior praise afford;
Reason's a bloodless conqueror,
More glorious than the sword.
Nor can the thunders of huzzas,
From shouting nations, cause
Such sweet delight, as from your heart
Soft whispers of applause:
The dear deceas'd so fam'd in arms,
With what delight he'll view
His triumphs on the main outdone,
Thus conquer'd, twice, by you.
Share his delight; take heed to shun
Of bosoms most diseas'd
That odd distemper, an absurd
Reluctance to be pleas'd:
Some seem in love with sorrow's charms,
And that foul fiend embrace:
This temper let me justly brand,
And stamp it with disgrace:
Sorrow! of horrid parentage!
Thou second-born of hell!
Against heaven's endless mercies pour'd
How dar'st thou to rebel?
From black and noxious vapours bred,
And nurs'd by want of thought,
And to the door of phrensy's self
By perseverance brought,
Thy most inglorious, coward tears
From brutal eyes have ran:
Smiles, incommunicable smiles!
Are radiant marks of man;
They cast a sudden glory round
Th' illumin'd human face;
60
And light in sons of honest joy
Some beams of Moses' face:
Is resignation's lesson hard?
Examine, we shall find
That duty gives up little more
Than anguish of the mind;
Resign; and all the load of life
That moment you remove,
Its heavy tax, ten thousand cares
Devolve on one above;
Who bids us lay our burthen down
On his almighty hand,
Softens our duty to relief,
To blessing a command.
For joy what cause! how every sense
Is courted from above
The year around, with presents rich,
The growth of endless love!
But most o'erlook the blessings pour'd,
Forget the wonders done,
And terminate, wrapp'd up in sense,
Their prospect at the sun;
From that, their final point of view,
From that their radiant goal,
On travel infinite of thought,
Sets out the nobler soul,
Broke loose from time's tenacious ties,
And earth's involving gloom,
To range at last its vast domain,
And talk with worlds to come:
They let unmark'd, and unemploy'd,
Life's idle moments run;
And doing nothing for themselves,
Imagine nothing done;
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Fatal mistake! their fate goes on,
Their dread account proceeds,
And their not doing is set down
Amongst their darkest deeds;
Though man sits still, and takes his ease;
God is at work on man;
No means, no moment unemployed,
To bless him, if he can.
But man consents not, boldly bent
To fashion his own fate;
Man, a mere bungler in the trade,
Repents his crime too late;
Hence loud laments: let me thy cause,
Indulgent father! plead;
Of all the wretches we deplore,
Not one by thee was made.
What is thy whole creation fair?
Of love divine the child;
Love brought it forth; and, from its birth,
Has o'er it fondly smil'd:
Now, and through periods distant far,
Long ere the world began,
Heaven is, and has in travail been,
Its birth the good of man;
Man holds in constant service bound
The blustering winds and seas;
Nor suns disdain to travel hard
Their master, man, to please:
To final good the worst events
Through secret channels run;
Finish for man their destin'd course,
As 'twas for man begun.
One point (observ'd, perhaps, by few)
62
Has often smote, and smites
My mind, as demonstration strong;
That heaven in man delights:
What's known to man of things unseen,
Of future worlds, or fates?
So much, nor more, than what to man's
Sublime affairs relates;
What's revelation then? a list,
An inventory just
Of that poor insect's goods, so late
Call'd out of night and dust.
What various motives to rejoice!
To render joy sincere,
Has this no weight? our joy is felt
Beyond this narrow sphere:
Would we in heaven new heaven create,
And double its delight?
A smiling world, when heaven looks down,
How pleasing in its sight!
Angels stoop forward from their thrones
To hear its joyful lays;
As incense sweet enjoy, and join,
Its aromatic praise:
Have we no cause to fear the stroke
Of heaven's avenging rod,
When we presume to counteract
A sympathetic God?
If we resign, our patience makes
His rod an armless wand;
If not, it darts a serpent's sting,
Like that in Moses' hand;
Like that, it swallows up whate'er
Earth's vain magicians bring,
Whose baffled arts would boast below
63
Of joys a rival spring.
Consummate love! the list how large
Of blessings from thy hand!
To banish sorrow, and be blest,
Is thy supreme command.
Are such commands but ill obey'd?
Of bliss, shall we complain?
The man, who dares to be a wretch,
Deserves still greater pain.
Joy is our duty, glory, health;
The sunshine of the soul;
Our best encomium on the power
Who sweetly plans the whole:
Joy is our Eden still possess'd:
Begone, ignoble grief!
'Tis joy makes gods, and men exalts,
Their nature, our relief;
Relief, for man to that must stoop,
And his due distance know;
Transport's the language of the sides,
Content the style below.
Content is joy, and joy in pain
Is joy and virtue too;
Thus, whilst good present we possess,
More precious we pursue:
Of joy the more we have in hand,
The more have we to come;
Joy, like our money, interest bears,
Which daily swells the sum.
'But how to smile; to stem the tide
Of nature in our veins;
Is it not hard to weep in joy?
What then to smile in pains?'
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Victorious joy! which breaks the clouds,
And struggles through a storm;
Proclaims the mind as great, as good
And bids it doubly charm:
If doubly charming in our sex,
A sex, by nature, bold;
What then in yours? 'tis diamond there
Triumphant o'er our gold.
And should not this complaint repress,
And check the rising sigh?
Yet farther opiate to your pain
I labour to supply.
Since spirits greatly damp'd distort
Ideas of delight,
Look through the medium of a friend,
To set your notions right:
As tears the sight, grief dims the soul;
Its object dark appears;
True friendship, like a rising sun,
The soul's horizon clears.
A friend's an optic to the mind
With sorrow clouded o'er;
And gives it strength of sight to see
Redress unseen before.
Reason is somewhat rough in man;
Extremely smooth and fair,
When she, to grace her manly strength,
Assumes a female air:
A friend(51) you have, and I the same,
Whose prudent, soft address
Will bring to life those healing thoughts
Which died in your distress;
That friend, the spirit of my theme
Extracting for your ease,
65
Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts
Too common; such as these:
Let those lament to whom full bowls
Of sparkling joys are given;
That triple bane inebriates life,
Imbitters death, and hazards heaven:
Woe to the soul at perfect ease!
'Tis brewing perfect pains;
Lull'd reason sleeps, the pulse is king;
Despotic body reigns;
Have you(52) ne'er pitied joy's gay scenes,
And deem'd their glory dark?
Alas! poor envy! she's stone-blind,
And quite mistakes her mark:
Her mark lies hid in sorrow's shades,
But sorrow well subdu'd;
And in proud fortune's frown defied
By meek, unborrow'd good.
By resignation; all in that
A double friend may find,
A wing to heaven, and, while on earth,
The pillow of mankind:
On pillows void of down, for rest
Our restless hopes we place;
When hopes of heaven lie warm at heart,
Our hearts repose in peace:
The peace, which resignation yields,
Who feel alone can guess;
'Tis disbeliev'd by murmuring minds,
They must conclude it less:
The loss, or gain, of that alone
Have we to hope or fear;
That fate controls, and can invert
The seasons of the year:
66
O! the dark days, the year around,
Of an impatient mind!
Thro' clouds, and storms, a summer breaks,
To shine on the resign'd:
While man by that of every grace,
And virtue, is possess'd;
Foul vice her pandaemonium builds
In the rebellious breast;
By resignation we defeat
The worst that can annoy;
And suffer, with far more repose,
Than worldlings can enjoy.
From small experience this I speak;
O! grant to those I love
Experience fuller far, ye powers,
Who form our fates above!
My love were due, if not to those
Who, leaving grandeur, came
To shine on age in mean recess,
And light me to my theme!
A theme themselves! A theme, how rare!
The charms, which they display,
To triumph over captive heads,
Are set in bright array:
With his own arms proud man's o'ercome,
His boasted laurels die:
Learning and genius, wiser grown,
To female bosoms fly.
This revolution, fix'd by fate,
In fable was foretold;
The dark prediction puzzled wits,
Nor could the learn'd unfold:
But as those ladies'(53) works I read,
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They darted such a ray,
The latent sense burst out at once,
And shone in open day:
So burst, full ripe, distended fruits,
When strongly strikes the sun;
And from the purple grape unpress'd
Spontaneous nectars run.
Pallas, ('tis said,) when Jove grew dull,
Forsook his drowsy brain;
And sprightly leap'd into the throne
Of wisdom's brighter reign;
Her helmet took; that is, shot rays
Of formidable wit;
And lance,-or, genius most acute,
Which lines immortal writ;
And gorgon shield,-or, power to fright
Man's folly, dreadful shone,
And many a blockhead (easy change!)
Turn'd, instantly, to stone.
Our authors male, as, then, did Jove,
Now scratch a damag'd head,
And call for what once quarter'd there,
But find the goddess fled.
The fruit of knowledge, golden fruit!
That once forbidden tree,
Hedg'd-in by surly man, is now
To Britain's daughters free:
In Eve (we know) of fruit so fair
The noble thirst began;
And they, like her, have caus'd a fall,
A fall of fame in man:
And since of genius in our sex,
O Addison! with thee
The sun is set; how I rejoice
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This sister lamp to see!
It sheds, like Cynthia, silver beams
On man's nocturnal state;
His lessen'd light, and languid powers,
I show, whilst I relate.
~ Edward Young,

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